The Seed A World Retreat

A 9-week retreat for cultural workers, academics and founders ready to apply their creative skills to generating sustainable income without self-sacrifice.

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Transform years of research, projects and embodied wisdom into an income-generating offer funding your most erotic worldbuilding visions.

9

WEEKS

9

WORLDBUILDER'S HANDBOOK CHAPTERS

1

INCOME GENERATING OFFER

$499

INVESTMENT (PAYMENT PLANS AVAILABLE)

Seed A World rooted in your desire, ease and creative power.

No more overgiving and under-earning. No more severing your spirit from your labor. Align your values with your income and generate money like you generate ideas.

Story Time

Inside Seeda School, everything begins with the most ancient worldbuilding technology there is: Story.

Here’s mine.

Rewind to 2018.

I was working as a software engineering instructor on a campus in Brooklyn dedicated to increasing access to tech careers for marginalized folks earning under $40,000 a year. My students were a diverse mix of BIPOC, trans and GNC+ working-class folks, single mothers, immigrants, and students with disabilities.

I fell deeply in love with the mission of serving them — of teaching skills that could materially change their lives. Slowly, almost without noticing, my 9am-5pm turned into a 9am-9pm.

For two years, I abandoned my creative practice.
I didn’t realize until much later that I had abandoned myself in the process.

Here’s what happened…

I abandoned my creative practice because I didn’t trust its financial viability. I resented my interdisciplinarity and blamed my “lack of focus” for my unmet financial goals, work frustrations and chronic exhaustion.

I began subconsciously comparing myself to my peers, constantly feeling behind or stuck in a loop of postponing my power. Next year was always going to be “my year.”

The growing gap between my desires and my daily actions produced shame, self-doubt, and relentless negative self-talk.

I convinced myself the solution was simple: work harder. Or no...read more self-help books so I could pathologize my way into continued productivity?

I pushed through burnout, ignored my body’s calls for compassion, dismissed the needs of my nervous system and the invitations of my neurodivergence.

I wasn’t just working a job that was misaligned with my values — I was working in ways that exposed disabilities I tried desperately to ignore.

Afraid to ask for accommodations, I internalized the belief that my needs were a liability, something that could threaten my paycheck and my survival.

I was the only Black woman on my team which meant most of the emotional labor of community care and conflict fell into my lap. By the time I got home, I had nothing left to give.

My personal relationships suffered — not because I didn't care, but because I was depleted.

Eventually, I began to self-isolate. Shame, exhaustion, anxiety, depression and unprocessed trauma piled up quietly. I withdrew from community at the exact moment I needed it most — forgetting that community has always been my pathway to relief.

_{^{PORTRAITS LOVINGLY TAKEN BY MY SISTER-FRIEND IMONDRÉ ANAIS IN OUR BROOKLYN APARTMENT, 2019.}}

^{DO YOU NEED ANOTHER DEGREE, CERTIFICATION AND PROFESSIONAL SKILLS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM OR DO YOU NEED TO SLOW DOWN LONG ENOUGH TO REMEMBER YOUR DESIRE AND THE TRUTH OF YOUR NEEDS?}

More often than we talk about, disability and complex trauma can make traditional employment impossible or unsustainable. Entrepreneurship and creative lives of refusal aren't always born out of courage, sometimes they're born out of necessity and needs capitalism just can't hold.

_{YOU DON'T NEED COURAGE. REFUSAL TO ABANDON YOURSELF IS PLENTY.}

We are all worldbuilders because we are all living inside a story

_{ABOUT WORK, WORTH, SAFETY AND SUCCESS}

For a long time, I was operating in deep misalignment and distrust of my desire. I was severed from my creative power and disconnected from the wisdom of my body.

Until I redirected my distrust.

We live in a system that teaches us to distrust our desire and our bodies when it’s the system itself that is unworthy of our trust.

In search of safety, I abandoned my interdisciplinary spirit and chased external validation, legibility and achievement. I forgot that real safety lives in my relationship with my intuition, my community and my body.

Seed a world on purpose by remembering this:

Your desire is more trustworthy than your fear.

Your fear can be your best teacher, but your desire is your best leader.

How?

Activate Your Element X

At some point, trusting your desire isn’t enough.

You also need a way to collaborate with it by working with your skills, your curiosity and your constraints to generate income without severing your spirit from your labor.

This is the erotic ease, playful rigor and self-trust you access in your Zone of Desire. You know, that place you go to when you’re making a song, a zine, a poem, a syllabus? That place can also power an additional stream of income.

Inside Seeda School, we call the bridge between imagination and infrastructure:

Your Element X

WHAT IS ELEMENT X?

“This premise binds the narrative together, defining what is possible in a story and shaping what can (and does) happen.”

— N.K. Jemisin, Teaches Fantasy and Science Fiction Writing, Master Class

WHAT IF?

In speculative fiction, N.K. Jemisin describes "Element X" as the core creative device that powers an entire world.

It’s the “what if…” question that establishes:

What kind of magic exists
What kind of technology is possible
What kind of politics, economies, and futures can emerge

Inside Seeda School, we use Element X differently, but with the same rigor.

