to be BLAQK gold

Our mission is to empower, celebrate and share stories of black greatness through art.

It all started with a black woman from East and North Preston, Nova Scotia who was in desperate need of a creative outlet. In late January of 2016, Donica Willis unintentionally crafted a visual aesthetic while exploring different photo manipulation techniques in Photoshop with a photograph of Lauryn Hill. She had the idea of somehow creating an illusion where parts of Lauryn Hill’s body were covered by a different texture/substance — in this case it was gold. After playing around with the aesthetic she was inspired to do more, which ultimately led her to asking herself ‘what if I challenge myself to do one of these each day?’. The timing of it all, combined with the need to create, ultimately lead her to a daily personal challenge to create one photograph per day for the entire month of February. She committed to selecting one story of black greatness to honour per day by applying this graphic treatment to their photograph. To keep herself accountable she created an account on Instagram that she used to share a post each day. This ultimately transformed into a yearly challenge, which will be in its tenth edition in February 2025. Since its first edition back in 2016, the project has morphed into a year round brand/movement offering programming, empowerment tools, collectibles and other things of black greatness.