Untitled

Project Overview:

Alkebulan is a creative ecosystem exclusively empowering black creatives. Emphasis will be placed on rehabilitating the impact of racism on the black creative community. This is a multidimensional platform dedicated to exclusively black curation, community unity, and economic reinvestment. This will materialize as a digital platform to provide a web-shop, a physical pop-up marketplace, and a directory all spotlighting black creative-community shareholders as well as providing opportunities to build wealth without it being tainted by an integration tax.

Problem Statement:

Systematic racism inhibits the acquisition and accumulation of equitable ownership within the black creative community of the culture its members produce. At its root, racism is an economic issue that requires an economic solution. There is a lack of reinvestment back into the black community as well as an exploitation of black creators and appropriation of their cultural contributions. Lastly, people are unsure where to find black-owned businesses to support or that racism needs to be contested economically. The challenge was to find an outlet to address these issues and contest the effects of racism on the black creative community.

Outcome:

Despite being the biggest exporters of popular culture, there is an insufficiency of equitable reinvestments within the black creative community even among its own members. There's an oppressive discrepancy between the amount of equitable ownership held by entrepreneurial black cultural creatives compared to white-owned companies. This project utilizes empowerment strategies to enrich and rehabilitate the black creative community/ industry. Our outcome enables equity ownership ensuring wealth building, curation of stakeholders, and promoting unity within the black creative community.

Challenges:

  1. An app to connect the Black creative community (with a portfolio component).
  2. An ecosystem to facilitate the socio-economic growth of the Black creative community.
  3. An independent marketplace to allow for economic sovereignty for black creatives

Design Process: