SunRise Studios Collective

Photo of LEAF Global’s ONEmic Haiti and Tanzania.

Our Mission

SunRise Studios Collective promotes artistic creativity, cultural preservation, and regenerative lifestyles through a global network of community-based multi-media studios.

SunRise Studios collaborates with other organizations to provide access to recording equipment. Photo of LEAF Global Arts ONEmic Tanzania member

Youth from the Huni Kuin Tribe of the Amazon receive a donation of musical instruments for the Vimi Media Lab Project.
Photo by Bane Saleh

Our Strategy

Provide grants averaging from $5,000 to $10,000 to establish modest, high-impact/low-budget media labs and recording studios.
Collaborate with communities to preserve cultural values through music, video, and other forms of media and artistic expression.
Connect musicians and artists from around the world for collaborative learning and creation.
Offer free mentorship and training in professional production skills.
Join forces with organizations who have a similar mission.
Create a directory of artists, producers, and supporters for more effective partnership sand creative productions.

Partnering with communities to:

Create gathering spaces to produce music, videos, and other artistic expressions.
Teach media production skills that offer economic opportunities.
Connect local artists with other creatives.
Create cross-cultural and intergenerational collaborations through a global network.
Increase community resilience through sharing renewable energy technology, permaculture, regenerative agriculture, and other sustainable living practices.
Support efforts of communities who wish to preserve their indigenous cultures, languages, instruments, and ancient wisdom through digital documentation and recordings.
Provide a platform for the community to share its local interest, issues, and views of the future through podcasts and other media outlets.

Huni Kuin women will sell their art at the media lab supported in part by the SunRise Studios Collective. Photo by Bane Saleh

Cultural Celebration

Culture Keepers and Creatives from indigenous communities around the world will be able to digitally document traditional songs, language, and other ancient practices to pass on critical knowledge to generations to come.

This work is based on endogenous development. The key concepts within endogenous development that are critical to this work are: Local control of the development process; Taking cultural values seriously; Appreciating worldviews; and Finding a balance between local and external resources. We honor the understanding that this work is community-led and based on local peoples’ vision of holistic well-being.

“The aim of endogenous development is to empower local communities to take control of their own development process. While revitalizing ancestral and local knowledge, endogenous development helps local people select those external resources that best fit the local conditions. Endogenous development leads to increased biodiversity and cultural diversity, reduced environmental degradation, and a self-sustaining local and regional exchange.” – Endogenous Development Magazine

The Rise Of

SunRise Studios Collective

A grant for a Permaculture training center in Togo, West Africa, first connected Nick Morgan of the Rex Foundation with Hannah Apricot of the Abundant Earth Foundation. Soon after, a young man from Kenya’s Kakuma Refugee Camp requested support to build a recording studios. Seeking wisdom from other organizations already creating modest recording studios led to the collaboration with David Satori and Schree Chavdarov through the organization LEAF Global Art’s “ONEmic Studio Project.” From there arose the vision of a global network of low-budget/high-impact recording studios: The SunRise Studios Collective.

With a generous donation of a solar system from Empowered By Light, the first studio was completed in April of 2022 in Kakuma, Kenya. We are now working with the Huni Kuin Tribe of Brazil and the Lakota Sioux of the northern US to help create studios in partnership with their communities. Interest in creating their own studio as part of the SunRise Studios Collective has been expressed from other communities and refugee camps located in Uganda, Mexico, Cuba, and Hawaii.

The Path Ahead

Collaboration is the cornerstone of the SunRise Studios Collective. We are working to grow by inviting other organizations, foundations, musicians, producers, musical equipment companies, and others interested in playing together to empower cultural creatives around the world.

With the help of a recent catalytic development grant, the next step is to bring on Project Directors to scale up this effort. Fundraising and partnership development will be a focus as we work to launch a network of high-impact, low-budget studios in communities often overlooked by the mainstream.

Members of Kakuma celebrate the opening of the studio.

A drum clinic sponsored by Conscious Alliance and Rex Foundation at the Pine Ridge Reservation in 2016