Element X becomes the organizing principle of your creative ecosystem.

It’s the “what if…” question that clarifies your deepest desire and structures how your skills, values and resources circulate without self-abandonment or compromising your politics.

Element X Examples

The Powerpuff Girls series

^{ELEMENT X: CHEMICAL X}

Sugar, spice, everything nice and the unexpected ingredient that changes everything.

X-Men series

^{ELEMENT X: MUTATION}

Extraordinary bodies and gifts emerge through difference, not conformity.

The Hunger Games Trilogy

^{ELEMENT X: THE HUNGER GAMES}

A brutal game that reveals the political and economic architecture of the world.

Naruto series

^{ELEMENT X: CHAKRA}

A force that links individual skill to lineage, discipline and collective legacy.

Black Panther series

^{ELEMENT X: VIBRANIUM}

A material resource that shapes culture, technology and global power.

Cykofa series

^{ELEMENT X: ABOLITION}

A parallel universe suspended among past and future where chain link fencing from demolished prisons is used as architectural membrane woven with data-encoded plant life.

Inside the Seed A World Retreat, we erotically engineer your Element X into an offer.

You learn how to identify the animating force behind your creativity and design an income ecosystem grounded in the same rigor, care and imagination as your art.

The Element X Quadrant

Inside Seeda School, we use The Element X Quadrant to locate the difference between where you feel validated and where you feel authentic belonging.

This framework helps you map your Zone of Validation versus your Zone of Desire, because it’s from inside your Zone of Desire that we imagine and design an income-generating creative offer that doesn’t sever your spirit from your labor.

ZONE OF DOMINATION

Work that requires force.

Tasks in this zone feel painful or depleting to complete. We often devise creative ways to avoid them altogether, or push through with resentment. Engaging this work requires dominance over the body, mind and spirit rather than collaboration.

_{EXAMPLES FROM MY PRACTICE}

Legal
Taxes
Admin

ZONE OF COMPETENCE

Work you can do — but wouldn’t choose.

You’re capable here, but not called. The job gets done, yet flow is elusive. Procrastination, distraction or quiet boredom often accompany this zone. You recognize that this is someone else’s true craft.

^{EXAMPLES FROM MY PRACTICE}

Graphic Design
Editing Photos, Videos or Audio
Creating Slide Decks

ZONE OF VALIDATION

Work that rewards you, but drains you.

The legibility of this zone is seductive. You receive praise, pay, credibility and social proof here. Staying feels responsible. Leaving feels risky.

Often, we unconsciously remain in this zone not because it’s aligned, but because it’s safe. Sometimes we even sabotage success here, sensing that full devotion would require sacrificing our deeper desire.

This is where survival strategies masquerade as ambition.

_{EXAMPLES FROM MY PRACTICE}

Software Engineering
Project Management
Corporate Consulting

ZONE OF DESIRE

Work that restores you.

This is the zone of flow, devotion, and creative sanctuary. The work itself is the reward. External validation is still present, but becomes an unnecessary motivator because the practice expands your capacity for care, curiosity and presence.

These are the skills you secretly dream of sharpening over a lifetime. When we refuse to imagine thriving here, we often stay in the Zone of Validation out of fear — not lack of desire.

_{EXAMPLES FROM MY PRACTICE}

Black Feminist Study and Divination
Speculative Fiction and Poetry
Multimedia Art Practice

The Real Question

We move through all four zones across our lives and practice.

The question isn’t how do I stay in one zone forever?

It’s: How do I design a life and income ecosystem that allows me to return to my Zone of Desire again and again?

Inside Seeda School, we answer this by:

Creating a clear cadence of return

Designing a creative offer that financially resources your desire

Using weekly dispatches and sacred sales strategy to keep you anchored there

The Element X Quadrant is the first tool we use to begin that work.

Locate Your Element X

^{THE FIRST INITIATION}

Before you build an offer. Before you set a price. Before you try to “fix” your relationship with money.

We start here.

The Element X Quadrant is the first initiation into Seeding a World. It helps you locate the stories, habits and survival strategies that have quietly severed you from your power by mapping the difference between where you are rewarded and where you feel aligned.

This is not a mindset exercise.

It’s a remembering.

Your desire is not frivolous. It is a sustainable source of erotic energy fueling your faith, your creativity and your capacity to generate income without negotiating with your breath.

Download Your Quadrant

Through this tool, you begin to:

Rebuild trust with your desire
Rebuild trust with your body
Rebuild trust with yourself

Through this tool, we ask:

What becomes possible when the skills from your Zone of Validation are channeled through the language, intention and methods of your Zone of Desire?

This is where we seed your world.

Download the Element X Quadrant to locate your desire and take the first step toward building an income ecosystem that can hold the world you're building.

“The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves.”

_{— Audre Lorde, "Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic As Power" (1978)}

Photographer: Jack Mitchell

The Seed A World Retreat

Summon the erotic energy of your Element X and write a new story — one that calls in the interdisciplinary income ecosystem you dream of creating.

