Ashara Ekundayo
Ashara Ekundayo is a Black feminist, Detroit-born independent curator, social practice artist, creative industries entrepreneur, cultural strategist, and founder working across arts, community, government, and social innovation spaces. Through her company AECreative Consulting Partners, LLC she designs and manages multidimensional international projects and fosters collaborative relationships through the use of mindfulness and permaculture principles to bring vision to life and create opportunities “in the deep end,” often with unlikely allies. Her creative arts practice epistemology requires an embodied commitment to recognizing joy in the midst of struggle.
For three decades Ashara lived and worked in Denver, CO where she co-founded the first indoor aquaponic food farm called The GrowHaus, and founded the Pan African Arts Society where she created and directed “Cafe Nuba” poetry venue and the Denver Pan African Film Festival. She moved to Oakland, CA in 2010 and In 2012 co-founded Impact Hub Oakland co-working community and Omi Arts Gallery and served as the Co-Director, Curator, and the Chief Creative Officer who designed and bottom-lined the brand messaging and creative practice programming of the entire company. In December 2017, she launched Ashara Ekundayo Gallery as a pilot-project social practice platform centering and exclusively exhibiting the artwork of Black womxn and women of the African Diaspora to investigate and inspire social and spiritual inquiry at the nexus of fact, the radical Black feminist imaginary, and Afrofuturism through visual and performance installation.
Currently, Ashara serves as the Founder/Steward at Artist As First Responder and sits on the Advisory Board of the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music and the Global Fund for Women “Artist Changemaker Program.” She has served as a Fellow with the U.S. Dept. of State Bureau of Educational & Cultural Affairs, Green For All, Emerging Arts Professionals, Institute For The Future, and Auburn Seminary in NYC. She has held Artist/Curatorial Residencies at Schools Without Borders, The Space Program SF, Villa Albertine, and the United African Alliance Community Center in Arusha, Tanzania.
Ashara is a Certified Permaculture Designer, Certified Foresight Practitioner, and a Graduate of Thousand Currents Leadership Academy and Rockwood Leadership – LeadNOW: California. She has shared about her interdisciplinary practice on stages such as TEDx Mile High, Creative Mornings, World Social Forum, Cannes Film Festival. She holds an M.A. in Gender & Social Change from the Korbel School of International Affairs at the University of Denver.
Her media projects include BLATANT - a multi-disciplinary, ongoing forum presented in collaboration with the Museum of the African Diaspora as well as a published maga(zine) of the same name that excavates, documents, and archives the stories of present-day and next generation cultural workers whose art practices heal communities and save lives. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic she piloted The Reflection Fund for Artists - a mutual aid project for BIPOC Bay Area creatives and also Co-founded Black [Space] Residency, a physical container for imagination, inquiry, activity and rest for Black Bay Area creatives - located at the Minnesota Street Project in San Francisco.
Ashara’s commitment to social transformation is informed by an intersectional framework that aims to expand the influence and impact of arts and culture on racial equity, gender + justice, and environmental literacy. She is the mother of 2 sons and 3 granddaughters currently living and working between Oakland, CA and Detroit, MI.
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