2025 Walk the Block Festival

Wa Na Wari’s 2025 Walk the Block Focuses on Gratitude for Land & Community

Seattle - July 15, 2025 - Wa Na Wari is pleased to announce the return of Walk the Block, its signature art and culture festival that transforms Seattle’s Central District into a vibrant celebration of Black creativity, resilience, and community.

Walk the Block 2025 unfolds in two powerful parts: a four-week institute launching August 8, focused on building with and uplifting legacy community members, followed by a day-long public celebration on September 27. On that day, the streets, porches, gardens, and storefronts of the Central District will come alive with art activations, performances, and installations that honor the neighborhood’s cultural legacy and invite collective joy and reflection.

This year’s theme, gratitude, honors thankfulness as a living practice - not simply a gesture, but a way of being. This year’s theme serves as an invitation to tend to the land, care for one another, and carry forward the legacy of those who came before. In alignment with Wa Na Wari’s mission, Walk the Block 2025 channels this spirit through art, music, and performance, encouraging the community to engage gratitude as a form of stewardship - of culture, connection, and shared space.

Returning this year to offer an even more in-depth and immersive experience,Wa Na Wari welcomes both local and national artists to build upon the foundation of past seasons and continue the tradition.

“Throughout the year we are constantly collaborating with the most incredible artists, thinkers, oral historians, small businesses, cultural workers and community organizers in our various program areas. Walk the Block is our way of bringing all of this creative energy together. We are celebrating those collaborations in a way that makes what we do accessible and exciting for everyone, especially those who don’t come to Wa Na Wari on a regular basis.”, says Inye Wokoma, Wa Na Wari Co-Founder.

Wa Na Wari continues that tradition through this year’s event and by integrating a dynamic mix of visual art, sound, performance, and community engagement in a neighborhood-wide format. This year’s event will feature a wide-range of artists who reflect the theme while invoking cultural memory and intentional reflection.

Performances & Artists

Headlining this year’s event is Saul Williams, a multidisciplinary artist celebrated as the “global ambassador of modern poetry.” He brings a powerful voice and visionary presence to Walk the Block 2025. Additional participating artists include Natalie Ball, Kamari Bright, Creative Justice, Dez’mon Omega Fair, Femme du lit, Curry Hackett, Maria Kang, Briana Kennedy, Zahyr Lauren, Josh Nucci, Perri Rhoden, The Ancient Robotz, Tariq Sahali, Shanice Smith, Carletta Carrington Wilson, and Inye Wokoma. These artists will activate the Central District with works that reflect the spirit, complexity and beauty and convergence of Black, human experiences. Learn more about the artists at www.wanwari.org/events.

In addition to the visual and performance art, Walk the Block 2025 will include a dedicated Comedy Stage curated by Nate Jackson’s Super Funny Comedy Club, showcasing stand-up sets from Danny Meyerend, Frederick White, and Tyrik Woods. This multidisciplinary approach allows Wa Na Wari’s Walk the Block to foster deeper dialogue and engagement, creating a celebratory yet critically conscious environment rooted in the rich cultural legacy the Central District and Seattle has long been known for.

Since its founding, Wa Na Wari has honored the legacy of Seattle’s Central District and served as a cornerstone serving as a nurturing space for artists and community members far and wide. Wa Na Wari builds upon the foundation laid by those who understood the deep value of protecting Black history, art, and place.

This commitment to preservation is not about looking back -it’s about lighting the way forward. By activating the collective imagination, Wa Na Wari inspires communities across the region and the country to envision a future where cultural memory is safeguarded, and where Black communities can thrive, create, and remain rooted in the places they call home.

Through Walk the Block, Wa Na Wari reclaims space and uplifts the rich legacy of Black artistry that continues to shape and build the landscape of Seattle.

On Instagram: @wanawariseattle

Wa Na Wari is located at 911 24th Ave, Seattle, WA 98122. Phone: (206) 485-7563

About Wa Na Wari

Sited in a fifth-generation, Black-owned home, Wa Na Wari is an immersive community art project that reclaims Black cultural space and makes a statement about the importance of Black land ownership in gentrified communities. Our mission is to create space for Black ownership, possibility, and belonging through art, historic preservation, and connection. Referred to as a "container for Black joy,” Wa Na Wari incubates and amplifies Black art and belonging while providing a safe space for organizing and movement building. By renting a house from a vulnerable Black homeowner, and giving that space back to the Black community, Wa Na Wari is an active model for how Black art and culture can combat gentrification and displacement.

