FUTURE PRESENCE: WA NA WARI'S PRACTICE OF COLLECTIVE COLLABORATIVE BECOMING
- Leilani Lewis
- Jul 24
- 8 min read
Updated: Jul 25
by Leilani Lewis
How Inye Wokoma and Elisheba Johnson are cultivating Black futures through radical collaboration and community-centered arts programming.
In the summer of 2019, just months after opening their doors, Wa Na Wari co-founders Inye Wokoma and Elisheba Johnson were facing complex challenges and opportunities. They were operating a vibrant and visible community arts center in a residential home, navigating zoning restrictions and hearing from other Black families in the central district who were struggling to keep their homes. These conversations revealed that their work could have wider implications beyond their single location.
Wa Na Wari Co-Founders Elisheba Johnson and Inye Wokoma
That’s when things got innovative. They authored a speculative paper titled “A Future History of the Central Area Art Walk.” The document was both visionary and practical, envisioning a 2035 where Black families throughout the Central District had transformed their homes and yards into cultural spaces, and then working backwards to identify the policy changes needed to make that possible. The paper envisioned new zoning laws, streamlined permitting processes, and innovative funding mechanisms that could support Black homeowners while nurturing neighborhood cultural activity.
Two years later, in 2021, when COVID-19 made traditional fundraising events nearly impossible, Johnson drew inspiration from this document to activate some of the ideas contained in the piece. With Johnson reaching back to the future, Walk the Block was born, and that vision materialized as their first arts festival. Each year since, the program has grown from hundreds to thousands of participants wandering through Seattle's Central District in late September, discovering installations on porches, hearing trumpet players serenading from stoops, and experiencing something unprecedented: the largest Black arts festival in the Northwest that belongs entirely to the community creating it.
"That document imagined if more people on the block adopted some version of what we were doing at Wa Na Wari," explains Wokoma, "and then there would be all these micro cultural spaces located in people's homes and yards... one night, everybody had a neighborhood Art Walk that was not like a series of galleries and businesses, but was literally inside of the neighborhood."
From Theory to Festival
From the speculative paper to what would become Walk the Block and inspire Wa Na Wari’s community organizing initiative, Central Area Cultural EcoSystem, 21st Century (CACE - 21), focused on building community power for Black homeowners and culture workers, resembles what scholar Saidiya Hartman calls a "wayward practice", the refusal to be constrained by existing cultural structures and the creation of new possibilities for Black life. Walk the Block embodies what happens when Black futures thinking meets community organizing. Rather than seeking organizational approval, Wa Na Wari built the infrastructure needed to realize its vision.
The festival reflects what Johnson calls their "open door, open source attitude": holding space for others' dreams while maintaining the structural integrity to manifest them. This approach aligns with what Adrienne Maree Brown theorizes in Emergent Strategy: "small actions and connections create complex systems" that can "create more life-centered ways of existing."
Ecosystem as Strategy
Wa Na Wari operates from an understanding of itself as one node in a larger Black arts ecosystem. "We serve one segment of the public, and this includes traditional gallery artists and installation artists," Johnson explains. "But then there's NAAM and ARTE NOIR and CD Forum and LANGSTON. We need all of them together, right? Because I can't put on a large theater production, LANGSTON has to do that."
This ecosystem thinking emerges from Johnson's own experiences of the traditional art world and her commitment to "building bridges for artists of color to grow and thrive." When ARTE NOIR launched during Wa Na Wari's second year, the response was to embrace and make space. Wokoma and Johnson invited the new organization to partner on Walk the Block, creating a new and generative collaboration. "We don't see programs as just us doing it," Johnson emphasizes. "We think of us doing it together. Whoever comes to Walk the Block, I want them to learn about all of the other people that we work with, so that we can collaborate and have a bigger impact."
Curatorial Innovation as Care Work
Wa Na Wari's approach to programming reveals sophisticated curatorial thinking wrapped in community care. This year's Walk the Block introduces comedy, recognizing it as a crucial facet of Black performance history. They're also developing an exciting commission with artist Curry Hackett, who works primarily in surrealist AI media.
"Here's an artist that works in a virtual and gallery and academic space," Wokoma explains about one such collaboration, "and we're inviting him to expand into a public site-specific installation practice." These commissions simultaneously support artistic evolution, create new public art, and demonstrate how Black organizations can circumvent the prohibitive gatekeeping of traditional public art systems.
This methodology represents what Wokoma calls "hacking the machine." But in conversation, it becomes clear this isn't just clever programming; it's futurist work. When Wokoma and Johnson see something beautiful in an artist's vision, they ask: How can we help you dream bigger? How can we actualize those dreams and bring the community in to engage?
The House as Radical Infrastructure
The physical space of Wa Na Wari occupies a house in Seattle's Central District with deep roots in the Wokoma family, where Inye's family has lived since the 1940s. "Having a house and holding the house as a Black space is our first and most important program," Wokoma states. In a neighborhood experiencing aggressive gentrification, maintaining Black cultural space becomes an act of spatial resistance that connects to Wokoma's broader artistic practice as a multi-disciplinary artist, journalist, and filmmaker whose award-winning work explores personal narratives through the lens of politics, economics, and collective histories.
