The Lineage & Legacy Recording Experience™ (LLRE) is a culturally grounded storytelling and archival project rooted in Black oral tradition, music, ancestral reverence, and communal memory. LLRE creates immersive spaces where Black people can remember, reflect, and record the stories that make us who we are, including:
• Studio Experiences — intimate, guided recording sessions where participants respond to music and memory prompts and leave with audio keepsakes.
• Remembering Walls — interactive installations at community events where people reflect, honor their ancestors, and name the stories that shaped them.
• Lineage & Legacy Rememberings™ Deck — a 54-card companion deck with music cues, memory prompts, playful moments, and youth-friendly cards used to spark storytelling in families and community gatherings.
• Activations & Pop-Ups — place-based storytelling moments

Across these touchpoints, Lineage & Legacy protects Black stories that are often forgotten, unrecorded, or held quietly within families. It ensures our voices are remembered with care, joy, and dignity.

Earlier this year, we captured over a dozen powerful recordings from Black women founders, mothers, grandmothers, and daughters. They shared stories about lineage, maternal inheritance, entrepreneurship, joy, survival, and the songs that shaped us.

With this grant, I will transform those recordings into the Lineage & Legacy Album, a mixtape-meets-audio-documentary that blends storytelling, music cues, interludes, and sound design. The album will reflect how Black women in Baltimore are showing up in a socio-political climate working against us—and doing so with brilliance, tenderness, and intergenerational strength.

This project will also bring closure to early 2025 Lineage & Legacy activations and culminate in a community Listening Party in February/March 2026.