Floating Freely: Queer Archives & Media from the Elders Project

What can we learn from listening to queer Black elders?

Join us at Weeksville Heritage Center for Floating Freely: Queer Archives & Media from the Elders Project, a half-day celebration of Black and queer history including a film screening, workshops, music, food trucks, and a panel exploring the questions of freedom, inheritance, and belonging.

Floating Freely is inspired by interviews conducted by J Wortham for the Baldwin-Emerson Elders Project, which captured 230+ oral histories with minoritized elders across America. Wortham's collection dives into queer waterfront histories in and around New York City. The Elders Project was created by award-winning author Jacqueline Woodson and produced in partnership with Incite Institute.

This event is free and open to the public, and will coincide with Weeksville Green Farmers & Community Market, our annual farmer's market focusing on Black foodways, urban growing, diasporic memory, and community built through food at every stage.

About Weeksville Heritage Center Weeksville Heritage Center is an historic site and cultural center in Central Brooklyn that uses education, arts and a social justice lens to preserve, document and inspire engagement with the history of Weeksville, one of the largest free Black communities in pre-Civil War America, and the Historic Hunterfly Road Houses.Learn more.

About the Elders Project Established by award-winning author Jacqueline Woodson, the Baldwin-Emerson Elders Project captures and celebrates untold and underrepresented stories of activists, storytellers, and community builders who have witnessed and shaped great change in American public life. Spanning over 230 oral history interviews and 1,000 personal mementos, the Elders Project was produced by Incite Institute at Columbia University—home to the Columbia Center for Oral History Research—in partnership with Woodson’s nonprofit, Baldwin for the Arts, between 2022 and 2024.Learn more.

Info: Osadolor Osawemwenze is a New York-based director, visual maker, creative researcher, and sound designer born and raised in Dallas, Texas. He graduated from Stanford University with an academic focus on the Black Diaspora, pop culture, Blackqueerness, media, art, and aesthetics. As a Nigerian American, moments of discovery, reflection, and awareness of their positioning in this world influence her nostalgic Lo-Fi and D-I-Y videos and experimental sonic design. In his globally charting podcast, “a coming of age, but irl,” Osadolor blurs introspection and conversation through uniquely crafted sonic experiences. Osadolor’s latest experimental documentary, a_blurred_fluxx_00.avi, which delves into the nuance of today’s Black queer youth, was a Best Documentary (International Short Film) finalist at the 2024 London Breeze Film Festival and has since been screened in various film festivals and theatres.

Info: Choose your own path with one of our hands-on workshops. All materials are provided, and each session is open to all ages and skill levels:

• Black Poetry and The Wish: Imagining Otherwise and its Otherworlds

• Mixing and Remixing: The Poetics of Collaging the Archive

• Reunion in Ink: A Letter Writing Workshop

Info: A conversation moderated by Ellery Washington with poet Cheryl Boyce-Taylor and activist-educator Afua Kafi Akua, exploring themes of aging, memory, and identity

Info: End the day listening to live sonic interpretations of Waterfront Queer Stories: Elders' Resilience Amidst Changing Tides featuring 20-minute performances by STEMLINES, Kambaba Jasper, and Viper.

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