Greetings,
I'm Alicia.
(Pronounced, Ah-lee-see-uh)
I’m so glad you’re here! I’m a dreamer and creator committed to hastening the world where Black women, women of color and all beings on the planet live in our fullness with ease, joy and authenticity. I create immersive art installations that Center Blackness for healing and transformation, facilitate visioning retreats and heal through my writing.
We must imagine the world we want to live in, find ways to experience it in our bodies and revel in the joy along the way.
Alicia M. Walters (she/gawdess) is a dreamer and creator exploring how we get free. As an artist, writer and facilitator, her work conjures freer futures, inviting people to envision and embody joyful liberation. She has worked with organizations and institutions across the United States to learn and practice Centering Blackness as a path for personal and collective transformation. She is the visionary and creator of the Black Thought Project, which creates sanctuaries for Black expression, facilitating interactive art installations and gathering over 1,500 responses from Black people about their experiences and visions of a world where they are truly safe and free. Believing deeply in the power of rest, ease and flow, Alicia facilitates retreats where people can tap into their deepest knowing, embody their joy, express their visions and engage their gifts.
Alicia has spent 20 years centering the needs, visions and gifts of Black women and women of color toward liberation. She is a fellow at The Maven Collaborative where she documents the impact of Centering Blackness on narrative and culture change. She was facilitator and co-creator of the Black Future Newsstand and creative director and author of WHOLE: a Vision for Abortion Freedom. She has authored legislation that ended the shackling of pregnant incarcerated women in California, led research on the impact of incarceration on families, and organized for full access to reproductive healthcare, among many other issues. She has served as the Movement Building Director at Forward Together where she managed the Strong Families Network of over 200 organizations and created Echoing Ida to raise Black women and nonbinary writers’ power, influence, presence and storytelling in the media. Her clients and collaborations include All* Above All, ACLU, Essie Justice Group, MediaJustice, If/When/How, Forward Together, Free Press, Race Forward, Media 2070, LightBox Collaborative, YWCA and Wakanda Dream Lab, among many others. She and her work have been featured in numerous outlets including The New York Times, The Guardian, CNN, Ebony and TIME.
When not dreaming and manifesting liberated futures, Alicia rests, gardens, rollerskates, laughs and enjoys time with her family and village.
Experiential Art
Alicia creates and curates immersive experiences that Center Blackness. Her Black Thought Project creates sanctuaries for Black expression, engaging communities to protect, witness and honor Blackness in public. As the facilitator, creative director and author of WHOLE, Alicia visioned and produced a 5-track multimedia narrative and audiobook experience of a world where Black people are free in our bodies and abortion is part of the whole of life. She is currently developing more interactive art installations and welcomes commissions and collaborations.
Collaborate with Alicia
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Writing
Alicia writes to explore new ways of seeing, understanding and living in the world. She is interested in how we can play with language to redefine our reality and bring new visions to life. Her WHOLE Narrative and Audiobook explore a future where Black wombed ones are free. In her Musings, a newsletter, she covers the mundane and the miraculous. As an essayist, she writes about Centering Blackness in its real world manifestations.
commission Alicia to write
Facilitation
Alicia facilitates trainings, retreats, workshops and long-term processes for organizations and communities interested in Centering Blackness, visioning, and creating and living within liberating cultures, systems and ways of being. Her work goes deep and she works with people who are ready to be vulnerable, do their own work, move through emotion and find their joy. She is experienced in facilitating courageous conversations and is most interested in working with people who are engaged in healing and transformation around their own conditioning and desiring to live and relate in more liberating ways.
Book Alicia to facilitate
What her clients say...
“I first met Alicia in 2017 when she was working at Forward Together as their Movement Building Director where she created Echoing Ida, a project that sought to amplify the voices of Black women and non-binary people. This is the heart of who Alicia is – a champion to change the power dynamics of our society by lifting up the voices and perspectives of those who are the most hidden and most impacted. I quickly realized I needed to work with this phenomenal person and we have been in deep partnership ever since. Throughout our partnership, Alicia upholds the utmost professionalism while also channeling joy, challenging all of us in the room while holding us with love and compassion, and creates spaces for us to open up our imaginations and sense of possibility. Alicia is one of those rare people that has an astounding analytical mind that lives in consort with an expertise in culture change and an evergreen open heart. She has an uncanny way to connect with people and she gets things done. In essence, she is a unicorn. Consider it a blessing if you get a chance to work with Alicia. It will change your perspective and life.”
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“Alicia's presence in any space she holds or touches is a gift. She is creativity embodied - infusing her projects with visuals and narrative, songs and breath, stillness and life, right when you need them or all at once. She is a soothsayer for freedom, justice, and liberation. She can hold the complexity of movements, and bring their people out of their heads and into their hearts, their culture, and their interconnectedness to dream into futures yet unknown. Her gifts are authentic, innate, curious, and discerning. I would hold space with her again and again if only she would let me...”