About
About Koor
Koor Archives is a non-profit organization that aims to preserve and celebrate Somali culture. Founded in 2024, Koor is registered in Toronto and operates across Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany.
Who We Are
Koor was founded in response to a clear need: the need for an autonomous, community-led platform dedicated to preserving and celebrating Somali cultural heritage in its many forms.
We are committed to building a space that values both tangible and intangible culture, from artifacts and material traditions to oral histories, poetry, craft knowledge, and memory.
Our work is rooted in the belief that Somali culture should be documented, preserved, and made accessible in ways that are accountable to the communities from which it comes.
Mission
At Koor, we are determined to create an autonomous, community-led, sustainable platform dedicated to the celebration of both tangible and intangible aspects of Somali culture. Our aim is to enable Somalis living both in the diaspora and back home to access their cultural legacy, working to conserve it for future generations.
Through archival work, culturally focused initiatives and community engagement, we aim to build a link between the past and the present and increase knowledge of and pride in the richness and diversity of Somali civilization(s).
Our Approach
Koor approaches cultural preservation as both archival and living work. We are interested not only in collecting and documenting heritage, but also in creating ways for people to engage with it through research, workshops, cultural initiatives, and intergenerational exchange.
Meet the team
A small, dedicated team working at the intersection of culture, community, and care.
Aziz Farah
Co-founderAziz Farah is a project manager, cultural educator, and language researcher based in Toronto. Working across visual design, language learning, and Somali material culture, he creates educational materials that make Somali language and heritage accessible to younger generations in the diaspora.
He is the co-founder of Koor Archives, where he has helped source, document, and shape its collection of Somali cultural artifacts. His work links material culture, linguistic study, and community memory through careful collection-building.
He is a cultural advisor to the Somali Centre for Culture and Recreation and previously served as a language instructor with Say Somaali's Afka Hooyo program.
Ibrahim Hirsi
Co-founderIbrahim Hirsi is a cultural practitioner working across archival research, translation, and poetry. Over the past seven years, he has delivered research projects and creative programmes for cultural institutions, universities, and community organisations across three continents. He is the co-founder of Koor Archives and a founding editor of Journal Gobanimo.
He served as an advisor on the 2023 Hooy exhibition and as co-curator of Koor Archives' inaugural exhibition, A Call to Culture. He also co-produced The Diver by Asmaa Jama, for which he conducted research and wrote original songs.
His poetry and essays have appeared in The Poetry Society, Modern Poetry in Translation, Goobjoog, Geeska, and Before Them We, among others. He is currently completing his first monograph: a study of metre and verse in the Shabeelle and Banaadiri dialects of southern Somali poetry.
Asha Noor
Co-founderAsha Noor is a cultural archivist and higher education professional working across cultural preservation, language initiatives, and community programming. She is the co-founder of Koor Archives, where she contributes to the documentation and public presentation of Somali cultural heritage through exhibitions, educational work, and archival projects.
With a background in conflict analysis and resolution, her work has included advocacy and policy initiatives as well as Somali language learning programmes for diaspora youth in the United States. She contributed to Koor Archives' inaugural exhibition, A Call to Culture, and to projects including From Other to Center at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and Wisdom of the Elders with the Black Muslim Psychology Conference. She currently works at Georgetown University.
Her interest in cultural preservation was shaped by her late grandmother and mother, who emphasized the importance of cultural memory and community work.
Idel Rasheed
Co-founderIdel is a Berlin-based independent researcher, curator and archivist whose practice is rooted in photography, archival imagery, and the documentation of Somali cultural heritage.
As the founder of Waaberi Phone, a digital platform dedicated to preserving Somali arts and culture, her work begins with the rigorous visual and textual archiving of diaspora life and collective memory. She draws on this research as a living foundation, creating photographic and mixed-media series that explore how memory, identity, and displacement are visualized across generations.