MOVING MASCULINITY
The Emotional Justice global digital village
Personal Note
Hello to our global Emotional Justice Global Community. 2026 is well and truly here. I’m so excited to welcome you into the world of MOVING MASCULINITY THE EMOTIONAL JUSTICE DIGITAL VILLAGE.
The masculinity crisis has been declared. There are headlines, data, theory and opinions. What’s the way out though? Emotional Justice decided to build a pathway out. And this newsletter introduces you to this work, this world, this practice.
Come on in and check it out.
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MOVING MASCULINITY
The Emotional Justice Digital Village
What is it?
MOVING MASCULINITY: The Emotional Justice Digital Village is safe space where global Black men do their emotional work. It’s about reassigning full humanity to a Black masculinity long stripped of it. That means developing emotional literacy as part of a healing that is sustainable and transformative.
MOVING MASCULINITY
The Breakdown
THE FORMAT
It blends art, film, poetry, sound, story and dialogue to create a healing practice that names emotional inheritance and reckons with silence, suppression, and a legacy of untreated trauma shaped by systems of harm that are societal, political, structural, global and familial. The work is a multi-sensory resource for Black men to do their emotional work – it is theirs to do, no-one else’s - and confront the impact of that inheritance. It features Black men from the ages of 16 to 60. Filmed and recorded across the US: Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, London, Accra.
THE ROOMS
Inside the digital village are four rooms—COMMUNITY, DAMAGE, HEALING, DREAMING. Each one is an intimate space where global Black men explore and reveal the emotional terrain shaped by loss and shaped by possibility.
1. DAMAGE
2. COMMUNITY
3. HEALING
4. DREAMING
The aim is simple: build an online safe space where Black men identify, name and express emotion, and move a masculinity taught to suppress feeling toward one capable of articulation, connection, and transformation. MOVING MASCULINITY is about intimate revolution for men. It is about building Emotional Infrastructure through The 3Es: Emotional Literacy | Emotional Worldview | Emotional Accountability.
Inside the four rooms, the work unfolds through Black men’s stories in forms that meet them where they are. In DAMAGE, two filmed poems move through tenderness and turmoil. In COMMUNITY, Black men share voice notes on loss, grief, love, pain, power, vulnerability, rage and regret. HEALING holds a short film of a man confronting the emotional inheritance passed down by his father and grandfather, and his struggle to choose a different path. DREAMING offers a new masculinity affirmation ceremony through an intergenerational dialogue between a 16-year-old boy and his elder—one exploring the boy he is and the man he’s becoming, the other reflecting on the boy he was, what he was told, taught and saw about masculinity, and the man he became. Together these rooms build a space where emotional literacy grows, loneliness eases, and the long habit of suppressing emotion begins to loosen. Each room is an invitation into the private, often hidden interior lives of Black men, and the possibility of transforming them.
HERE’S THE SITE:- www.movingmasculinity.com
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MOVING MASCULINITY
THE PUBLIC ENCOUNTER
Throughout 2026 MOVING MASCULINITY moves from digital village into public space. We call it :- THE PUBLIC ENCOUNTER.
GHANA | NEW YORK | SOUTH AFRICA |
THE SITES
Across Ghana, New York, and South Africa, this public encounter is a single journey with multiple stops, stretching across communities, cities, countries and continents. The roll-out is an encounter with art, film and dialogue—experienced as:-
THE STILLS: The journey begins with Ghanaian photographer Alex Kwesi Afari’s photo exhibition featuring Black men in Accra in a range of emotional expressions. These stills are storytellers of emotion. They hold signs that act as invitations to action - calls to move a masculinity that has been paralyzed and pathologized toward one of possibility, peace-building and emotional literacy.
THE SCREENING: After moving through the photographs, audiences enter a 45-minute screening that travels through MOVING MASCULINITY’s four rooms—COMMUNITY, HEALING, DAMAGE and DREAMING—woven together and narrated by founder Esther A. Armah. The screening gives shape to the emotional world the digital village holds, showing the interior lives of Black men as they reckon with inheritance, conflict, tenderness, rupture and possibility.
THE SESSION: The experience concludes with a facilitated dialogue exploring masculinity, history and emotional inheritance. This session opens up how systems shape emotional habits, how silence becomes legacy, and what it takes to chart a different path. It gives audiences space to grapple, question and connect the work to their own worlds.
2026 PUBLIC ROLL OUT SCHEDULE
We built a global distribution pipeline across communities, cities, countries and continents to take the work from the digital to the communal; and to curate and create conversation within community in order to serve and scale.
APRIL 18th APRIL 29th SEPTEMBER TBC
ACCRA, GHANA NEW YORK, USA CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA
ACCRA, GHANA
APRIL 18th
We begin THE PUBLIC ENCOUNTER at The Mix in Osu, Accra, Ghana.
Featuring Ghanaian photographer ALEX KWESI AFARI.
A post-screening dialogue exploring healing and masculinity in Ghana, reckoning with tribe, family, culture and history, led by KOBINA ANKOMAH GRAHAM.
COME SEE THE ART | COME WATCH THE SCREENING | COME LISTEN TO THE SESSION
PLEASE RSVP:- https://forms.gle/z7TmALN2ELHJNBtF9
MOVING MASCULINITY
The Global Lab
What is It?
The Global Lab is a 10-year initiative of CULTURAL PRODUCTION, NARRATIVE CHANGE, HEALING PRACTICE AND CAPACITY TRAINING. Our global sites are across the US, the UK, Ghana and South Africa.
It is housed within THE ARMAH INSTITUTE of EMOTIONAL JUSTICE, and expands and extends to men of all races, faiths, and cultures.
It comprises the following:-
· THE NARRATIVE ARM
· THE PRACTICE ARM
· THE CULTURAL ARM
THE NARRATIVE ARM
UNFOLD: notes on MOVING MASCULINITY is the multi-media narrative arm that lives on Substack. It features notes, essays, audios, open letters and video from multiple contributions enriching, expanding and extending the intellectual arm of this work.
THE PRACTICE ARM
MM16: capacity training is building emotional infrastructure as leadership development strategy. This is online training that explores from the classroom to the c-suite.
MM16: community is a space of reflection and healing in spaces of faith and community organizations.
THE CULTURAL ARM
The Dreaming Ceremony Memory Set is a guide for families to hold the masculinity affirmation ceremony for Black boys turning 16. It comprises the embossed questions, the designed t-shirt and the information to share images as we build a global Black boyhood ceremony of celebration, possibility and freedom.
MOVING MASCULINITY: The Global Lab
https://www.movingmasculinity.com/thegloballab
