Kiire Wellness

Rainbow Spirituals: Orisha, African Spirituality & Wellness as a Human Right for Black LGBT+ Folx
Artistic Discipline: Performing Arts
Category: Creative Equations Fund: Justice, Equity, & Sustainability
Grant Year: 2022
Location: Bedford-Stuyvesant
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Through performance and workshops, we create safe spaces for Black LGBT+ communities to explore African spiritual expression and wellness as a human right. Through the interweaving of Afro Ancestral spiritual traditions of movement, song and rhythm like Orisha and the art of LGBT performance in the Ballroom Scene, otherwise known as Voguing, we create spaces for Black LGBT+ communities that explore what it means to be liberated, to be empowered and to have access to Black, African, spiritual expression. We believe that wellness, empowerment and access to spiritual expression is a human right, and that by creating safe space for Black, LGBT communities to experience traditional, and indigenous African spirituality, and their connection to the contemporary movement phenomena of Voguing through workshops & artistic installation that we are helping to promote holistic wellness and the continuation of cultural and spiritual tools within Black LGBT+ communities and legacies. We believe that this will help to preserve ancestral wisdom, culture, and also the health and wellness of Black LGBT+ people who have to consistently fight for their right to breath & live safely. Due to dangers present in Black, LGBT+ communities, we need the space to explore spirituality, belonging & calm.