Blueprint Cafe, 3120 St Paul St, Baltimore, MD 21218

Join us for the culminating event of the Reimagining Land theme, as we gather to reflect, connect, and celebrate with a public conversation between Rashid Awari (CEHDA-GHANA and WIACT) and Eric Jackson (Black Yield Institute), moderated by Anand Pandian (Johns Hopkins University) and Nicole Labruto (Johns Hopkins University). This special event brings together voices from Ghana and Baltimore in dialogue for a transatlantic perspective on Black land and food sovereignty.

Rashid will be visiting from Spain to share insights from his work with CEHDA-GHANA and World Institute of Africa Culture and Traditions (WIACT). CEHDA-GHANA works to improve opportunities for migrant communities in Catalonia, support grassroots initiatives for community resilience in the Sawla District of Ghana’s Savannah Region, and promote traditional agricultural practices and cultural heritage rooted in Ghanaian knowledge systems. WIACT hosts a diverse array of activities and projects that aim to recover, preserve, share, and revitalize the traditional cultures, languages, and indigenous knowledge of Ghana’s Savannah Region, and across the African continent.

In conversation with Rashid is Eric Jackson, Servant-Director of Black Yield Institute, a Black-created, Black-led institution rooted in South Baltimore. Grounded in Pan-African thought and practice, Black Yield Institute organizes through land and food as central sites of resistance, healing, and transformation. The Institute envisions a self-determined, cooperative, and thriving community—one in which Black people govern the politics, economics, health, land, and food systems that shape their lives, from seed to waste.

The themes guiding this conversation arise from shared questions and lived experiences: How are African and African American communities reclaiming identity in the face of historical misrepresentation and racial prejudice? What roles do language, ancestral knowledge, and oral history play in the healing of personal and collective wounds? How might traditions—from the Gonja lifeways in Ghana to the foodways of Black Baltimore—offer pathways toward environmental and social repair?

The event will conclude with a Ghanaian meal at Blueprint. Everyone is welcome to join and eat together!

As the final gathering in our yearlong exploration of Reimagining Land, this event is both a reflection and a celebration—an opportunity to look back, share across place and perspective, and plant new seeds for what comes next.

Please RSVP for no more than two people per RSVP.