SPECIAL
INITIATIVES
The African Diasporic Network
Led by Dr. Monica White Ndounou
The African Diasporic Network (ADN) is a special initiative of The CRAFT Institute initially introduced in Dr. Monica White Ndounou’s Shaping the Future of African American Film: Color-Coded Economics and the Story Behind the Numbers (Rutgers UP, 2014). The book examines storytelling patterns, economic data and a range of off-screen circumstances that controlled the production, marketing and distribution of Black films adapted from plays, literature and original screenplays from the 1980s onward.
Shaping the Future of African American Film offers The African Diasporic Network as a solution to distribution and production challenges facing Black cultural producers across platforms while recognizing the historical role of Black theatres as incubators of Black talent and storytelling that continues to influence all platforms (i.e. The designers Ruth E. Carter and Hannah Beachler along with the principal cast of the Black Panther (2018) film all have backgrounds in or influences from theatre).
The 2018 International Black Theatre Summit (IBTS) was organized on the premise of this solution.
The African Diasporic Network’s Black Theatre Circuit, is designed to reimagine solutions to ensure the economic and cultural vitality of Black theatres and storytelling across patforms.