SunRise Studios Collective

Our Mission

SunRise Studios Collective promotes artistic creativity, cultural preservation, and regenerative lifestyles through a global network of community-based multi-media studios.
The Strategy
  • Provide grants to high-impact, low-budget recording studios and media labs
  • Offer free production training and mentorship
  • Connect musicians for global co-creations
  • Share the music of grassroots artists with the world
  • Demonstrate resilient and regenerative living practices
  • Provide grants averaging from $3,000 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 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 that have a similar mission.
  • Create a directory of artists, producers, and supporters for more effective partnerships and 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 interests, issues, and views of the future through podcasts and other media outlets

CULTURAL CELEBRATION

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 SRS History

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” projects. 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. With 8 fully operational community studios as of 2024, we are excited to continue to combine music, permaculture, and collective devlopment. Collaboration is the cornerstone of the SunRise Studios Collective.

Storytelling | Equity | Integrity | Collaboration | Inspirational

1. We operate with integrity.
2. We advocate for equity.
3. We collaborate with our partners to engage in inspirational storytelling.

A map of current Sunrise Studios Collective projects around the world.
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Partnering with SunRise Studios Collective, Wahinya has built a small arts center that includes a recording studio. The goal is for this center to be the Kikuyu Town Arts Centre headquarters. The space is on a farm that is part of the Ùndirì wetland ecosystem and shows potential for being a hub for nature conservation, art, music and culture. This program is quite essential as it will bring together artists, musicians, botanists and cultural historians with the goal of creating, conserving and curating various community projects.

Partnering with SunRise Studios Collective, Empowered By Light, and International Permayouth Network, The Ambassadors have built a fully functional solar-powered permaculture center & recording studio that amplifies the voices of refugees from over 17 countries that reside there. The recording studio has been named Hope Studio in honor of their personal journeys.

The Vimi Media Lab and recording studio will serve the Huni Kuin people of the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest. This studio will encourage indigenous youth to learn ancient songs and prayers from their elders as well as preserve ancestral knowledge through audio and video recordings.

The world will gain insight into the different Huni Kuin ceremonies, celebrations, and ways of life deep within the Amazon Rainforest. It was only in the last 150 years that this tribe had contact with the modern world and they hold a unique perspective on how to live in harmony with nature that all the world could learn from. This studio will shed light on the struggles of these people to protect their lands and their deep spiritual connection to the rainforest.

Still, in the early design stages, this video and audio production studio will also serve as a community gathering space, theater, and location to sell art produced by women of the region. Its construction will combine Indigenous and modern sustainable building techniques.