Seed A World is a 9-week retreat designed to help you...

`1`

Locate your Zone of Desire

`2`

Create an income-generating offer rooted in that sacred, non-negotiable site

`3`

Learn how to sell through invitations that don't require you to sever your values, your body or your spirit

Inside this retreat I will never ask you to "work harder", that's rarely the solution.

But I will ask you to align your creative power with your material needs.

So let’s pause and ask:

What is the offer that’s been living in your body for seasons, if not years, waiting for you to take it seriously?

What is the calling your ancestors keep picking up the phone about, leaving messages you can no longer pretend you didn’t hear?

What level of monthly income would allow you to meet your needs and then some?

Why generate more money than "enough"?

To buy your friend’s painting at their art show,

To work at a pace your nervous system can actually hold,

To circulate funds inside your community’s mutual aid requests,

To save for gender-affirming care,

To generate income toward your next move or your first home

That's why.

Inside Seed A World, you will learn how to create and sell an income-generating offer in alignment with your desire without overgiving, undercharging or bargaining with the ancestral audacity you're being called to step into.

This retreat is an invitation to build a container for work worthy of your breath.

What Seeda School Worldbuilders Are Saying

"It’s been so incredibly powerful to see the way each prompt, each assignment, each framework, in such a short amount of time, brings the threads of my practice into harmony and makes it so the universe can clearly respond. I can’t even count the number epiphanies I’ve had since I’ve started working with you. Thank you."

Ravon Ruffin, Fall 2023

The Seed A World Framework

Seed A World is built on a nine-step Black feminist worldbuilding framework designed to help you decide, design and release an income-generating creative offer without severing your spirit from your labor.

Rooted in storytelling and speculative practice, this framework moves in a circle so you can return to it again and again as your practice evolves. Instead of a one-time launch formula, this is a worldbuilding technology you can practice inside of across a lifetime.

Across nine modules, you’ll move through three essential milestones that transform desire into sustainable income.

The 3 Retreat Milestones

By the end of the retreat you will...

Decide on Offer

Everything begins with desire.

Using the Element X Quadrant, you’ll locate the true, non-negotiable desire at the center of your creative practice. From there, you’ll map your full Creative Ecosystem containing your skills, curiosities, histories and lived wisdom to clearly identify the flagship offer you’re here to develop.

By the end of this phase, you won’t be guessing what to create. You’ll know.

Create Your Framework

Once your offer is clear, we build the world around it.

You’ll develop a narrative, structure and value system for your offer rooted in your politics, your people and your embodied wisdom. This framework allows you to articulate the transformation you will offer before you create a single asset.

You’ll learn how to validate and sell your offer while it’s still becoming. Get paid to deliver your offer without over-promising, over-delivering or betraying your pace.

Invite the People

Now we open the portals.

With your offer defined and your story clear, you’ll learn creative marketing and sacred sales practices that feel aligned, direct and grounded. You’ll craft invitations — not anxious announcements — to call in your first 100 participants and generate income you can count on in the seasons ahead.

No perfectionism. No people pleasing. Just clear invitations rooted in self-trust.

The Worldbuilder's Handbook

The Worldbuilder’s Handbook is your companion through the retreat and long after it ends.

Built directly from Seeda School’s worldbuilding framework and informed by Black feminist praxis, this handbook guides you through all nine modules with depth and precision. Each chapter includes worksheets, templates, toolkits, frameworks, checklists and prompts designed to help you develop, market and sell your creative offer step by step.

It’s a living tool you’ll return to as your work expands, your income grows and your world evolves.

The Worldbuilder’s Handbook supports you in building an offer that can hold your desire and your nervous system now, and for years to come.

^{Every chapter of The Worldbuilder’s Handbook features the black feminist whose work we study inside the retreat to build new worlds. Pictured from left to right: Audre Lorde, Akwaeke Emezi, Octavia Butler, bell hooks, N.K. Jemisin, Torkwase Dyson, Legacy Russell, Alexis Pauline Gumbs and Toni Morrison.}

^{WEEK 1}

Remember Your Desire

With the help of Audre Lorde’s “Uses of The Erotic, The Erotic As Power” we learn how to stop outsourcing our direction to trends, urgency or external validation and reconnect with the desire that can actually sustain our work. By the end of this week, you know what you’re building and why it’s worth protecting.

^{WEEK 2}

Map Your Ecosystem

We study along Akwaeke Emezi’s Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir in order to do a Creative Ecosystem Audit and draw a skills map with divine audacity. You see your skills, experiences and curiosities as a coherent ecosystem instead of a list of unfinished projects. You leave this week knowing what stays sacred, what’s ready to be shared and what can responsibly generate income.

^{WEEK 3}

Decide On Offer

In Week 3 we allow Octavia Butler to inspire us to make our own worlds and write ourselves in. You make a clear, grounded decision about what you’re selling without self-betrayal or overcomplication. By the end of this week, you have an offer that honors your capacity, your politics and your desire for stability.

