Inside the Academy, you’ll master more than the art of tattooing — you’ll learn how to channel stories through skin, honor cultural lineage, and create from your spirit.

You’ll Learn To:

• Build an unshakable technical foundation

• Read energy, intention, and narrative in every design

• Develop your authentic style through the Y.U.M.E. Methodology™

• Protect your creative energy and artistic lineage

• Serve clients as collaborators in ritual, not transactions

🌀 Every artist leaves with a craft rooted in legacy.

"Tattoo is self-care. It helps build community.

It is embedded with ‘each one teach one’ and ‘give back’ models." 

— Shoppe Gal, The Memoir

This is more than ink — it’s initiation. It’s ownership. It’s art as liberation.

And now, it’s your turn.

Complete the course to unlock the full resident artist certification program.

Available upon completion of coursework, this advanced certification is for artists called to protect, preserve, and progress tattoo culture.
 

It transforms tattooing from a profession into a lineage — 

where mastery meets meaning, and every mark becomes legacy.

Master Tattoo Artist | Ethnohistorian | Author | Philosopher | Cultural Steward

IMANI K. BROWN® (Osunyoyin)—Osun priestess, spiritual practitioner, and brand alchemist—blends ritual, ancestry, and storytelling in her dedication to reactivating tattoo as both ancestral inheritance and liberation technology. Recognized as the second most prominent Black female tattoo artist in the U.S. and first most prominent Black tattoo artist in Japan, she continues to shape global conversations around tattooing, culture, and creative liberation.

A noted practioner-scholar of her field, she is the founder of Little INKPLAY Shop®, a lineage-centered tattoo studio dedicated to embodied practice, ritualized wellness, and Afro-Kawaii design. As stewardess of Black tattoo culture through the Black Tattoo Anthology® non-profit, she works to reclaim, document, and preserve diasporic tattoo traditions through fellowships, storytelling, and archival practice. Expanding this cultural work into entrepreneurship, Imani created Y.U.M.E. Create Club®, a community platform for multi-passionate creatives to transform ritual and story into systems of visibility, sustainability, and wealth.

Author of Shoppe Gal®, The Memoir: The Journey of a Black Female Tattoo Artist, Imani’s practice redefines tattooing as cultural inheritance, liberation technology, and a pathway for collective healing and remembrance.

Her ethos is simple: the very things we are taught to hide—our magic, our lineage, our multi-passionate creativity—are the tools that protect us, guide us, and sustain our futures.

MEET THE ARTIST