Our Story
The philosophical foundation and tangible ambitions of Creative Cultural are a product of the lived experiences of its founders and their ancestors. The story begins in Cross City, Florida, in the Jim Crow era, where Jahi and Khary Khalfani's father grew up. It begins in Archer, Florida, a rural town where their mother raised them in the same house she'd grown up in with six siblings. It begins in Ocala, in a Palestinian refugee household, where Laila Fakhoury's parents made a life after returning from a homeland under illegal occupation. These are the soils the work grew out of — two families who understood the importance of community and contribution, and that "thriving" is something you build for each other.
Jahi and Khary spent their childhoods running four nonprofit Community Access Centers with their parents in Archer, Bronson, Chiefland, and Cross City — funded in part by a mobile concession the family operated to keep the doors open. The centers provided what their rural towns needed: safe space, financial literacy, after-school tutoring, mentorship, and more. Laila's path moved through grassroots activism and social work, for Palestinians and people in general. While at the University of Florida, she gave her first TED talk, served as President of Students for Justice in Palestine, worked at Gainesville's Crisis Center, and helped spearhead the application of restorative justice in juvenile diversion programs.
In 2018, Jahi, alongside his brother and partner Laila, launched Dion Dia — an independent record label created to support friends, bridge communities, and expand cultural representation in Gainesville, Florida.
We used music to develop community by creating environments where people could express, connect, and create freely. Spaces where many in Gainesville felt at home and represented for the first time.
Dion Dia was, more than anything, an experiment in care, driven by an instinct that people thrive when they're supported and given space and resources to create. That instinct shaped every venture that followed. A vintage store (How Bazar) became a beloved community hub. A local festival (Big) grew into statewide cultural infrastructure. A neighborhood market (Bazar Á La Carte) became a touring community incubator. Each venture taught us something new about how people organize, how resources flow, and what it takes to sustain cooperative systems over time.
Every lesson coalesced into the development of Creative Cultural — a tangible answer to the question: How do we cultivate and sustain a culture of human beings, being human? Reflective of "being" rational and creative, moral and ethical, brave and resilient, productive and beneficial. It's from the human lens that we work to build environments and systems that enable people to discover and thrive as their true, authentic selves.
Everything we build is in service of that intent. We use capital as a tool. We treat technology as an extension of care. We organize potential into self-sustaining, surplus-generating positions, so the value created in communities stays in communities and compounds over time — moving people towards a non-homogeneous equilibrium: a dynamic state where different people, cultures, and places coexist with integrity while contributing to shared well-being.
Our Approach
People need something to do, somewhere to go, and someone to spend time with. Industries are built on top of those desires, and our work happens where they intersect — through music, food, public gatherings, technology, and cultural infrastructure. These are the moments where people connect to each other and to place, and where new systems begin to form.
From those moments, we build outward. Alachua County is home. It's also where every model we build takes its first shape. Through network mapping, applied research, and cooperative development, we build models here that scale across Florida and beyond.
A Complementary Organization
Center for Cooperative Futures
The Center for Cooperative Futures is a nonprofit research organization working in tandem with Creative Cultural to provide the intellectual and analytical infrastructure behind our ecosystem's development. Where we build, the center studies — tracking impact, producing knowledge, and exploring questions that sit at the core of everything we do.
- How do grassroots, humanities-driven efforts generate scalable systemic transformation, and how can that impact be meaningfully measured, supported, and amplified?
- How can the collective potential of people — their skills, networks, assets, and ideas — be coordinated in ways that generate reinvestible surplus and lasting community benefit?
- What does it take to shift dominant logics at scale — and what infrastructure, narrative, and cultural conditions make that shift durable and desirable?
Grant-eligible and independently credentialed, CCF is the pathway through which aligned foundations and institutions can support the mission of Creative Cultural and the cooperative futures we're working to make possible.
Learn more about the Center →