NFTs That Diversify Power and Decolonize Knowledge
Speaking on diversity, inclusion, and education with Maliha Abidi, Joana Lacerda, and Paff Evara
During the last week of our asynchronous conference we heard from Maliha Abidi, Pakistani-American artist and activist, founder of NFT community Women Rise and author of Rise: Extraordinary Women of Colour who Changed the World and Pakistan for Women; Joana Lacerda, Portuguese entrepreneur, founder of WomenWeb3, and creative director of Women Labs, which “represents the bold and unpolished women of Web3;” and Paff Evara, co-founder of Take Up Space, an online platform and community for the next generation of diverse change-makers.
Maliha and Joana use art to bring awareness to issues close to their heart: empowerment, diversity, inclusion, and education. They strongly believe that Web3 can greatly help us build stronger communities and achieve increased representation.
“How can art enable the actors in the system to really promote better living for everyone?” Joana asks.
For Maliha, art became her personal way of coping with the isolation, the culture shock, and confronting the issues that affected her as a woman of color and a Muslim after moving to the US at the age of 14. Ten years later, she uses art as a tool for storytelling, to celebrate and represent women. Maliha’s project, WomenRise, comprises 10,000 NFTs that represent women from all over the world. She sees Web3 is a way to encourage women, people of color, and other underrepresented groups to take up space which was inaccessible to them for so long.
Not coincidentally, Take Up Space is the name of a community and platform founded by Paff Evara and her partner for LQBTQ and BIPOC change-makers, aimed to empower, onboard, and educate these people in Web3 to become the next generation of diverse leaders.
“We’re all about empowering the individual, and focusing on underrepresented people. It’s no doubt that Web3 has a bit of an image problem, and, I think we could all agree, it is a little bit pale, male, and stale.”
Paff quotes Patrice Palmer, a doctoral candidate in the School of Education at Baylor University: “It’s one thing to say, all people are welcome, and it’s another thing to say, I had you in mind.”
The changemaker curriculum at Take Up Space consists of a three-phased approach to personal growth, and it’s all about healing, removing limiting beliefs, building network, and leading. “Myself being black, queer, and neurodivergent, I wanted to create a community that I wished that I had when I was just starting my career,” Paff says.
But you can’t expect the individual to bring all the change—there’s systemic, organizational change that needs to happen, so the other part of Take Up Space is called Make Space. It’s a DEI consultancy that partners with brands. Through working with this consultancy brands are able to get real insights from different communities, understand lived experiences, and make sure they are using the right language, terminology, etc.
“We want to help people take up space in Web3 and help brands make space for underrepresented communities in Web3 and beyond,” Paff summarizes.
Joana Lacerda has considered herself a changemaker from day one. If Maliha used painting as a way to bring attention to such matters as inclusion and diversity, Joana used architecture as a way to promote human rights and speak for the underrepresented people.
Today, it’s all about building the new spaces for Joana. She names some numbers: about 73% of crypto owners are men and only 60% of women understand what an NFT is. She believes there’s a drastic need for change. Her space WomenWeb3 was born out of the need to scream to the world: There should be more women involved in this!
She also believes Web3 should be built from scratch, and not be made by a transition from Web2. “The only way to change the system is by changing the story and not to “transition” it”, she tells Monika Jiang. And the way to bring that change is through better education.
Maliha, Joana, and Paff, each in her own way, all see Web3 as a way to increase and normalize education around the world. Maliha wants to make Web3 accessible and create educational initiatives using this space for 129 million of women and girls around the world who have not had access to education.
On the other hand, the mindset and ethos of educators is also crucial here, says Joana, who works a lot with the European commissions. Systems like the European Commission are still very self-centered, she says, and that needs to shift. There is no openness to the approach of co-creation there, but decolonizing knowledge and creating diversity is the key to changing our reality.
We are all, including from the business side perspective, are co-creators of the systems and products that will be there for us. We need to unlearn and build from scratch. We are the wild ones thinking about rewriting the systems.
Check this out
- Listen to Joana Lacerda in conversation with Monika Jiang
- Watch my conversation with Maliha Abidi here
- Listen to Paff Evara’s voice note
Some recommended sources from Joana
Here are some initiatives recommended in our #houseverse by Joana Lacerda where you can learn more:
- Metaschool: hands-on Web3 learning
- A community for the crypto curious
- A “bible of content” around key topics on the web3
- A mobile-first blockchain with a mission is to build a financial system that creates the conditions for prosperity for everyone
- A decentralized non-profit with a mission to help the crypto and NFT community to have a positive impact on our planet
Want to learn more and join our 20-week-long learning journey?
This week we’re talking about the value of art and the art of value with a Beijing-based art duo Chow and Lin. We speak about merging art with market economics, bringing attention to the global tipping points of our times, like the poverty line, and using Web3 technology to challenge the question of value in art and social issues.
Katia Zoritch, writer at the House of Beautiful Business
The House of Beautiful Business is a global community with the mission to make business more beautiful. Learn more about our Beautiful Business Trip, in partnership with global PR and communications consultancy Hotwire here.
