Sankofa Sanctuary
'Wherever there is air and light and open space, things grow.'
-Helen Oyeyemi
Planting Seeds of Healing, Growth, and Legacy in West Louisville
Sankofa Sanctuary is a transformative outdoor learning and healing space located in Chickasaw Park, one of Louisville’s historic Olmsted parks. With deep roots in West Louisville’s legacy of resilience, this initiative reclaims space for joy, education, and community wellness, restoring what was once denied.
We are inviting visionary donors, partners, and supporters to join us in building a sanctuary where families can thrive, naturally.
Go Back and Get It
.jpeg)
Sankofa means to go back and get it and Play Cousins Collective does just that by remembering the ways of our Ancestors and building on them from an asset based lens looking at how love, health and joy show up in the family and how we grow that.
Mainly through gathering, sharing resources, taking account of the knowledge, experiences and community we have. We are a part of the many cultivating community and culture in Louisville KY. One that speaks to the deep legacy and pride we should have in being from here.
Its deeper and richer than night life or bourbon tastings. There is something in the roots, in the water and in the blood of our people here. Who turn inward and do the work of advancing, healing and sustaining.
We aim to showcase that spirit, speak to it, and grow it, moving us away from the hierarchies placed on us, the competition, the name recognition, the trauma responses.
We are making healing and culture more accessible to our people, creating room to simply exist and to celebrate that existence.
To say: We are enough. That we can enjoy. That we need one another. That presence is our peace.
Building our culture itself is a mindfulness practice , a way of noticing the colors, rhythms, stories, archetypes, and ways of being that move us from place to place through time.
Sankofa Sanctuary is a special place where that spirit is alive and accessible.
Here, we play, outside the imaginations of others and deep within our own.
We dance beyond a judgmental gaze.
We build ourselves up.
We gather and grow.
Children who play freely outdoors experience stronger immune systems, improved focus, and fewer symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Adults benefit too, with lower blood pressure, lower cortisol, and even reduced cancer risk.
At Sankofa Sanctuary, we are healing generational trauma through ancestral practices: gardening, foraging, nature-based free play, meditation, healing circles, yoga, and African dance.
This space allows us to return to what was once stolen, to honor the land and one another.
We have to acknowledge that play is how we practice autonomy, freedom and imagination. What might we be loosing as a community by denying this to our children or even ourselves?
The innovation needed to think about things critically or form ideas without instruction is practiced in play. The confidence to challenge concepts and advocate for yourself and others is grown through free play.
When our children are denied their childhoods, they are not being prepared for leadership, they are being trained for compliance.
They learn to produce, not to create.
To serve, not to imagine.
To survive, not to thrive.
.jpg)
Reflect and Discuss
-
What happens to people when access to nature, rest, and joy is systematically limited? Why do you think play, something so simple and universal, has become a privilege rather than a right?
-
What would it look like for nature play to honor both ecological and cultural restoration? Some nature play spaces unintentionally center dominant cultural values, what does that look or feel like to you?
-
How can play become a form of resistance or reclamation for marginalized children and families? What might liberation look like through the act of play?
4. How are you personally decolonizing or rewilding yourself? How do you interrupt trauma responses or survival practices? How do you disrupt systems that are making us unsafe or extorting our health freedom and power?
5. How might we bring more Sankofa energy into our own work, homes, or classrooms?