^{WEEK 4}

Create The Culture

Through a bell hooks "love ethic" you define the values, boundaries and relational norms of the world you’re building so your work attracts aligned participants. This week replaces people-pleasing with discernment and makes your offer feel safe for you to steward and safe for others to participate in.

^{WEEK 5}

Clarify The Characters

We imagine our dream offer participants like N.K. Jemisin imagines characters. You get crystal clear on who this work is for, and who it’s not, without overexplaining or trying to be everything for everyone. By the end of this week, you know how to speak directly to the people who are ready to invest, instead of anticipate free labor.

^{WEEK 6}

Create The Framework

We study Torkwase Dyson’s practice of “Black Compositional Thought” to learn how to communicate our work in a way that feels honest, compelling and grounded in our lived experience. This week teaches you how to build your own framework and gives you language that builds trust, making asking for money feel like a easeful part of the practice.

^{WEEK 7}

Pick The Portals

We study Legacy Russell’s manifesto on Glitch Feminism to inform our choices in software platforms and systems that support our online practices and our bodies. By the end of this week, you have a simple, sustainable sales cycle reflecting your desires and integrity.

^{WEEK 8}

Commit To Cadence

In search of ceremony we study the practice of Alexis Pauline Gumbs to establish a rhythm for sharing our work that feels devotional rather than depleting. This week replaces all-or-nothing output cycles with consistency that compounds trust, audience and revenue over time.

^{WEEK 9}

Invite The People

Just as Toni Morrison invited her readers into her stories, you will practice inviting people into your work — directly, clearly and without apology. By the end of this week, you have an offer you’re ready to invite the people into and welcome money without shame or perfectionism.

The Retreat Outcome

You won’t just emerge from this retreat with an offer.

You'll emerge with your own worldbuilding framework for turning desire into income, care into infrastructure and spiritual wisdom into a container that can hold your material needs.

This is how worlds and creative lives of refusal are built.

"11/10 recommend joining The Retreat with Ayana Zaire Cotton. It was deeply transformative: from re-rooting into new affirmations that better support our world-building to having the guidance and community support to actually build the thing. In 9 weeks!

For years, I've worked on creative projects but avoided creating a framework because I was afraid it would feel too contrived for both me and my clients. The Retreat changed that: I now feel clear-minded and excited about guiding others through my process (I have a process!). I can't believe what we were able to create in 9 weeks together, piece by piece, week by week.

The community was one of my favorite parts of The Retreat: it felt living, breathing, and magical. The poetry! The bookish fanfare! The expressions via multi-media! Every week, I felt completely inspired by how the fellow retreaters were translating their interests, desires, and visions into offerings rooted in their rituals, too.

Ayana's teaching structure, content, and language left me feeling focused and encouraged—two vital things you need when you're world-building—after every class, every session, every week. I loved that their entire approach was informed by Black feminist teachings and guides that moved us through each topic. I come back to our Worldbuilder's Handbook daily, if not for the templates, then for the affirmations.

They've created an incredibly important, helpful, and inspiring space to participate in if you want to deeply resource your own world-building. Again, 11/10, y'all."

Karly Borden, Spring 2024

“What if it is not an experiment, this creative life of refusal. This rarely institutionally-funded disloyal life of practice for a world as yet unnamable. This insistence on transformation when the bank account screams “conform.” What if this life as an independent experimental artist is not itself an independent experiment? What if it’s an interdependent ceremony?”

_{— Alexis Pauline Gumbs, "The God of Everyday", Topical Cream}

The Seed A World Retreat Is For You If…

You’ve been the one who holds everything together for everyone else and you’re starting to wonder what your care could build if it were finally resourced.

You’re tired of being brilliant, principled and perpetually precarious — you know that clarity around your income generating skills is part of ending that cycle.

You know how to work hard, stay late and give generously, but you’re ready to release the belief that exhaustion is the entry fee for belonging.

You’ve undercharged not because your work lacks value, but because your care has been so expansive you forgot to include yourself in it.

Your devotion to Black feminist values runs deep, yet you feel the quiet ache of knowing your labor has outpaced your compensation. You are ready to stop treating money as a "necessary evil" and start relating to it as a site of ancestral stewardship, provision and futurity.

You’re ready to price your offerings with integrity, not as a virtue signal, but as a boundary that protects your time, energy and nervous system. You are done pretending money "shouldn’t matter" while quietly worrying about rent, healthcare and paid time off.

You are deeply committed to collective liberation and you’re beginning to sense that your sustainability is not a betrayal of that commitment, but its continuation.

You are ready to replace self-sacrificing heroics with income infrastructure and transform your devotion from a site of depletion into a site of power, pleasure and sustainable long-term impact.

You are ready to speak about money with the same militancy, clarity and honesty you bring to art and liberation; no longer softening your language around pricing to avoid "moral suspicion" — you are ready to tell the truth about what it actually costs to sustain your desire, your practice and your life.

I know it feels virtuous to say “I don’t have a dream job, because I don’t dream of labor”. But what if we did?…

You’ll call in the most erotic job title and description you can imagine and we’ll use that data to get to work.

