The Invite is a multiplatform project designed to cultivate solidarity and empower historically disempowered artists and communities. Each experiment with the cookout builds on the last to form a strong foundation for developing a reparative AI platform.

THE COMIC - THEORY & PRAXIS

The first stage of The Invite project was a comic book, The Cookout: A Guide to AI (Ancestral Intelligence, to be published by For The Birds Trapped in Airports Press in 2025. An advance draft copy is available for download and includes insights on the relationship between ancestral versus artificial intelligences. Announced during my opening keynote at the 2023 Association for Internet Researchers conference and launched at my Solidarity Media & Tech Solidarity Workshop at Harvard University, the Afro-indigenous futurist comic set in an AI dystopia is a workbook for creators, organizers, and researchers to help them use reparative media practice as they organize stories and data. I ask readers the same series of questions I asked myself in developing OTV. This method is the foundation for the next two experiments.

The Invite is a Black-led series, inviting artists and community leaders across disciplines — music, film, dance, theater, poetry, culinary arts and more — to share their recipes for liberation.

The Invite is modeled after Soul, one of the first Black television series in the US, which blended uncensored music, dance, poetry, theater, and conversation on public television from 1968 to 1973. The Cookout brings this show to the 21st century, adding social video (e.g. TikTok), gaming, AR/XR/VR and AI-based art.

The Invite is an experiment in decentralizing intellectual property ownership: it is collectively owned by the producers; every invited artist will own their segment; and the audience may have the chance to own a piece of the show through blockchain.

It is created by me and developed with Emmy Award-winning producer Makiah Green (left); Emmy Award-nominated director Sam Bailey (middle); and Emmy-nominated producer Sarah Minnie (right).

MAKIAH GREEN (executive producer, left)is an Emmy Award winning producer, writer and entrepreneur on a mission to tell nuanced stories that reflect the beauty and nuance of Black life. She is the Founder of Get Free Media, a disruptive production company and collective studio that provides creators of color with culturally specific development support. As the former Senior Vice President of LizzoBangers, Makiah developed and executive produced Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls for Amazon Studios, which won 3 Emmys and took home a Producers Guild Award and Critics Choice Award for Best Competition Series. Previously, Makiah worked as a Manager of Original Series at Netflix, where she oversaw a number of critically acclaimed shows including MO, Dead to Me, Gente-fied and Dear White People. Before joining the Netflix team, she rose through the ranks at MACRO, where she developed films including Judas and the Black Messiah, Sorry to Bother You and Really Love.

SAM BAILEY (director, middle) is an Emmy-nominated writer and director from Chicago, currently residing in Los Angeles. Bailey is the director of Marvel's upcoming series for Disney + Ironheart, the co-creator of the acclaimed Emmy-nominated webseries Brown Girls, and the creator of the Gotham-nominated webseries You’re So Talented, which premiered at Tribeca. Bailey served as a producer and as a director on the final season of Netflix’s Dear White People as well as a director on the previous season of the show. Bailey directed the Powderkeg digital series East of La Brea (SXSW Selectee, Urban World Film Festival Winner), and episodes of television including Grown-ish, Loosely Exactly Nicole, and The Chi. Bailey received praise for her examination of gender and patriarchy in her short film Masculine / Masculine which premiered on Vice. Bailey's work has been featured in many publications and she was included in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2018, The Root’s 100 Most Influential African Americans of 2018, and received Shadow and Act’s Rising Award in 2019.

SARAH MINNIE (producer, right) is the founder of Minnie Productions. She is an Emmy nominated producer and award-winning director of documentaries, commercials, fashion films, music videos, web series, pilots, short films, features and more. Her work has been published in VOGUE, The Chicago Tribune, Hyperlink Magazine, Women & Hollywood, and in film festivals such as DC Black Film Festival, NYC Web Fest, Austin Film Festival - just to name a few. The devotion to continuously serve the marginalized community she represents and loves, has led her to partnering with organizations that align with her missions to support the Chicago intersectional filmmaking community. Most recently Sarah partnered with Open Television (OTV), as the first ever Development Officer in 2020. And, in 2021, OTV’s Head of Artist Development and Production.

DR. AJ ESCOFFERY is the Margaret Walker Professor of Communication Studies and Director of the Media and Data Equity (MADE) Lab at Northwestern University. He is the author of Reparative Media (MIT Press), Open TV (NYU Press), cofounder of the Emmy- and Webby-nominated platform OTV | Open Television, co-executive producer of Jules Rosskam’s Sundance Award-winning Desire Lines, juror for the Peabody Awards, and affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.