Play Is Medicine: Designing Care Through Super Mario 64
Forget brain-training apps. In the ‘90s we already had one: Super Mario 64. Turns out Peach’s castle was a cognitive gym all along.
Aishatu Ado
Aishatu is an award-winning writer and peace technologist named among "TOP 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics," exploring liberation through literary art, design, and divestment from oppressive systems.
Àrokò Anthology: Call for submissions
ÀROKÒ ANTHOLOGY NO.1: FOLKLORE FROM AFRICA & THE DIASPORA Curated and edited by Aishatu Ado DEADLINE 12.31.25 // Submit to: contact@aroko.coop THEME We invite fiction that breathes new life into folklore from Africa and the African Diaspora. Send us stories that draw from folktales, myths, fables,
Discord Decides: How Nepal's Youth Turned Gaming Infrastructure into Architecture For Liberation
145,000 young Nepalis turned Discord into a digital parliament and elected their country's first woman interim prime minister. Design reflects the values of those who wield it, not those who built it.
Matricide
On July 4th 2025, America murdered its safety net: Medicaid gutted, food stamps slashed, Arctic drilled—all for billionaire tax cuts. "The cupboards testify: nothing grows in hunger's house.”
Dignify through Design
Juneteenth 2025: The Fire This Time
You want to know what Juneteenth means in 2025? It means we're still breathing despite every plan to make us die. Every law designed to break us, every vote they tried to steal. Every knee pressed to our necks, every wound they wouldn't heal.
Design is Circular
Movie Theaters as Modern Underground Railroads: How 'Sinners' Created Freedom Spaces in Plain Sight
For 137 minutes, "Sinners" transforms theaters into Underground Railroad stations—where Black truth flows freely. Darkened spaces become corridors of breath. Tears fall uncensored. And for a moment, liberation exists in plain sight.
Updates
Welcome to ÀROKÒ.WORLD
Welcome to the ÀROKÒ.WORLD, a home for critique, reflection, and conversation at the intersection of Blackness and design. Brought to you by Àrokò Cooperative.
Dignify through Design
Totoro, Tanks & the Theft of Wonder: Ghibli Aesthetics in the Age of AI
When nostalgia becomes a weapon, truth blurs. As AI-generated Ghibli-style imagery floods the political arena, we must ask: What happens when the visual language of peace is hijacked to launder state violence?
Divest
THE STORM THEY NAMED DEMOCRACY
The debut of the “Verses in the Wake” poetry column tears through illusion with lyrical fury. It strips democracy of its costume, revealing empire’s raw face—where ballots bury dreams and language launders violence. This is poetry as reckoning. As resistance.
Community
A Brief History of Àrokò Cooperative
If you’ve ever wondered who we are or what fuels our work at Àrokò Cooperative, you’re in the right place.