The Seed A World Retreat

Lifetime Access

$499

Payment Plans Available

LIFETIME ACCESS to the 9-module Seed A World Retreat: 20+ hours of creative offer development video lessons and strategies to implement inside your practice
Module 1: Element X Quadrant + Offer Development Roadmap
Module 2: Audit Your Skills & Curiosities with the Creative Ecosystem Map
Module 3: Offer Focus Intersection + Income Vision Worksheet
Module 4: Mission, Vision, Values Worksheet
Module 5: Character Pyramid for Dream Participant Avatar (DPA) + Transformation Statement Templates
Module 6: Story Circle Framework Creation Tool
Module 7: Sales Cycle Kit (Business Model Formulas, Landing Page Wireframes, Marketing Emails and a Guide to 80+ Creative Platforms)
Module 8: Lead Magnet Locator + Weekly Dispatch Planner
Module 9: Launch Calendar Worksheet, Offer Invitation Dashboard and Offer Release Checklist
The 50+ Page Worldbuilder’s Handbook: To support you in your offer development journey
Seed A World Retreat Private Podcast: For worldbuilding on the go!
Discord Community: Connect with a global community of worldbuilders for support, feedback and finding accountability buddies

Enroll

Seed A World at Your Own Pace and Power

Seed A World in alignment with your capacity, timezone and learning style.

Join us inside this flexible 9-week retreat where you'll develop, structure and sell your income generating creative offer aligned with your desire and values.

Inside this retreat you will learn how to practice through a Sankofa sensibility to self and community service. We'll use the creative skills that you already have, the desire that refuses to leave and the ancestral inheritance that has always been yours to steward.

The Seed A World Retreat helps you:

Clarify your desire and your values
Develop your income-generating offer in alignment with your desire and your values
Create and launch a sacred sales system in alignment with your desire and your values

Enroll

Seed A World Retreat Payment Plans

Enroll using these payment options and receive access to all the support and resources listed above!

2 Monthly Payments Of

$250

Lifetime Access

Enroll

3 Monthly Payments Of

$167

Lifetime Access

Enroll

What Seeda School Worldbuilders Are Saying

“Being led through the Seed A World Retreat by Ayana offered me the sea I know I can rely on to float me above all that attempts to drown me. Each of the nine action steps helped to buoy my practice & deep sense of embodiment utilizing the full power of Audre Lorde's uses of the erotic.

Ayana's excavating groundwork reminds us that the ability to float already resides in the power of our expansive breath. If we can dream it, then it is safe to trust that it is already done for not just ourselves but folks dreaming of the work we are producing.

The world you desire to build already exists within you & the worldbuilding framework helped me realize that our work can support so many others if we break through the fertile ground where we stand alone. In fact, through the worldbuilding framework, Ayana facilitates that we are never truly alone because the Sankofa sensibility circularly connects us to our past, present, & future.

If you're ready to invite folks to wade into the sea of your worldbuilding & transformative offer then sign up! Trust that when it rains it pours & your abundant desires will grow & be witnessed by the outstretched limbs of folks in the Seeda School community with you.”

Kay Brown author of Assemblage: Baby's Breath, Spring 2024

Meet Your Worldbuilding Guide

I’m Ayana Zaire Cotton (she/they), a Black feminist worldbuilder, writer, erotic engineer and business architect devoted to helping Black feminist artists, academics and founders build lives and livelihoods rooted in desire. My work lives at the intersection of spell and strategy, poetry and plumbing, erotic truth and structural rigor. I don’t teach pedagogy I haven’t practiced. I teach from embodiment — from the imagination transformations, initiations and experiments that made my work sustainable, resourced and sovereign.

Through Seeda School, I support worldbuilders who are done waiting on institutions, gatekeepers or permission slips from the old world. Together, we treat creative practice as non-negotiable ceremony and business-building as a liberatory bridge. I help worldbuilders clarify their offers, develop values-aligned sales systems and build recurring revenue that funds their writing, research and worldmaking without sacrificing integrity, pleasure or political clarity.

For over a decade, I’ve launched art projects, social sculptures and speculative frameworks that doubled as businesses and books — learning how to circulate resources while staying rooted in desire. If you’re ready to stop outsourcing your power, step into self-agency and let your work be resourced by the people it’s for, this is an invitation to say "yes" to your offer and the world it makes possible.

^{Photograph by Stephen Miller. Custom workwear created by Ayana Zaire Cotton from her previous business, Zaire Studio.}

Website

About Seeda School

Seeda School is located in Cykofa, a parallel universe suspended amongst the past and the future where cornrows are cryptography keys, data farms are data forests, the weaving loom is a computer and chain link fencing from demolished prisons is used as architectural membrane woven with plant life.

Seeda School is animated by a Black feminist, abolitionist imagination. We specialize in Black feminist speculative practice, worldbuilding, business development and creative actualization.

Our mission is to make revolution irresistible¹ through the framework of Black feminist worldbuilding.

Our vision is a generation of present, paid, powerhouses building infrastructures of mutual aid supported by Black feminist offers and businesses.

