The Seed A World Retreat

A 9-week retreat for artists, academics and founders ready to generate sustainable income without self-sacrifice.

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

9

RETREAT MODULES

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.

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Story Time

Inside Seeda School we start everything by rooting into the most ancient technology there is, story. Here’s mine…

Rewind to 2018, I was working as a Software Engineering instructor at a company and on campus in Brooklyn, NY dedicated to increasing access to tech careers for marginalized folks making under $40,000 annually. My students were a diverse mix BIPOC Trans and GNC+ folks, single mothers, immigrants, etc. I fell in love with the mission and my 9am-5pm quickly turned into a 9am-9pm.

For two years I abandoned my creative practice, without realizing I abandoned myself in the process.

Here’s what happened…

I abandoned creative practice due to lack of trust in its financial viability. I was stuck inside a story of resenting my interdisciplinarity, blaming “lack of focus” for my unmet financial goals, “career” frustrations and overall exhaustion.

I was subconsciously comparing myself to my peers and constantly feeling “behind” or “stuck”. Next year was always going to be “my year”. Misalignment between my desires and my actions began to produce shame and negative self talk.

I just needed to work harder, right? Or no…I needed more self-help books so I could pathologize my way into ever increasing levels of productivity. I became burnt out from unsustainable work habits, ignoring the needs of my body and the invitations of my neurodivergence.

Not only was I working a job that was misaligned with my values, I was working a job that exposed disabilities that I tried my best to ignore, afraid to acknowledge or advocate for accommodations due to internalized ableism and fear my true needs would compromise my paycheck and my access to survival.

I was the only Black woman on my team which meant most of the emotional labor of community conflict fell on my lap. Too exhausted from the emotional labor on the job, I couldn’t show up with the emotional capacity my personal relationships deserved.

I started to self isolate because of shame, exhaustion, anxiety, depression, unacknowledged trauma. I compromised my community support when community support is always the pathway to relief.

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

Disability and complex trauma renders folks unable or unwilling to hold "traditional jobs". 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.

We are all worldbuilders because we are all embodying a story.

I was operating in complete distrust and misalignment with my desire — deeply severed from my creative power and the needs 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.

I abandoned my interdisciplinary spirit in search of safety inside external validation and achievement, forgetting safety resides in my relationship with my intuition, my community and my body.

Seed a world on purpose by remembering your desire is more trustworthy than your fear.

We are all worldbuilders because we are all embodying a story.

I was operating in complete distrust and misalignment with my desire — deeply severed from my creative power and the needs 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.

I abandoned my interdisciplinary spirit in search of safety inside external validation and achievement, forgetting safety resides in my relationship with my intuition, my community and my body.

Seed a world on purpose by remembering your desire is more trustworthy than your fear.

How?

Activate Your Element X

Collaborate with your skills to create an additional stream of income with the same erotic ease, playful rigor and self-trust as you do in your Zone of Desire. You know, that place you go to when you’re making a song, a zine, a poem, a syllabus.

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?

N.K. Jemisin describes “Element X” as a creative device that powers speculative fiction. She frames it as a, ““what if...” question that establishes clarity on some magic, mysticism, fantasy or advanced technology inside a story”.

Inside Seeda School we frame it as a “what if...” question that establishes clarity on your deep desire and powers the story of your creative ecosystem.

Element X Examples

The Powerpuff Girls series

^{ELEMENT X: CHEMICAL X}

Sugar, spice, everything nice. And Chemical X.

X-Men series

^{ELEMENT X: MUTATION}

Mutants have extraordinary bodies, gifts, and lives, all thanks to their x-gene.

The Hunger Games Trilogy

^{ELEMENT X: THE HUNGER GAMES}

The grim, futuristic, eponymous battle royale at the center of this series embodies the class disparity and exploitation at the heart of the books.

Naruto series

^{ELEMENT X: CHAKRA}

Through chakra, the characters of Naruto use a dizzying array of martial arts techniques that also connect them to the legacy of their communities and families.

Black Panther series

^{ELEMENT X: VIBRANIUM}

The nearly indestructible metal drastically impacted and shaped Wakanda’s economy and culture.

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.

The Element X Quadrant

Inside Seeda School we use The Element X Quadrant to locate the shape of your Zone of Validation vs. Zone of Desire. It is from inside your Zone of Desire that we will imagine and design your income generating creative offer.

ZONE OF DOMINATION

It’s painful to complete. We often devise creative ways of getting out of doing these tasks and avoid it at all costs. We need to exercise dominance over our mind, body and spirit to engage in this craft or activity. Working with force.

EXAMPLES FROM MY PRACTICE

Legal
Taxes
Admin

ZONE OF COMPETENCE

We get the job done but understand there are other folks whose true calling this is. We’re okay at this craft or activity but we may procrastinate on it or are easily distracted while doing it. Accessing flow is difficult.

