Black Love Convergence: A Virtual Experience

Black Love Convergence will be celebrating our 6th Year of gathering the Black Diaspora to fall in love with Blackness as an act of political resistance (b. hooks). This year’s gathering will bring together over 300 people virtually under the theme Messages from the Stars.  Black folks have always relied on our connections to the universe, nature, and ancestors to help guide us in our survival, liberation, and freedom. We honor this legacy by seeing how infusing these messages into our practices for wholeness and New World Building is supercharged for this time! 

Here is what is in store for this year!  

• June 16 -  7pm - 9:30pm ET House of Pleasure A Black Only Adults (18+) event that explores the vastness of pleasure. From relationships, to sex, to the pleasure of living this evening includes a night of juicy conversations and interactive workshops. Hosted by Ignacio G. Rivera  Featuring Workshops by Rashida KhanBey Miller (Messy Movement )  and Ashley Cobb (Toy Story: How To Use Sex Toys To Increase Your Pleasure In A Relationship)
• June 17 -  12pm - 2:30pm ET Black Joy Concert  An event for EVERYONE, come join us for a live-streaming event that celebrates Blackness through music, poetry, and performance! Grab a group of your friends and come get your groove on with us! Musical Guests:  Serpentwithfeet, Be Steadwell, Boomscat, and Holden Cession
• June 18- 12pm - 2pm ET Ancestral Voices Panel: Messages from the Stars  A Black Only event, come learn from wisdom keepers from our community about what opportunities for evolution are available at this time. Come with your questions on everything from ancestral work, divination, and light work. Moderator Yvette Murrell; Panelists - Natoya Hall, Dr. g (Claudelle R. Glasgow), Gerard D. Miller
• June 18 - 2:30pm - 6:30pm ET  The Well  Our Virtual Retreat Series dipped in Black gold! With workshops from The Ancestral Spirit Kollective and House of Olokun this is a BLACK ONLY space to deepen your practices of healing, arts, and spirituality that unlock our collective freedom. 

The Well Workshops presented by House of Olokun June 18, 2023 | 2:30pm - 4pm ET 

1.  Earth Magixkz: Reconnecting w/t our Ancestral Plant Kin : Learn how our ancestral relationships with plants have guided and protected our sacred lineages since time immemorial. This offering is an invitation to explore and expand our rich ancestral relationship to the flora of the land and sea. We shall celebrate the invaluable contributions of Black folx to herbal medicine, learn about gifted healers, the medicines they made, and the roots they worked. We will dig deep to unearth, reconnect, and reclaim while building our own personal relationships to plants and plant spirits. 
2. Embodied Pathways to Your Desires: Join Karen Hewitt and Raven E. Freeborn for an immersive and transformative workshop on the interdependence and mutual support between shadow work, nervous system regulation, and integrating your authentic self. This workshop is designed to support you in creating space for play, showing up for yourself, and better experiencing safety, connection, dignity, and belonging. By exploring the unconscious and unresolved parts of ourselves that we may repress or deny, we can heal and grow, accessing a deeper level of self-awareness and connection.
3. Rooted Love: Self-Healing as Intergenerational Medicine: Experience writing and ritual as power and mediums of healing love. In our grieving and healing we are sacred; deserving of attentive love and unconditional care. Let us give this to ourselves now! You are invited to join us in a heart-opening workshop to connect with your inner child, Higher Powers, and Ancestors. Meet yourself and join kinfolk in awakening the power of written and ritualized connection as self-love and lineage medicine.

The Well Workshops presented by The Ancestral Spirit Kollective (The ASK) June 18, 2023 | 4:30pm - 6pm ET 

1. Protect Ya Neck! is a hands-on learning space, where we will look at key figures, materials, and resources within hoodoo for protection of ourselves energetically, physically, and our homes. This is a collaborative learning/teaching space for practitioners and those beginning to tap into protection work. Participants are encouraged to bring their wisdom for us to harvest our collective knowledge.
2. “I Am the Altar” is a workshop about building a relationship with yourself to build a deeper connection with your ancestors. For baby Hoodoos and practitioners who want to address self-doubt in their spiritual practice. This workshop offers self-care rituals that empower you to show up as you are and your ancestors are here for YOU.
3. Ancestral Plant Library is a gentle smoothing grounding space that will bring back newly interested Black people to their roots in creating herbal medicine. We will discuss the history, location, uses of herbs and plants connected to hoodoo. At the end of this journey participants will be able to create a traditional tea blend that our ancestors used in the past.

Closing Conjure by Yvette Murrell and Emanuel H. Brown June 18, 2023 | 6pm ET - 6:30pm ET - Allow this conjure of collective freedom to settle into your bones, and shape how you practice freedom through emodied practice. 

Black Love Convergence Producer: Lex Draper Garcia Bey (she/her) is an event production expert, founder of Down The Rabbit Hole Productions, and Detroit griot. Lex specializes in providing logistical strategy and implementation management to nonprofit organizations that meet at the intersections which Lex cares about the most. Her community-centered approach to matching emerging vendors from within the community to cultural programming opportunities with large-scale organizations has earned Lex the reputation of being an invaluable resource to creative economies and value-conscious event planning for cause-based enterprises. Lex has curated conferences with as many as 5,000 attendees, leading event production and logistics for Allied Media Conference, Allied Media Projects, Live6, Black Love Convergence, Sidewalk Detroit, and the inaugural BlkOut Walls Festival in 2021. It is with intention and love that Lex weaves opportunities for storytelling, opening portals into the critical local wisdom of a people.