^{SEED DATA}

^{“As a culture worker who belongs to an oppressed people my job is to make revolution irresistible.” ― Toni Cade Bambara,}^{Conversations with Toni Cade Bambara}^{(2012), e}^{dited by Thabiti Lewis}

Why Now?

Collective Liberation through Collective Divestment

Just like there is Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, etc. Seeda School brings you Erotic Engineering. Someone looked at the world and said, “this is a mechanical engineering problem”, we are looking at the world and saying, “this is an erotic engineering problem”.

For Electrical Engineering the material mechanics in question are electricity and conduits. For Erotic Engineering the material mechanics in question are creative spirit and systems of structural support.

We are living in a time of collapse. Not only are institutions and systems of oppression collapsing but the ideologies and belief systems that provided their structural support are toppling along with them.

Erotic Engineering gives us permission to use our creative spirit to scaffold belief systems that inform our lives and change the material conditions of the world. A field of study that holds creativity and imagination as sacred and essential building tools in a time of destruction.

^{WHETHER YOU'RE BUILDING AN OFFER OR A BUSINESS, WE NEED IT.}

"Business as usual" is collapsing. We need new offerings for the new world. What offering or business will you build for the worlds we need, not in the future, but now?

“Abolition is not absence, it is presence. What the world will become already exists in fragments and pieces, experiments and possibilities. So those who feel in their gut deep anxiety that abolition means knock it all down, scorch the earth and start something new, let that go. Abolition is building the future from the present, in all of the ways we can.”

_{— Ruth Wilson Gilmore}

Worldbuilding Creative Offer Ideas

^{1:MANY OFFER}

Take aspiring urban gardeners through a 12-week journey of ideas, strategies and methods for establishing a gardening and food sovereignty practice at home and at the community level.

_$1,111

^{ARTIFACT OFFER}

Create a zine on how you created a mutual aid infrastructure of childcare supported by chosen family, neighbors and community members.

_$10

^1:1 OFFER

Combine your astrology practice with your years of experience with community facilitation and offer astrology readings introducing folks to their role and calling in collective liberation.

_{$500 PER READING}

^{DONE FOR YOU SERVICE OFFER}

Experienced facilitator with a growing disinterest in non-profit work? Offer community agreements consulting and leadership coaching on restorative justice practices for decision makers inside of organizations.

_{5-FIGURE MINIMUM ENGAGEMENT RATE}

^{1:MANY OFFER}

Public scholar with a Substack or Patreon and want to dive deeper with your community? Wrap your current research practice into a syllabus and create an annual membership with live discussion sessions, recommended readings and a national network of student organized, "pop-up" study groups in public libraries.

_$3,000

^{1:MANY + ARTIFACT OFFER}

A paid newsletter publishing a Black sci-fi short story every week, culminating in a self-published book.

_$7/MONTH

^{1:MANY OFFER}

A 4-week collage course using childhood photos for collective healing and re-memory.

_$475

^{1:MANY + DONE FOR YOU SERVICE OFFER}

A professional development fellowship for Black designers desiring intergenerational, interdisciplinary mentorship and skill-sharing.

_$199/MONTH

^{1:MANY + ARTIFACT OFFER}

An oral history podcast documenting the stories of your block. Each season culminates in a "Neighborhood Yearbook" featuring portraits of your neighbors, their stories, emergency contacts and mutual aid they can offer.

_{MONTHLY PODCAST SPONSORSHIP FROM LOCAL BUSINESSES}

^{1:1 OFFER}

Black feminist book doula services for industry experts working on their debut publication geared to politically engaged readers.

_{$10,000-$25,000}

^{1:MANY OFFER}

A 3-month Cooperative Economics business incubator offering organizational architecture and governance strategy for aspiring coop founders.

_$5,000

^{1:MANY + DONE FOR YOU SERVICE OFFER}

A hair braiding service inviting clients to use the length of time in the chair to free-write. Clients meet virtually once a month to share their writing.

_$275-$575

“The grammar of black feminist futurity is a performance of a future that hasn’t happened yet but must. It is an attachment to a belief in what should be true, which impels us to realize that aspiration. It’s the power to imagine beyond current fact and to envision that which is not, but must be. It’s a politics of prefiguration that involves living the future now.”

_{— Tina Campt, “Quiet Soundings: The Grammar of Black Futurity”, Listening to Images (2017), p. 17.}

_{Pictured: Grada Kilomba in Conversation with Tina Campt}

FAQs

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What Seeda School Worldbuilders Are Saying

"After grinding for over a decade in the nonprofit sector, I needed support building a viable, self-directed career path to generate income rooted in my values and creativity. The Seed A World Retreat offered both the practical tools and community encouragement I was seeking to heed the creative call I have been feeling. Now I look forward to sharing this work that feels personally terrifying and necessary, and I believe in my ability to do it using the Seeda School tools. During the retreat, Ayana held space with such admirable curiosity and generosity! If you want an experienced, informed, Black feminist, imaginative hype-person to put a loving battery in your back, sign up for the Seed A World Retreat immediately."

