The Soul of Nations (SON) Foundation, a for-purpose 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that aims to champion cultural resilience and wellness sustainability through humanities, health, and heritage programming that empowers underrepresented communities. The Foundation’s vision is to support artists and researchers in creating large-scale works that offer innovative perspectives on space reclamation and the evolving landscape of cultural transformation over time.
GREEN ARCHITECTURE PROJECT
The Green Architecture Project in a one-year hybrid fellowship between Indigenous and Black women and non-binary artists and designers to aid the exploration and conceptualization of cultural intersectionality within the framework of a number of issues pertaining to the access to affordable housing, urban planning, environmental policy, and traditional architectural representation. Artist Fellows from various countries collectively further their understanding of home in connection to culture, post-colonial identity, environmental stability, and architectural design.
Traditional forms of Indigenous art and architecture have often been misrepresented in mainstream media and academia. These structures are often created from architectural techniques that have been utilized for generations. Unfortunately, a myth exists that Indigenous vernacular architecture is substandard, temporary, and for the impoverished. Indigenous communities from the Americas and Africa are continuously striving for environmental stability. However, these communities are often met with natural and governmental challenges that have threatened the traditional value of vernacular and cultural practices for residential styles of architecture.
The Green Architecture Project aims to help Indigenous and Black communities from around the world to explore and develop alternative relationships among people, place, space, environment, and the non-human; expand collective imaginative capacity to envision new structures and processes for social relations, and use the expressive arts to inspire and shape alternative social, economic, and technological relations. When thinking broadly of architecture, the masterpieces of the past inevitably come to mind; buildings constructed to withstand the passage of time, that have found an ally in age, cementing themselves in the history of humanity.
NORTH AMERICA
The Soul of Nations Foundation is pleased to announce that the Green Architecture Project has been re-granted in the United States and Canada. Therefore, we are seeking to invite up to five Black and Indigenous Artists to participate as Artist Fellows. The Green Architecture Project will provide collaborative artist fellowship grants ranging from $2,000 – $5,000 for emerging artists and architects, with an optional five-day research and professional development residency in New York City.
SOUTH AMERICA
The Soul of Nations Foundation is pleased to announce that the Green Architecture Project has been re-granted in Bolivia. Therefore, we are seeking to invite up to ten Afro-Indigenous and Indigenous Artists to participate as Artist Fellows. The Green Architecture Project will provide collaborative artist fellowship grants ranging from $2,000 – $5,000 for emerging artists and architects.
AFRICA
The Soul of Nations Foundation is pleased to announce that the Green Architecture Project has been re-granted in Kenya and Rwanda. Therefore, we are seeking to invite up to ten Black Artists to participate as Artist Fellows. The Green Architecture Project will provide collaborative artist fellowship grants ranging from $1,000 – $5,000 for emerging artists and architects.
NEWS
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The Soul of Nations Foundation respectfully acknowledges that we currently operate on the ancestral lands of the Munsee Lenape, Piscataway, and Anacostan peoples, which have not been ceded. Thank you for your commitment to Indigenous and Black communities. Please, share our organization’s work with those in your network who are just as invested in BIPOC progression as we are.