The Soul of Nations Foundation relies on an extensive network of non-governmental and government partners, host and key opinion leaders, universities and cultural institutions, activists and policy collectives, formal and non-formal educators and cultural practitioners, grassroots organizations, Tribal governments, charitable foundations, legal firms, sustainable corporations, and community members of all race, gender, and creed—thus helping to ensuring the formation of mobilized kinship with a high level of intellectual capacity.
ART AND RESEARCH EXPANSION INITIATIVE
The Art and Research Expansion Initiative aims to increase a high level of culturally artistic programs that encourage ethnocultural discourse to empower marginalized youth and communities via creative, academic, and ceremonial expression. Thus, furthering the understanding of heritage, freedom and effective collaboration through a contemporary lens. Initiative programming centers authentic Black and Indigenous voices to foster critical and progressive methods for community change and spiritual healing processes through vernacular-based prisms.
Programs offered through the Art and Research Expansion Initiative aim to assist Indigenous and Black communities to explore and develop alternative relationships among people, place, space, environment, and the non-human; further the development of trustworthy institutions; build trust and a sense of shared purpose among and within communities; develop new models of community organization, empowerment, and governance; 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. The vision of the Foundation is fund artists and researchers creating works of large scale with underlying vernacular media, similar to patronage systems of the Renaissance, to invite innovative perspectives toward space reclamation and the evolution of cultural transformation in Italy over time.
The Soul of Nations Foundation endeavors to strengthen its partnership community to help increase the value of access and empathy through abstract measures. Thus to conjoining the international scope of our work in the cultural nexus of the world. We believe the cultural transformation process can manifest when allies from all ends of the creative spectrum come together in strategic ceremony bearing the gift of sustainable vision and greater dream capacity. The fight for agency is a constant battle that people of color face around the world. Having the ability to claim a space, deem it sacred, and cultivate authentic narratives within its boundaries — without fear of its message being appropriated — is indeed an esteemed privilege. However, for many, such a concept can only be defined as a dream without community support.
NEW YORK PARTNERSHIPS
The Soul of Nations Foundation has held art and education programs in new York City since 2016. In 2021, the Soul of Nations Foundation relocated to Lower Manhattan in good faith to invite transitional perspectives for space reclamation, progressive cultural representation, and neo-healing experimentation. Being a newcomer to the cultural nexus that we now call home, the Soul of Nations Foundation is in need of building community and is seeking to meet with allies, partners, and patrons who share similar philanthropic values to help foster critical and altruistic methods for the induction or culturally-present spiritual experimentation through contemporaneous prisms that catalyze the listening and learning process.
In our new phase of operation, the Soul of Nations Foundation is hoping to foster new allies in New York City who have a discerning heart for contemporary art and believe that new ways of imaging society in relations to Indigeneity and Blackness are still in discovery.
ITALIAN PARTNERSHIPS
Since 2018, the Soul of Nations Foundation has had the splendor of partnering with governmental and cultural institutions in Northern and Central Italy to devise community development and implementation strategies through manifestation of Soul Center for the Arts and the Advocacy and Research Program.
There is currently no dedicated permanent government-funded space in Italy for the enrichment of minority and migrant contemporary artwork or creative thought. Race is almost absent as an issue from the museums of Florence (and indeed Italy), whether the period is the Roman Empire, the Renaissance or the twentieth-century fascism of Mussolini. A part of the difficulty here is the way the Renaissance is packaged and sold. This is a glamorous world of art and luxury— and, yes, of violence, but of the dramatic Borgia-style vendetta not the institutionalized systems of oppression.
Although there is a long way to go, particularly in the privately-owned heritage sector, through the actualization of Soul Center for the Arts, minority access to the arts and intercultural dialogue will help to make Florence, Tuscany, and eventually, Italy, a more inclusive country for all. Please consider standing with our organization as we endeavor to make a sustainable impact in land of La Bella Vita.
PARTNERS AND ALLIES
Partnerships help to ensure the stability and expansion of our work toward fostering art and research programming rooted in contemporaneous and sociocultural empathetic themes.
NEW PARTNERSHIPS
Terra Foundation for American Art
Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation
Jewish Museum of New York City
MOCA Toronto
U.S. Embassy Luxembourg
U.S. Embassy Nairobi
U.S. Consulate Florence
U.S. Embassy Berlin
Human Rights Engagement Fund
BIWOC* Rising
Municipality of Florence, Vice Mayor Alessia Bettini
New York University
Chashama
The Recovery Plan
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NORTH AMERICA
U.S. Department of State
Smithsonian Institution
MASS Design Group
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United Nations Development Program
Museum of Northern Arizona
Tucson Museum of Art
Virginia M. Ullman Foundation
Tucson Foundations
FedEx
University of Arizona
George Washington University
Howard University
Kalliopeia Foundation
Zane & Bennett Contemporary
Silicon Valley Community Foundation
Hobbs, Straus, Dean & Walker, LLP
Diné College
Institute for American Indian Arts
Antique Tribal Art Dealers Association
Wells Fargo
Office of Senator Tom Udall
Office of Congressman Raúl Grijalva
Senate Committee on Indian Affairs
Bureau of Indian Affairs
United National Indian Tribal Youth
National Congress of American Indians
Jeffry Gibson’s Studio
Navajo Times
Medium
Huffington Post
Teen Vogue
TRIBAL NATIONS
Tohono O’odham Nation
Hopi Nation
White Mountain Apache Nation
Navajo Nation
Shinnecock Nation
Chicken Ranch Rancheria of California
Zuni Pueblo
Freedmen’s Band of Choctaw
Nanticoke Tribe of Delaware
Pueblo of Jemez
ITALY
Municipality of Florence, Vice Mayor Alessia Bettini
Municipality of Genova
U.S. Consulate General Florence
U.S. Consular Agency Genova
U.S. Embassy Rome
Blu Logistics
Il Secolo XIX
Socinas
Arte Genova
New York University— Florence
Temple University— Rome
University of Turin
University of Verona
University of Genoa
University of Berlin
Polimoda School of Design
The Recovery Plan
Black History Month Italia
Bogliasco Foundation
INTERNATIONAL
U.S. Embassy Bolivia
U.S. Consulate Lagos
Republic of Rwanda, Cultural Affairs Section
Museum of Contemporary Art Lagos
Nairobi Design Week
BOZAR
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.