Support QTPOC Vendors: Shop at metaDEN’s Friday Night Markets

Shelby Quinn

@TomCruiseofFinland

metaDEN, a Brooklyn based creative Incubator founded by and for creatives of color with a trans and gender-non-conforming focus, opens their new location with a series of night markets the first three Fridays of December. 

Each event runs from 6 p.m. to Midnight, is open to all, and is free to enter. metaDEN told Bushwick Daily they have over 40 unique local vendors of color specializing in crafts and applications- including jewelry, CBD products and spiritual guidance.

With the holidays upon us, metaDEN’s market series provides space to support local artisans and creatives, but a connection and reinvestment in the QTPOC community. The store is open to everyone of any racial or gender identity, while membership to the Incubator is solely curated for POC-identifying individuals. 

Founders McKenzie and Joss Martinez, partners in life, business and wellness, started metaDEN last January recognizing a vacuum of safe spaces where POC, particularly queer and trans-POC, could meet, share passions, ideas, and healing. “Wellness is often not centered in a defined, intentional safe space,” Joss, told Bushwick Daily.; McKenzie added, that “this need for a sanctuary for POC and QTPOC free from miscommunications and microaggressions, [and] allows for members to manifest energy into healing.” 

All money generated in metaDEN’s store, night market sales, and Incubator membership, is invested back into the business and to the artists. “metaDEN is a platform exploring creativity and wellness within the community, as a means to promote sustainability ,” McKenzie shares.

Allies can support metaDEN by attending the Night Markets and frequenting the metaDEN shop. Those unable to attend in-person, can still contribute towards metaDEN’s GoFundMe campaign and engage others in conversations that reinforce community building and metaDEN’s mission.

Memberships for the Incubator launches online December 16. Day Passes are $5, and grant access to the incubator’s POC library, a gallery, studio space, and instruments. “Come do music, bring your artwork, come to create, come to network, come to heal,” Joss invites.

All are welcome to the three-night markets leading into Christmas. Attending the metaDEN night markets supports a local business and vendors within the QTPOC community, and larger healing and craftsmen community in Brooklyn. metaDEN’s night markets will take place at their storefront location at 1335 Gates Ave.

Cover image captured by OAZ, courtesy of metaDEN

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