Locks Conference

9^th Annual

International Locks Conference

Blends Natural Hair, Health, and Beauty

By Junious Ricardo Stanton

Sharon Goodman has produced for nine years a community oriented grassroots natural hair care and beauty conference. The conference has grown over the years from a one day five-hour event that attracted fifty attendees to now being a three day weekend affair with an international flavor that attracts thousands.

Over the years, Goodman and her staff have expanded the conference and extended its scope to include additional aspects of culture, hair care, health, and healing modalities. “Each year," she explains, "it grows more and more; more people know about it; more people attend; and we’ve extended our scope. It used to be called just the Locks Conference, but now it’s called the Locks Conference, International Hair, Health and Beauty Expo.

"We’ve added a lot of holistic health practitioners, complimentary modalities, and topics like disease reversal, yoga, stress management, vegetarian cooking, and how to have healthy happy homes. So not only do we want to concentrate on celebrating the beauty of ourselves on the outside, but we want to build up the beauty on the inside, body, mind and spirit.”

In addition to natural hair care products created by black entrepreneurs and sold by black vendors and natural hair care stylists who gave demonstrations and worked on attendee’s hair at the Expo, this year’s conference offered thirty workshops on a variety of topics and issues focusing on holistic health, roots, and culture featuring African drumming, doll making and entertainment, and the hair hut that focused on healthy natural hair, natural hair maintenance and styling.

Goodman was ecstatic at the growth and evolution of the Expo. “Last year we had one thousand five hundred people come through in two days. I was so happy. Last year was the first year it was held at Harambe Institute. John Skif (the Chief Academic Officer of Harambe) used to attend the conference when it was at Community College and Temple University. He was so taken by it that he invited us to come here to his school.

"We use the club (Club Diamani adjacent to the school), the courtyard, the school the whole place and when people come in and see the black art all around, because this is an Afrocentric school they appreciate it more.”

Photos: Herman Ramsee & son (?), vendors at the Locks Conference

Akosua Ali-Sabree — therapist, holistic healer and poet — served as Operations Manager for the Expo. For her, the Expo is empowering. “The significance of this Conference is that out of all the activities we have in Philadelphia the Lock Conference allows a number of different communities to come together to learn and exchange — communities that normally wouldn’t come together. It allows small business people to display their wares, people have things they want to do in the workshops or share with folks this is the venue for that. It’s a real family environment. All ages can come to share and I’m real excited about that. As a practitioner that’s what I’m about; people relaxing, being stress free, learning more about their ancestry, learning about the possibilities in the world.”

Most of the attendees wore natural hair styles — including locks and braids — and the Expo gave off a more culturally aware vibe. Goodman is anticipating an even bigger event next year to celebrate their tenth anniversary. “Next year is going to be our tenth and we’re going to go all out. It’s going to be a whole week thing. We’re going to go to other school besides Harambe, different other venues like First Friday and the Library, we’re going to do something there. So I want this to go on and on.”

Goodman is genuinely appreciative of the community support the Expo has received over the years and she attributes that to the Expo’s growth and popularity. “The community is very supportive. Every year we get more and more people. This year we had to turn away some vendors, a lot of vendors wanted to attend the affair is so great.”

While people come from all over to attend the Expo, it retains a local flavor. “Most of the vendors are local. We have some from as far away as Atlanta Georgia, New York, Washington. And I see this year we have quite a few African vendors, too, from the Motherland.”

Goodman indicated a lot of the traffic to the Expo was from word of mouth. “We did a survey last year and we found out much of the awareness about the Conference was from word of mouth, our ad in the New Observer, and the post cards we sent out. We hang out flyers, posters, and things like that. But, from the survey, people said they heard about it from word of mouth. Plus its always the same time, the first weekend in October so people know about it and remember.”

In keeping with the concept of economic development the Expo encourages helping African-American entrepreneurs promote their products. “The Expo pushes all aspects, culture, economics. I’m a vendor myself I make dolls. We want people to make money a lot of the money we make we spend it right back with the vendors in the community so its really community and culturally based. This really a community event. We don’t go out to big corporate sponsors looking for sponsorship, we go to the community and we get sponsors from the community. We have duafe Holistic Hair Care, LeRoi and Cinza Simons and Chic Afrique, people right from the community willing to support us and come back every year.”

Over the course of the weekend, the Expo features a fashion show, workshops, vendors, spoken word artistry, entertainment and the culminating event a hair show and competition. “Natural hair stylists, master braiders, and this year we added a barbering aspect, master barbers are going to come and show their stuff. They put on skits, plays and vignettes and they are going to be judged on their styles and creativity. The judges will be professional and lay people who are creative who know stuff about styling. There will be first second and third place prizes for locks, braiders and barbers they will be judged and graded on creativity, technique and overall presentation.”

It rained Saturday but that didn’t stop the traffic to the Expo. The vendors were out in force and the attendees didn’t allow the rain to deter them.

Byron Pugh, a vendor, was pleased, “This is attractive to me because of the atmosphere. The actual area, the purpose of us being able to come together be in one place where we can really be able to meet our culture and connect with other people who are really trying to buy things that are hopefully more culturally aware, be aware of who they are and learn and be taught in a place where they can feel good about themselves. And hopefully walk away with a good feeling about where they came from and what they did that day.”

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updated 20 October 2007