— Jasmyne Gilbert, Winter 2024

“Ayana Zaire Cotton, is, to me, a being whose radically tender ways of loving, teaching, and questioning mirror the revolutionary labours of love of bell hooks, Octavia Butler, Toni Cade Bambara, and the list goes on. Through Seeda School, Ayana plants seeds of responsible hope, of revolutionary reimagining(s), and most importantly, of communal (and personal) pursuit(s) of the erotic into the body, mind, and soul of whoever has the chance to waltz with their teachings, with their being. Being a student of Seeda School is constantly being reminded that one’s desires are needs, and therefore that we — as people — have the power to materialize the conditions we yearn to have in order to thrive, to be free. Receiving teachings and exchanging with Ayana and the lovely beings who tap into their care-full-y crafted [offers] is a blessing that keeps on giving, and I trust that this will remain the case in near and distant futures.”

Gloria-Sherryl François (G L O W Z I), Fall 2023

Chinyere Erondu, Fall 2023

"Words cannot express enough how grateful I am for the blessing that is both Ayana and Seeda School. Enrolling in the retreat was an immediate yes for me — where the weekly meditations and facilitations from Ayana felt like sacred invitations to return — return to community, return to self, return to Spirit, return to our gardens. Like The Artist's Way, but through a decolonial Black feminist lens, I continue to find Seeda School and its Retreat as an evergreen gift and artistic nourishment that, as a result, enriches the tending of my spiritual and literary practice — The Conflicted Womanist.”

“It was such a pleasure being part of Seeda School retreat and be in community with a cohort of talented, caring and loving souls. This offering is a soothing and refreshing balm to each and everyone wanting to delve deeper into their inner being to bring out unknown treasures to the world. Ayana, the creator and facilitator of the retreat is its living proof. They are a bottomless well of inspiring, exciting, creative, experimental and spirit-led knowledge and I’m deeply grateful for their work and their willingness to share with us all that they know with so much grace and care.”

Keren Lasme, Fall 2023

Taylor Rae, Fall 2023

“I find it difficult to express in words just how impactful the Seeda School Retreat was for me as a clayworker, herbalist, teacher, and activist. Seeda School contextualized our work as multidisciplinary artists in the revolution and helped us all to abandon mentalities of scarcity that are upheld by colonialism and white supremacy. Ayana has put so much time, effort, and care into every piece of her retreat and it shows. Even as someone who already had a creative offer established, I gained so much wisdom from the content and discussions that I am confident will only improve the success of my offers, along with one of the most tender, caring, and uplifting communities that anyone could ask for. I am infinitely grateful for the work Ayana does in bolstering us artists and creating containers for the radical dreaming of better worlds.”

"Ayana has created a thriving Black feminist counterpublic that combines the speculative imaginary with the power of presence and action to manifest worlds that exist outside of and beyond oppressive systems, reminding us that we don’t have to cut off any parts of ourselves in the work.

As a participant in both the Seed a World Retreat and the Treehouse over the past year, I have found that accepting Ayana’s invitation into communal worldbuilding has completely transformed the way I think about both engaging with and funding my creative practice. Their gentle invocation around returning consistently to our work to build a nurturing cadence of outreach via the weekly dispatch, with its focus on curiosity and research, as well as their guidance on developing an income-generating offer has shown me the value of cultivating a creative ecosystem where all parts feed into and nourish each other.

I came for the emphasis on grounding our art in interdisciplinary wildness and opacity. I stay for the soft weave of community that grounds us all together in what Alexis Pauline Gumbs calls “an interdependent ceremony.” Ayana and my fellow worldbuilders are holding each other through this time of escalating genocide and rising fascism worldwide and together we are creating full universes of possibility to, in Christina Sharpe’s words, “imagine otherwise.” Join us?"

Elliott Silverstein, Spring 2024

"The Seeda World Retreat has been instrumental in bringing my coaching program to light. When I joined, I had just drafted my framework and had a fuzzy idea for my offer. Every single week of the Retreat helped me clarify and strengthen my initial ideas. It felt like starting with a block of marble and then sculpting and chiseling until what was truly important emerged.

I loved the structure of the Retreat. It has everything you need to birth your offer and business. We had the tools and time to work autonomously and in-depth. Then, we had our amazing Open Studio Calls, where the communal revolutionary spirit made its magic. In between, the asynchronous support via Discord and email was a guiding light and helped me feel never alone.

Today, just two weeks after the Retreat's end, I started softly launching my program. I may not have been here without the Retreat!

More than this, the 9 weeks together have been a time of creative expansion and personal and political evolution for me. I'll always be immensely grateful to Ayana and the marvelous human beings I was honored to have by my side during this journey."

Giada Centofanti, Spring 2024

“The Seed A World Retreat offered by Seeda School was an invitation to revisit the primordial womb; a safe and warm place for meaningful growth and expansion of our deepest desires. Ayana's passion and deep community care shone through as she guided/facilitated the cohort to transform the seeds of our deepest desires into tangible and beautiful offerings to the world. The carefully curated Retreat Workbook allowed us to seed, tend to, grow (and prune when necessary) our ideas into structured next steps. I'm so happy to have had the opportunity to commune with other like-minded, community-oriented folk who share the same passion for building worlds that provide ample space and opportunity for radical, free existence and communion.”

