Rooted in culture.Guided by memory.Driven by liberation.

The ACMM Framework™ is a culturally grounded approach that reveals the meaning beneath the data, so strategies are rooted in reality and built to transform.

Portrait with layered silhouette of head profiles

Anneshia Hardy

Creator, Applied Cultural Meaning & Memory Framework™

Anneshia Hardy is a cultural narrative strategist, scholar-practitioner, and social impact leader whose work explores how culture, collective memory, identity, power, and public meaning shape democratic participation, organizational transformation, and institutional change. Her work bridges academic inquiry and applied narrative practice to help organizations better understand how people make meaning and how that meaning shapes leadership, strategy, and collective action.

As the creator of the Applied Cultural Meaning & Memory Framework™ (ACMM Framework™), Hardy developed an interdisciplinary narrative methodology informed by political ethnography and more than a decade of applied narrative practice across the South. Drawing from communication studies, Black Studies, cultural studies, organizational communication, political communication, and memory studies, the framework helps organizations move beyond messaging to understand how meaning influences institutional culture, decision-making, and narrative capacity.

Hardy has led narrative research, strategic communications, and organizational learning initiatives supporting voting rights, democracy, civic engagement, and social change efforts throughout the South. Her work has informed regional and national campaigns surrounding landmark voting rights litigation, including Allen v. Milligan and Louisiana v. Callais, while helping organizations connect advocacy, organizing, and public narrative through culturally grounded research and strategy.

She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Communication at Georgia State University, where her research examines political meaning-making, cultural memory, and Southern storytelling traditions.

Strategist

Develops narrative strategies rooted in culture and community insight.

Facilitator

Creates spaces for collective meaning-making and narrative development.

Scholar-Practitioner

Connects research, culture, and practice to help communities make meaning and build power.

Desmond “Dez” Wilson

Director of Visual Meaning & Storytelling

Desmond “Dez” Wilson is a Southern-based filmmaker, creative director, and multidisciplinary storyteller whose work explores Black cultural memory, Southern identity, and the evolving narratives that shape communities across the American South. Through documentary film, photography, design, and emerging technology, he creates cinematic work that preserves history, documents change, and expands how Southern stories are understood.

As Director of Visual Meaning & Storytelling for the Applied Cultural Meaning & Memory Framework™ (ACMM Framework™), Wilson leads the visual translation of the framework’s research and methodology. He works across documentary production, photography, creative direction, and visual strategy to transform complex narrative analysis into accessible public scholarship. His work extends the life of ACMM research through film, imagery, multimedia storytelling, and creative interpretation.

Wilson brings more than a decade of experience spanning documentary filmmaking, journalism, advertising, public communications, cultural strategy, and creative leadership. His expertise includes directing, cinematography, photography, editing, sound design, color grading, visual identity development, and narrative strategy. His documentary work includes Black Soil Rising and As Goes the South, alongside ongoing stories documenting Black life, cultural preservation, migration, community development, artistic identity, and generational change throughout the region. His approach combines cinematic craft with grounded, human-centered storytelling that allows Southern communities to define themselves beyond stereotype and outside interpretation.

Beyond his production work, Wilson works at the intersection of artificial intelligence, visual storytelling, and creative education. He develops platforms that support artists, preserve cultural history, expand access to creative tools, and cultivate more authentic representations of Southern life.

Role

Director of Visual Meaning & Storytelling

Documentary film, photography, creative direction, and visual strategy in service of the ACMM Framework™.

How the ACMM Framework™
Came About

Years of working alongside communities, organizers, and cultural leaders across the Deep South revealed a persistent gap: data told us what people said, but not why they believed what they believed.

Meaning lives in culture. It lives in memory. It lives in the stories we inherit.

The ACMM Framework™ was born from nearly two decades of applied research, campaign work, and cultural analysis. It integrates narrative theory with lived experience to build strategies that are not only effective, but liberatory.

Our Why

We believe free people
must be able
to imagine themselves free.

Narrative is the pathway
to that imagination.

Grounded in Scholarship. Built in Practice.

The ACMM Framework™ integrates theories and insights from scholars and traditions that center culture, power, and meaning-making while honoring lived experience as a primary source of knowledge. Developed through applied movement, communications, and political strategy work, the framework moves beyond traditional narrative theory to examine how meaning shapes power in real-world conditions.