Founded by sister and brother duo Shaunda and Stafford Lewis, the Black Atlantic Cultural Immersion Tour, BLACUIT for short, is an immersive exploration of the history, places, people, food, music, and overall cultures that make up the Black Atlantic.
Coined by philosopher and sociologist Paul Gilroy, the Black Atlantic is the transnational cultural construction created through the spreading of African people across the world (the African Diaspora) as a result of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. It is a web of multi-culture in the western hemisphere and beyond, all rooted in the original cultures of those who were victims of the Slave Trade and their descendants. The Black Atlantic embraces the hybridity and creolization that has occurred with African cultures through diasporic formations, and celebrates both the similarities and differences between what has morphed into multiple cultures and ethnic groups. The entirety of the world has been impacted by the Transatlantic Slave Trade, especially those places that make up the Black Atlantic – a figurative continent created through the spreading and mixing of Black people (people of African descent) with white people (people of western European descent), Native people to the Americas, and people of Asian descent.
The institutional enslavement of African people and their descendants existed in every place that is now currently a country in the Americas and beyond. From the formation of the Black Atlantic over the past 580 years, the world has created and recreated countless cultures, ethnic groups, and national constructions.
Among them are:
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African Americans (both of the United States and Canada)
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Afro Europeans (mostly in Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands)
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Latino/x People – People from the places in the Americas colonized by the Spanish and Portuguese through the enslavement and genocide of Native people to the Americas, and forced capture, migration, and enslavement of African people (North America – Mexico, Central America – Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, etc., South America - Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, etc., Spanish-speaking Caribbean – Puerto Rico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, etc.)
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West Indian/Caribbean People (Greater Antilles, Lesser Antilles, ABC Islands, parts of South and Central America)
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West African Nationalities – those places that were once slave regions on the West African coast in the Transatlantic Slave Trade (Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Ghana, Benin, Angola, etc.)
The Black Atlantic Cultural Immersion Tour is a surveying of the Black Atlantic - its potential, assets, and ability to elevate Blackness and unify the world.
2021-2023 Stops on the Black Atlantic Cultural Immersion Tour (BLACUIT):
Curaçao, West Indies – Winter 2021/2022
Santiago, Cape Verde – Winter 2022
Montserrat, West Indies – TBD 2023
Antigua and Barbuda, West Indies – Summer 2022
New England, USA – TBD 2023
To launch the Black Atlantic Cultural Immersion Tour, we are beginning with the spaces and places that are a major part of the current and evolving formation of the Daly and Lewis families.
This is a Movement.
Immersion Class Is In-Person! Follow Along!
The Black Atlantic Cultural Immersion Tour is a program of the newly formed organization, The Culture Collaborative, a nonprofit organization focused on celebrating and elevating multi-culture. It is an immersion and re-immersion into the history, places, people, and cultures of the Black Atlantic. Our goal is for it to become a global movement. For too long being Black has been seen as a deficit. 580 years is way too long for the majority of the world’s people to see themselves as lesser than. Gone are the days of whiteness being supreme. We’re moving into a brighter age where we uplift all, especially the global majority: Black and Brown people. Let’s begin with BLACUIT in the west, and spread it across the world.
We are making Blackness relevant.
We are Blacuit. #BLACUIT