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Between 2023 and 2025, the AfroPortals Project Space and Archive has hosted 44 activations connecting artists, scholars, culture bearers, and community storytellers with practitioners across the African diaspora. Through the Gold Portal, developed in partnership with Shared Studios, neighbors have engaged in full-body livestream conversations with cultural workers in Addis Ababa, Kigali, Bamako, Johannesburg, São Vicente, Mexico City, and Lagos, along with community members in Nakivale Settlement in Uganda. Together, we have held dance parties, exchanged freedom songs, shared poems and paintings, and hosted climate justice and collective wellness conversations that affirmed our shared creativity and resilience. In the coming months, as preparations move forward for future construction at Liberation Park, we will be pausing the Gold Portal and our programming partnership with Shared Studios. We do this with deep gratitude. To every artist, neighbor, student, organizer, healer, creative worker, and passerby who stepped into the portal and offered your voice and presence, thank you. Your contributions shaped AfroPortals into a cultural practice that lives beyond any one site. The Oakland Portal has served as a gathering place for shared imagination and global exchange, welcoming over 35,000 participants through community programs, exhibitions, and international dialogues that strengthened relationships and affirmed our collective capacity to remember, create, and build together. This pause is a transition, not an ending. In 2026, AfroPortals will introduce new programming partners and expanded portal activations across the United States. The spirit of this community remains at the heart of the work, guiding the next chapter of creative connection and collaboration. Stay connected. The story continues. With love,
Ashara, Christian, Ietef, Marcella, NiQueen, Sam, and Zandashé
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