The festival's demographic success puzzles even its organizers. As one community member observes annually, "You guys somehow figured out how to get the old and the new residents to come." Johnson laughs when recounting this: "We don't have the cheat code. I don't know how we need to figure it out, but it is a really cool thing that has happened."
Perhaps the "cheat code" is authenticity itself: when you create something beautiful while centering community care, when you make space for everyone's humanity, people respond. Walk the Block provides what Johnson describes as "art that changes them" while being "in community in a way that fills their soul."
Breaking Down Access Barriers
Johnson brings insider knowledge of organizational structures to her work at Wa Na Wari. A curator and artist educated at the Cornish College of the Arts, she previously owned Faire Gallery Café, a multi-use space hosting everything from exhibitions to poetry readings. Her six years of developing award-winning public art programs, capacity-building initiatives, and racial equity programs with Seattle's Office of Arts and Culture provided her with perspective on how "world-class public art" is created and who among the artists and the public has access.
"Most of those people who come to Walk the Block will never step into a museum or gallery," Johnson notes, referencing conversations with organizers of Nuit Blanche, Toronto's all-night arts festival that inspired aspects of Walk the Block. "It's their only art experience for the year."
Walk the Block dissolves these barriers through radical accessibility: meeting people exactly where they are. This represents recognition that people connect with art differently, requiring multiple entry points into cultural engagement. Johnson also notes that for many, Walk the Block may be the one time throughout the year that people engage with Wa Na Wari, acknowledging that there are still barriers for many to visiting galleries and cultural spaces.
"I want people to be able to feel like they can go and see art that changes them, but also be in community in a way that fills their soul." —Elisheba Johnson.
Programming Connection & Vision
What distinguishes Wa Na Wari within Black cultural organizations is their capacity to simultaneously provide community healing and push artistic boundaries. Their community garden, initiated by Seattle-based artist and community member Davida Ingram rather than staff members, exemplifies what Wokoma calls "holding space for dreams of others."
Their oral history program was born out of a partnership with the Washington State Black Heritage Society. Their Love Offering meal program is a multifaceted partnership with local Black farmers and food-centered organizations.
Walk the Block functions as what they describe as "an expression of all of our program areas bundled up into one event." The festival encompasses everything Wa Na Wari does: maintaining Black space, community organizing, oral history work, gallery programming, performances, community meals, and gardening. "All those programs engage the community in very collaborative ways," Wokoma notes, "and all those programs have had some or still have, at their root, some kind of very important collaboration or partnership that makes them possible."
Recognition as Validation
ARTE NOIR's decision to honor Wa Na Wari as part of their anniversary celebration recognizes what they term "The Spirit of Collaboration." Most arts collaborations involve resource sharing or mutual promotion. The ARTE NOIR-Wa Na Wari relationship operates at a deeper level of shared vision and strategic thinking.
When asked about future visions for Walk the Block, Wokoma emphasizes continued commitment to "that collaborative spirit and really embracing the idea and the excitement of creating something new; the excitement of creating new Black art on a scale that is immersive."
This vision transcends any single event or organization. Wa Na Wari has created a model for Black cultural organizations operating as laboratories for community self-determination, spaces where speculative ideas become reality through patient revolutionary organization building.
Building the Future in Real Time
Walk the Block stands as evidence that other worlds aren't just possible but actively under construction, one block at a time, one collaboration at a time, one artist commission at a time. ARTE NOIR recognizes Wa Na Wari not merely for producing successful events but for modeling what happens when Black cultural organizations operate from abundance rather than scarcity, collaboration rather than competition, love rather than fear. Walk the Block succeeds through the art it presents, the world it imagines, and the community it creates every time thousands take to the streets to engage with what they've built together.
Tickets for Walk the Block are now on sale! Learn more about Wa Na Wari's programming and purchase tickets at wanawari.org.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Leilani Lewis is an award-winning arts leader and seasoned Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) practitioner based in Seattle. She has been honored with the 2017 Mayor's Arts Award for Emerging Leader and the Marylynn Batt Dunn Award for Excellence from the University of Washington. With over 15 years of experience, Leilani’s work bridges the creative sector and higher education, where she is known for her commitment to service, fostering community engagement, and building innovative partnerships.
As the Senior Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the University of Washington Advancement, Leilani is a visionary leader whose transformative DEIB frameworks have been embraced by institutions nationwide, affirming her status as a thought leader in the field.
Leilani is a sought-after speaker at national conferences and has been deeply involved in the arts community, serving on various boards, producing programs, and consulting across the Seattle area. She is also the co-founder of Black Women Write Seattle, a group dedicated to supporting Black women on their journey to publication. Leilani holds a postgraduate degree from Seattle University and is a certified DEIB practitioner.