The Black Canon: Moments Frozen In Time

Problem:
The Black Canon preserves Black art, film, and history — an archive with real cultural weight and almost no public awareness. No visibility means no donors. The task was making people care about something they didn't know existed, without the work feeling like a history lesson.

Solution:
We positioned the collection as a source of originality and cultural knowledge rather than a record of the past. The research looked at how institutions like the Getty Foundation and the Schomburg Center treat archives as living sources of artistic inspiration and found that as AI-generated content becomes more common, authentic cultural history becomes more valuable, not less.

That thinking shaped a two-film campaign. The first sits inside the archive itself such as records, posters, photographs, the objects holding the history. The second brings that history into the present, placing young Black New Yorkers alongside the icons who came before them. Together they argue that the archive isn't finished; it's still being inherited.

My Role:
Copywriter — Helped conduct research, wrote scripts, and storyboards; supported production on set


Both films were selected by the client and produced.