Don’t Do It For The Gram, Do It For The Archive
The Seeda School Podcast is Now on YouTube!
Dear Worldbuilder,
I’m sure you’ve seen the annoying TikToks and Reels about “becoming more visible” and the incessant demands to let us perceive you1. The reminders that if you came here with something to say, we’re going to need you to eventually come out of hiding and say it. The most annoying thing about all these 90 second reminders might be that there’s some sliver, if not, a whole lot of truth to them.
I’m letting out a deep sigh right along with you.
You might have even heard me let out that deep sigh inside the 59th episode of the podcast For the Worldbuilders titled “Offering the Wisdom and Skills from Your Journey of Transformation”. Inside this episode I mentioned getting multiple messages, beyond social media through an algorithm much more ancient, to show up more inside and alongside what I came here to say.
For much of the summer this looked like me going back and forth with the ancestral invitation, “wait so you want me to be even more visible than the workshops and the podcasts and the getting on stage and the occasional talking head Instagram story and the vulnerability in the dispatches and, and, and you want more from me?” and the answer was yes.
So we’re going video ON and the For the Worldbuilders podcast is now on YouTube. Truth is, once I got over all my wanna be illusive cool art world girl bullshit the prospect of playing with video became an idea I warmed up to. An idea taking me back to many creative childhood curiosities and desires like having a fashion blog in high school, casting all my cousins to make a short film using only that blue intel play movie creator camera and software in elementary school and wanting nothing more than to be a video girl in the early 2000’s.
I laugh at myself thinking about all the ways I grew up to be a 2020’s version of a video girl. Life is nothing if not funny and our desires are nothing if not persistent.
What if we didn’t “do it for the ‘gram”? What if we did it for the archive?
That’s my mantra these days anyway, “do it for the archive”. For the little black girl who might find these lost tapes and take away something about how they might survive the multiple apocalypses of their time…communicating across our own ancient algorithms.
Outside of my deep sigh around being obedient to the laden desires of my heart — thrusting me out my comfort zone — we talk about something much more important inside this episode, our journey of transformation.
What is your “journey of transformation”? We all have one. That pivotal life decision. That time we had to grieve a past self to access our true self, that time our refusal created new possibility, that time we literally had to create options when it seemed like we were out of them.
Inside Seeda School we return to this site of transformation to inform your creative offer and the journey your framework will take your clients, students, customers, members, through. We will do an audit of your creative skills, past projects and processes to get clarity on what you will offer. Then we will mine your journey of transformation to get clarity on how you will communicate the value inside your offer. Lastly, we will remember we didn’t get here alone. We will make a list of all the folks we’ve helped and have helped us along the way, then invite them into our creative offer inspired by their love.
Join us in the upcoming 2-PART Worldbuilding Workshop Series to return to your journey of transformation, a well of wisdom full of offerings to your childhood desire, offerings to us and offerings to our collective database of longing. An ungovernable, can’t be named, can’t be owned, belonging to no one and no where, everywhere all at once, archive that we inherit from generation to generation.
What evidence of your love and longing will you leave behind?
Let’s find out together. Our first workshop is on October 8th at 12pm EST. See you there?
With desire,
Ayana
If you want yet another perspective (never too much, yes?) on “visibility” as a cultural worker who treats their creative practice like a spiritual practice, check out episode 45 of the For the Worldbuilders podcast titled, “Will You Let Us Perceive You?”