Adidas’ new ‘Community Archive’ zine honors Ahmaud Arbery’s mother and celebrates the radical work of preserving Black stories

“See beyond the words and photographs. See the dreams that are unfolding, the futures being built,” Ahmaud Arbery’s mother on Adidas’ community archive.

When Wanda Cooper-Jones, Ahmaud Arbery’s mother, penned the opening letter of to Adidas’ new “Community Archives” zine, she wasn’t just reflecting on her son Ahmaud Arbery’s legacy. She was issuing a call to action. 

“As you turn these pages, I invite you to see beyond the words and photographs—see the dreams that are unfolding, the futures being built, and the enduring truth that one life can spark a movement of change,” the social justice leader and founder of the Ahmaud Arbery Foundation shared. 

Her reflections serve as a powerful introduction to a publication that refuses to treat community impact as an afterthought. In honor of Giving Tuesday, the sportswear brand released “Community Archives,” a zine documenting half a decade of adidas’ Purpose Marketing work, centering the voices of community leaders, creators, and activists who’ve been shaping the intersection of sports and culture. 

“I think with big brands comes huge responsibility,” Ayesha Martin, Senior Director of adidas Purpose Marketing, told theGrio. “The best way to actually describe the work that we’ve done in our neighborhoods and with impactful partners to ensure that there is this legacy of access and equity in sport and the culture born of it is really just this community archive.”

The zine itself reads like a love letter to Black excellence in motion. Flip through and you’ll find WNBA All-Star Layshia Clarendon sharing their journey as an LGBTQ+ activist. There’s Dr. D’Wayne Edwards, whose Pensole Lewis College made history as the first and only design-focused HBCU, reminding readers to “never pass up an opportunity.” The Quilters of Gee’s Bend, a group of intergenerational artists preserving Black Southern craft traditions, are featured alongside WNBA stars Aliyah Boston and Candace Parker, pro skater Diego Nájera, and countless others whose names might not make headlines but whose work is reshaping communities.

What makes “Community Archives” different from typical corporate social responsibility campaigns is its refusal to position Adidas as a savior. Martin says she and her team have spent years asking harder questions about power, preservation, and who gets to tell these stories.

“Through this work, we’ve started to become really curious about the power and who holds the power to archive and memorialize and exhibit,” Martin explained. That curiosity recently manifested in a museum-like experience for the brand’s Honoring Black Excellence platform, curated by Rog & Bee Walker, that elevated the stories of Black honorees beyond a typical corporate celebration.

The zine is an extension of Adidas’ broader ecosystem of community work, which includes Community Labs and Wood U, and partnerships with organizations such as Recess Kickball League, Black Women’s Player Collective, Pensole Lewis College, and Black Ambition. The kind of sustained, multi-year commitments that feel increasingly rare at a time when brands often treat social justice as a trend cycle.

“I think the every day is an important moment to acknowledge,” Martin said. “Some of these actions taken by people who are creating with purpose that we’re celebrating in the zine can truly inform the next generation, or even people searching for a window of opportunity to see how shaping access to sport might look.”

For Cooper-Jones, who has channeled unimaginable loss into advocacy work that’s impacting young people across the country, the zine represents something both commemorative and forward-facing. 

“May this zine serve as both a celebration of what we have accomplished, and a call to continue the work of lifting young people higher,” she noted. 

Martin describes the publication as “a physical, visceral manifestation of almost five years of collective community action.” And perhaps that’s what makes it resonate. At a time when our stories constantly face threats of erasure, and physical archives feel like a dwindling art in this hyper-digital age, this zine invites us to see ourselves in these stories, to recognize that movements don’t start with large corporations or campaigns. They begin with individuals like Wanda Cooper-Jones, who draw on personal experiences to drive actionable change in their communities.

“These are our stories—archived,” Martin emphasized. “A beautiful expression of community in action. The quiet acts of courage, the bold leaps of faith, the undeniable potential of every young person we’ve connected with—a gentle reminder of how, together, we transcended a moment in time to shape a movement.

In conjunction with the zine’s release, adidas is inviting adiClub members to participate in giving back: for each 100-point contribution through December 31, 2025, the brand will donate $1 (up to $50,000) to support Boys & Girls Clubs of America’s wellness programming for youth nationwide.