— Yen C, Fall 2023

"The Seeda School experience has been such an affirming and generative experience for me. I am often seeking out classes and opportunities to learn new skills, be in process with my peers, and engage in self-development and personal growth. My experience with Seeda School, via Ayana's generous facilitation and framework, felt so deeply aligned with my values, my creative praxis, and my worldview. Guided by the brilliant offerings of Black feminists, Ayana has cultivated such a sacred space with an inspiring cohort of people. Since participating in the cohort, I have revisited the curriculum, and it continues to be a transformative guide as I chart my path forward."

— Jessica Valoris, Winter 2024

"The Seeda School is unlike anything I have experienced before. It's a mix of personal, intimate, and necessary inner groundwork, visioning for the future, and practical tools for business and financial sustainability, all within a liberatory framework of black feminism and worldbuilding. I found it to be such a necessary container for reflecting, visioning, developing ideas, dreaming up possibilities and then bringing them to life with the many tools that are offered throughout the course. Ayana is a brilliant and generous facilitator, and has thoughtfully curated a safe community of support among like-minded artists and creatives. I am telling everyone I know about Seeda School as I feel like all interdisciplinary artists and creatives need this kind of facilitated retreat experience to bring their ideas to life and offer them to the world."

Steph Rue, Winter 2024

“The violence is endless under empire and white supremacy, but so is our capacity to imagine new worlds and to love on each other” – a thought Ayana offered us early on, amid the grief, heartbreak and rage at the apocalypses taking place close and far, is also the best summation of this heart-and-possibilities-expanding retreat. Under Ayana’s effervescent, loving, wise guidance and expansive vision, these 9 weeks were a space for us to practice loving ourselves – breathing through fear, taking our desires, curiosities and oddities seriously, seeing a divine throughline in our journeys, choosing to start without having all the information – in order to answer the call from our people, past and present, and bring about the futures we need today. I told everyone I care about of the gift that is the Seed A World Retreat, looking forward to revisiting our session recordings and completing the worksheets (that I know my life depends on). I am so grateful I followed my intuition (and desire!) and chose to invest in myself through this course. I am grateful and forever charged/changed by this offering, that Ayana had dreamt up and powerfully-beautifully woven into being.”

— Aisha Jandosova, Fall 2023

“Ayana has created a retreat that is immensely valuable. Seeda School has been able to anticipate needs that I was uncovering myself with richness and depth in ways I never expected! I wholeheartedly recommend this retreat for creatives ready to immerse themselves in their hearts desires.”

— Vanessa Murchie, Fall 2023

"Seeda School gathered me and all the threads of my creative practice. I came in with an idea and left with a digital course rooted in ease and pleasure. The workbook is beautifully laid out to include a framework for building out a curriculum, sustainable marketing plan, and sales funnel. Ayana's affirmations each week are a remedy to the uncertainty I experience beginning something new. This retreat has been grounding and deeply supportive."

Brandi Cheyenne Harper, Winter 2024

“This Seed a World Retreat has been been such an eye-opening journey that has shown me that I don't have to fear claiming the things that I am because the current world that I participate in says that I can not be all the things that I am. Ayana, it is clear what you want to put forward - a world where everyone is fully themselves and living in a world of love. I felt that throughout the experience, and felt as if I was being asked to take a chance in believing in and being a part of that type of world - a world built from love. Through a facilitator of love, a community of love, and words/frameworks of love, I felt affirmed and empowered to go on an be the interdisciplinary researcher, director, curator, and writer that I want to be. I feel as though I have so much of the foundational tools and essence from Seed a World and I can wait to launch, and see all the other worlds that are launched from this beautiful retreat.”

— Bo Dautruche, Fall 2023

“Through the Seed A World Retreat, Ayana offers rich, juicy, tangible frameworks for attendees to tap into our deepest desires so that we may then be led by them in our endeavors to develop and share values-driven creative offers. Each retreat session was equal parts meditation, sermon, and playdate. It was an invaluable experience to imagine within a world where Black feminism was the bedrock, where attendees could start replacing self-rejection and scarcity with self trust and generosity, where showing up fully for our practices would sustain our livelihoods in the ways we dream of and deserve. I’m eternally grateful and excited for how what I learned in the Seed A World Retreat will propel me into a more expansive and abundant future.”

— Dkéama Alexis, Fall 2023

"Seeda School is the most nourishing, electric, brilliant, inspired, held space I have been lucky enough to be a part of. I entered the retreat from the depths of a creative winter, and Ayana built the container for a true and revelatory spring. She has architected the balance of structure, rigorous tools, juicy inspiration, accountability, and relational support that will help you (finally) recognize and birth the thing that has been calling you. And more than that, Seeda is the invitation to manifest the luscious version of a life you didn’t know you were allowed to have."