Conciencia Afro, the anti-racist cultural and political organisation founded in Madrid in 2016, has launched a crowdfunding campaign to sustain its work. The appeal, running on the Goteo platform, aims to cover part of the annual costs of the Espacio Afro Cultural Center and the cultural, artistic, educational and political projects the organisation runs throughout the year.

After ten years of work, Conciencia Afro maintains a small team and a programme that includes the Espacio Afro centre itself, an anti-racist training team, the Plantain Library, the Madrid Negro walking tour, the Afronteriza artist residency and the annual Conciencia Afro Festival, held this year at La Casa Encendida. The campaign is not intended to fund a single isolated activity but to keep the space open and the team in place over the coming year.

The appeal comes at a moment when many independent cultural spaces in European cities are struggling with rising rents and shrinking public funding. Conciencia Afro's model is explicitly political as well as cultural: its work links artistic creation with memory work, education and anti-racist advocacy, and its centre has become a meeting point for Madrid's Afro-descendant communities, offering a space where Black history and contemporary creativity are placed at the centre rather than at the margins.

Supporters can contribute through the Goteo campaign page. The organisation has said the funding will go directly to the running costs of the centre and its year-round programme, rather than to any one event, and that keeping the doors open matters more than any single project. For a grassroots organisation that has spent a decade building an audience and a community, the campaign is a test of whether that community will now help carry the costs.