About Our Name
Ìtura is a Yoruba word that means "calm" or "peacefulness." For us, this is the state of calm or peacefulness that comes after a period of struggle or upheaval, when clarity reveals itself through alignment.
We chose this name because it describes the state from which our work flows.
Many support structures for cultural work are built through institutional access. Those who fall outside - the spiritual practitioners that preserve culture, the independent historian, the solo artist producing and executing their own creative vision - either go unsupported or receive resources without the infrastructure needed to manage them.
The Ìtura Collective exists for them. We ensure that the communities this work is rooted in are its owners, not just its source.
The Ìtura Collective exists for all of us.
Our Team
Yvonne Therese Holden
Founder | Executive Director
Yvonne is a public historian and cultural heritage practitioner that uses history as a mediator to explore the construction of identity. She believes that history, as most people have received it, has been shaped by a single, dominant lens that distorts our understanding of ourselves, often without our knowing it.
During her six years as Director of Visitor Services and Operations at Whitney Plantation, one of the few plantation museums in the United States to center the experiences of the enslaved, she came to understand the difference between who she was and what systems said she was. Her work at Whitney Plantation is referenced in Clint Smith's How the Word Is Passed, and her interpretive frameworks have been incorporated into academic curricula. She subsequently developed immersive experiences through her role as Director of U.S. Programming at The Telos Group, an organization that works to shift how people understand their relationship to conflict and change.
She holds the stories of her ancestors, and through them, she connects us.
She founded The Ìtura Collective to drive her own path while supporting others in her community who want to do the same. Because, in her words, "The permission we have been taught to seek from the outside was always ours to give.”