Canopy Collective

It is an honor to be considered for the Elevate Prize. 

In terms of technical assistance, we are particularly excited about the potential to harness the strategic marketing and media expertise offered through this opportunity. For example, after our first year of truth-telling experiences launch in 2022 (at the tail end of the podcast release), how might we leverage social media to both inspire other geographies to start their own initiatives, join our global network and use crowdfunding to scale truth telling nation-wide? How might we support those initiatives in fundraising, design and execution? 

In terms of funding, we will use $100,000 to support full-time leadership role with benefits for Dannielle Thomas and the additional $200,000 will go directly to our community of practice - offering 8 flexible grants of up to $25,000 to support experimentation, visioning and the adaptation of lessons from around the world. We currently have an eager network of US-based leaders eager to apply lessons from the conversations with global leaders from South Africa to New Zealand - this will stimulate innovation and genuine collaboration. We would love storytelling strategy and support in how to then share those stories with the rest of the world.

I am a Black woman born and raised in Georgia. My community has raised me, held me, comforted me, and healed me. My true community, where I feel home, is with black women. Black women living in the South, black women working hard for their families, community, their rights and wellness. I am from a matriarchal family. A matriarchy (because of enslavement and racial violence), that never had the time or opportunity to grieve, to find peace, or be truly unguarded in public settings but built a community that allowed for those spaces. I am also a member of a larger community of black people across the South, who are struggling, pushed aside, and neglected in a broader conversation of racial justice and abolition. 

This is why Canopy exists. Historically, we have never been given the spaces and time to grieve, and our grief is often unheard, unfelt, and leaves the world unchanged. Canopy Collective is working with practitioners and activists to support in telling the national truth, publicly displaying the pain, and calling for a change in narrative that will spawn a change towards reconciliation and repair, and will eventually be felt globally.

Canopy Collective advances racial equity by transforming the deeply held narratives that stand in the way of justice and healing. We do this in two ways: 

First, we are building and resourcing a transnational network of citizen-led truth-telling initiatives. Led by organizers and artists and steeped in liberatory research methods, this initiative will support the creation of place-based micro-histories that describe the harm, size the debt and envision the healing. Each year, the products of this research will become public art installations or immersive experiences for all. Complimented by educational opportunities for non-Black people to co-process the truth.

Second, we will bridge Americans into the deep wisdom and leadership abroad in truth and repair, normalizing these efforts as proven tools in the upkeep of democracy, and providing inspiration as we chart our path. We are doing this through a podcast miniseries with Vox and a transnational community of practice. The series will take listeners across the world to explore the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in South Africa and Sierra Leone; Germany’s restitution paid to Jews after the Holocaust and the memorialization, education, and policy; reparations to over seven million victims of Colombia’s fifty-year armed conflict, among others.

Canopy innovates in the following ways:

From distant experts to proximate leadership: we center those who have been harmed to describe and define the harms, generate what is owed and vision the healing.

The products of research are public art: instead of white papers, our inquiries result in public installations that are immersive enough to evoke emotion, provoke reflection and shift paradigms.

From American exceptionalism to transnational solidarity: instead of a posture of exporting democracy, we create communities of practice focused on truth and repair.

From truth-avoidance to grief as a door to collective transformation: counter to American white-dominant culture, we believe that only through grief can we arrive in mourning and through mourning can we arrive at grace.

Led by organizers and artists: while vital to democracy, are infrequently “valued” as productive, especially outside of election cycles. Aside from our deep roots in Georgia, another reason our work will begin in Georgia is to harness the organizing capacity that was grown in the 2020 cycle.

Learning and action: we will offer small unrestricted grants to promote experimentation and collaboration across borders. We will activate the global community of practice by resourcing the adaptive experiments that emerge from global dialogues.

Our impact strategy is built upon the followingbeliefs, rooted in our team’s deep immersion in anti-racist organizing in the US and transitional justice around the world. 1. BlackAmericans need a path to real ownership of defining the harms to be repaired, and to authentically integrate their stories as the most important data of the process. Without this, any government-driven effort will fail to win legitimacy with those to whom it is owed - and fail to achieve true healing. There are many local truth-telling initiatives yet no organization to systematically support and connect them at scale. 2. All Americans need to be invited into learning and grief that is personal, citizen to citizen, locally-driven, sustained, culturally transmitted, and not handed down by political figures or government. Without such an approach, we believe minds can not be shifted and the broad support for reparations cannot happen. 3. Finally, we need to expose and connect Americans to the rich wisdom, history, and leadership in truth and repair around the world. This will serve to normalize truth and repair, show we are not alone, and build global solidarity for US practitioners as they fortify for a long road to racial equity and healing.