Website | wanawari.org

On Facebook | www.facebook.com/wanawariseattle

About Walk the Block Institute

Walk the Block Institute invites our community to explore strategies for creative community building. Each year, Walk the Block Institute is presented by a different Wa Na Wari program, reflecting its unique character and focus.  This year our art program has curated a group of Black filmmakers to share their work and reflect on their roles as observers, narrators, futurists, and thought provocateurs in social movements. 

About the Artists and Participants

2025 Walk the Block Artists:

Natalie Ball, Kamari Bright, Creative Justice, Dez’mon Omega Fair, Femme du lit, Curry Hackett, Maria Kang, Briana Kennedy, Zahyr Lauren, Josh Nucci, Perri Rhoden, The Ancient Robotz, Tariq Sahali, Shanice Smith, Carletta Carrington Wilson and Inye Wokoma

Comedy Stage curated by Nate Jackson’s Super Funny Comedy Club:

Danny Meyerend, Frederick White and Tyrik Woods

Dance Stage Curated by Black Collectivity

Activation Partners:

Arte Noir

EVENT DETAILS

Walk the Block Institute (4 weeks) | August 8, August 15, August 22, August 29

Location: Zoom

Walk the Block Community Festival | Saturday, September 27 from 1PM - 7PM

Location: Registration is on 24th and Union, Seattle, WA 98122

Info: Terence Etc. (also known as Terence Nance) is an artist born and raised in Dallas, TX.
Terence’s work exists on the thresholds between artistic forms, yielding an extensive
multidisciplinary practice. In 2020, Terence released his first EP “Things I Never Had” followed in 2022 by his first album “V O R T E X” (released via Brainfeeder). The music is transcendent, ornate, and playful and tells interdimensional love stories from the early 21st century.
In the world of cinema - Terence has directed music videos for André 3000, Solange and Earl
Sweatshirt. He also wrote, directed, scored, and starred in his first feature film “An
Oversimplification of Her Beauty” which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and was
released theatrically in 2013. He created two seasons of his Peabody Award-winning HBO
series, “Random Acts of Flyness” in 2018 and 2022 .

Info: Amir George is a filmmaker and artist whose work blends sound, image, and spirituality into cinematic experiences of non-linear perception. His films explore transformation and transcendence, often following characters who exist outside social conventions, occupying liminal spaces and states of becoming. George’s work has screened at institutions and festivals including MOCA Los Angeles, MoMA PS1, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, BlackStar Film Festival, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. His archival short Shades of Shadows is part of the permanent collection at the Walker Art Center. He is currently developing his debut feature film, The Healer, a narrative rooted in memory, legacy, and reimagined history.

Info: Brian McDonald is an award-winning writer/director with over 30 years of experience in film, television, and comic books. A globally respected story consultant and teacher, he has worked with Pixar, Disney, Cirque du Soleil, Lucasfilm, and Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions. His book Invisible Ink is considered essential reading at Pixar and in film programs worldwide. A founding faculty member of the Red Badge Project, McDonald helped veterans with PTSD heal through storytelling. His forthcoming memoir from Macmillan explores the M**der of his brother and his personal journey toward forgiveness.

Info: Gilda Sheppard, PhD, is an award-winning filmmaker who has screened her documentaries particularly her
documentary Since I Been Down throughout communities and film festivals in the United States,
internationally in Canada, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tokyo, the Festival Afrique Cannes Film Festival,
and in Germany at the International Black Film Festival in Berlin. Sheppard has taught sociology courses
and collaborated in the facilitation of workshops on film/production at University of Cape Coast, and

Ashesi University in Ghana and at several Washington State women, men and youth prisons. She is a co-
founder, former faculty for Freedom Education Project Puget Sound (FEPPS) an organization offering

college credit courses at Washington Corrections Center for Women. Sheppard is a 2017 Hedgebrook
Fellow for documentary film and a 2019 recipient of an Artist Trust Fellowship.Sheppard is faculty Emerita
of Sociology, Cultural and Media Literacy at Evergreen State College in Tacoma.

Host or Publisher Wa Na Wari