EXAMPLES FROM MY PRACTICE

Graphic Design
Editing Photos, Videos, Audio
Creating Slide Decks

ZONE OF VALIDATION

The activities in this zone seem too good to give up. We receive decent pay, status, credibility and a ton of praise for working inside this zone. A craving for safety and security usually causes us to stay here. Maybe we secretly don’t want to become successful in this zone because it is misaligned with our deep desire. Unconscious self-sabotage or suppressing desire as a survival strategy occurs in this zone.

EXAMPLES FROM MY PRACTICE

Software Engineering
Project Management
Corporate Consulting

ZONE OF DESIRE

Working with flow. Working inside this zone is its own reward, no longer needing to depend on external validation. Discipline melts into devotion and returning feels like sanctuary that expands our capacity for care. The skills inside this zone are the skills we secretly dream of devoting our life to sharpening. If we refuse to imagine thriving inside this zone we may stay in the Zone of Validation out of fear.

EXAMPLES FROM MY PRACTICE

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

We will cycle through these different zones inside our practice and our lives. The question is: How do we commit to a cadence of returning to our Zone of Desire? We commit to a cadence of return through weekly dispatches and a creative offer that financially resources our Zone of Desire.

Locate Your Element X

The Element X Quadrant helps us get clarity on the stories severing us from our power by locating our deep desire.

Our desire is a sustainable source of erotic energy charging our practice and our faith.

Through cultivating a relationship with desire we learn how to trust it again.

We learn how to trust ourselves again.

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

Let’s find out together.

The Seed A World Retreat

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

A self-paced retreat with 9-modules teaching you how to locate your Zone of Desire, how to create an income-generating offer from inside that sacred, non-negotiable site and how to sell your offer through invitations in alignment with your audacity and your values.

What’s that offer that’s been on your heart for seasons, if not years?

What’s that calling your ancestors won’t stop picking up the phone and leaving messages about?

What’s the monthly income that allows you to meet all your needs and then some so you can buy your friend’s painting at their art show, work at the pace that supports your nervous system, circulate funds inside your community’s mutual aid requests, save for gender affirming surgery or generate income for your next move or home ownership desires?

Learn how to create and sell an income generating offer in alignment with your desire.

Let’s create a container for work worthy of your breath.

The Seed A World Retreat

Self-Paced Retreat

$499

Lifetime Access

LIFETIME ACCESS to the 9-module Seed A World Course: 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: Framework Creation Tool
Module 7: Sales Funnel 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 Course Private Podcast: For worldbuilding on the go!
Discord Community: Connect with a global community of worldbuilders for support, feedback and finding accountability buddies

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Seed A World At Your Own Pace

Looking to Seed A World in alignment with your pace, timezone and schedule?

Join us inside this self-paced worldbuilding course that will teach you how to 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 service — generating revenue becomes responsible stewardship over your ancestral inheritance.

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

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3 Monthly Payments Of

$167

Lifetime Access

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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

Seeda School's Worldbuilding Framework consists of nine critical action steps with three major milestones: Deciding on your creative offer, developing the framework for your offer and releasing your offer. Leveraging the worldbuilding power of storytelling the framework takes the form of a story circle, invoking a circular practice you can return to for years to come.

The 3 Retreat Milestones

By the end of the retreat you will...

Decide on Offer

After locating your true desire for your creative practice using the Element X Quadrant we will map your entire Creative Ecosystem to get clarity on the flagship offer you will workshop throughout the rest of the retreat.

Create Your Framework

Now that you've decided on your offer we will develop a narrative and framework around your offer informed by your values and the people you dream of serving. You will be able to use your framework to sell and validate your offer before it's fully created.

Invite the People

With an offer idea rooted in your desire and a brand narrative established you will learn creative marketing and sales strategies to release your offer to your first 100 participants in order to generate income you can count on in the seasons to come.

The Worldbuilder's Handbook

Based on Seeda School’s worlbuilding framework and the black feminist teachings informing the school, The Worldbuilder's Handbook is your go-to tool for navigating the 9 weeks of the Seed A World Retreat and beyond. Each chapter is a workbook with worksheets, templates, toolkits, frameworks, checklists and more helping you develop, market and sell your values aligned creative offer in 9 weeks. Completely informed by black feminist praxis, the Worldbuilder's Handbook is a toolbox you can return to for years to come as you scale and deepen the impact of your creative offer and practice.

^{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 chaotic 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.

^{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}

Connect The Story

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 lived experience—not marketing trends. 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 collapse or shame.

The Retreat Outcome

You don’t just emerge from the retreat with an offer.

You emerge with your own worldbuilding framework for turning desire into income, care into infrastructure, and vision into something that can actually hold you.

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 Black feminist strategy, protection, 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 rest.

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 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.