About

Radical Imagination was established in 2020 to make space for Black, Indigenous and artists of color to commune with one another and the land.

Radical Imagination is a registered nonprofit organization that envisions alternative futures where people and land thrive through conversation, art, connection to nature, collaboration, and world-building. We’re based in the hills of Vermont US, have an office in Oslo, Norway and work globally.

Our biggest project yet is an artistic research initiative and publication centered on Landback: access conversations, activism, art, film, information accessibility, inclusion, environmental justice, and ecologically sound solutions for the planet.

Radical Imagination builds BIPOC-led futures through land-based residencies, collective visioning, mutual aid, cultural organizing, and regenerative storytelling.

Check us out on:

Instagram

Accomplishments

2020 Founded the Every Town project which is committed to securing land access and sovereignty for Black and Indigenous folks in every town in the state of Vermont through local and regional partnerships.

2021 Funded and distributed grants to Black and Brown healers to support them offering their services for free to other folks of Color in their communities.

2021-2022 Raised funds for and partnered with a group of volunteer carpenters to build infrastructure for Black and Indigenous land based projects throughout Vermont.

2023-2024 Hosted diverse groups on the Radical Imagination land including foraging, overnight camping, herbal first aid, wilderness skills and carpentry basics.

Our Inspiration

SunRa
adrienne marie brown
our friends
Julia Butterfly Hill
Chani Nicholas
nature
Slow Factory
our children

Our Skills

Transformative Artist Residencies
Collective Visioning & Facilitation
Mutual Aid & Resource Sharing
Land Justice & Stewardship
Cultural Organizing & Public Art
Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration
Storytelling & Narrative Change
Event design

A word on environmental justice

Our environmental justice work advances climate resilience by returning land to those who have long cared for it as family, not commodity. Indigenous and Black communities face disproportionate housing instability and land dispossession, leading to severe health impacts. Meanwhile, the ruling class sustains poverty and restricts access to clean air, water, and land—both through subtle tactics and direct policies.

Our Partners

Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust

Community Resilience Organizations

Liberation Ecosystem

Conscious Homestead

NOFA VT

The Vermont Land Trust

Books We Like

🔥 On Revolutionary & Decolonial Thinking

"Pleasure Activism" – adrienne maree brown
"The Wretched of the Earth" – Frantz Fanon
"Borderlands/La Frontera" – Gloria Anzaldúa
"Freedom Is a Constant Struggle" – Angela Davis
"Emergent Strategy" – adrienne maree brown

🎨 On Art, Creativity & Imagination as Resistance

"More Brilliant than the Sun" – Kodwo Eshun
"The Poetics of Space" – Gaston Bachelard
"Staying with the Trouble" – Donna Haraway
"Art on My Mind: Visual Politics" – bell hooks
"Glitch Feminism" – Legacy Russell
"Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals" – Alexis Pauline Gumbs
"All About Love" – bell hooks

🌱 On Utopian Futures & Radical World-Building

"M Archive: After the End of the World" – Alexis Pauline Gumbs
"Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World" – Tyson Yunkaporta
"Parable of the Sower" – Octavia Butler
"The Dispossessed" – Ursula K. Le Guin

💭 On Visionary Economics & Mutual Aid

"Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines" – Alexis Pauline Gumbs, China Martens, Mai’a Williams
"The Revolution Will Not Be Funded" – INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence
"Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)" – Dean Spade
"Doughnut Economics" – Kate Raworth
"The Ministry for the Future" – Kim Stanley Robinson

Get in Touch

Are you working on a landback project that you think we should know about? Do you want to collaborate on an event? Reach out!

Our email is:
radicalimagination@proton.me

Last Updated 24.10.31

RADICAL IMAGINATION

Solve New Problems with New Ideas!
Think Globally, Act Globally!
Landback!

Selected Projects

Artist Residencies

The Radical Imagination Residency was hosted in Ndakina the original land of the Abenaki People – 125 acres of Vermont field and forest in the summer months.

In the past we have operated the residency by opening up our studios and gardens to invite BIPOC artists from all over the world to come and share the bounty. We provide three vegetarian meals a day, special guest lectures, and two optional adventures.

Our facilities include a wood shop, ceramics shed, fiber barn and shared indoor and outdoor studio spaces. Hosting artists from various disciplines in our tiny corner of the world has inspired growth and awareness in our home and our community. We are so thankful to the artists that have shared their work and this space with us thus far.

At this time we are no longer convening the residency but you never know it could return.

Skillshare and Herbalism

We are committed to skillshare on the land. We have hosted a wide variety of in-person and online events, workshops, and trainings running the gamut from foraging and herbalism to self-defense and breathwork.

Wilderness Skills

In late September 2020, we hosted the first of many all BIPOC programs. Wilderness skills led by instructor Mujib Khaliq and it was pure joy.

The workshop covered how we can integrate long term wilderness living practices into our daily activity, and how these practices can apply to "wilderness survival situations". Largely focusing on the practices and mentality for being as comfortable as possible in the woods, for as long as necessary.

Additionally, we got into combat foundations and self defense, and discussed conflict de-escalation/avoidance and how they apply to getting through physically aggressive situations, as the later can be even more applicable than fighting most of the time.

Land Trust

In collaboration with the Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust we have created a land sovereignty project for Black, Indigenous and People of Color called Every Town. The project is based on Abenaki land which has been renamed “Vermont” by Colonizers.

In the spirit of reparations and doing what is right and just for Black, Indigenous and People of Color in this exceedingly white space, we are working to secure the land permanently for the descendants of communities that have been forcibly removed from their ancestral land and are now commonly without access to natural spaces.

By obtaining at least one parcel of land in every town in Vermont we will create a rural network of support and community for Black, Indigenous and People of Color. Every Town will ensure that land in Vermont will be held in trust for permanent stewardship and access for Black, Indigenous and People of Color.

The Every Town project was created to directly serve Liberation Ecosystem (formerly the Releaf Collective) a network of 400 BIPOC throughout the state of VT who connect on themes of land, food and environmental sovereignty. With the support of NOFA VT and Vermont Land Trust we were able to get the project off the ground.

In 2021, the Every Town project moved to the NEFOC Land Trust, which has been advancing food and land sovereignty in the Northeast since 2020. We joined their Community Conservation program and began collaborations in Vermont, with groups like Rural Vermont, an organization that has worked for 35 years to improve equity in food and agriculture systems and more recently supported their work with The Center for Agroecology.

Land Access

We work with our partners to find ways for People of the global majority to thrive on land. Since 2017, we’ve welcomed folks of Color from across the state and beyond—many from urban areas with little green space and worsening air and water quality—offering a place to reconnect, heal, and rebuild a relationship with the land (after forced disconnection).

For example, shared our infrastructure in order to collaborate with Conscious Homestead’s BIPOC cohort, the Flying Fish Fellows, for their end-of-year camping trip and nature-based art retreat in 2023.

Just Construction

We’ve partnered with Community Resilience Organizations, to form and fundraise for Just Construction, a group of volunteer carpenters who build infrastructure for BIPOC land-based projects, including Radical Imagination

Amplifying Landback

Our focus is Landback—locally, regionally, nationally, and globally. We learn from, support, and connect with efforts restoring land to Indigenous stewards and Black communities whose ancestors were violently displaced and enslaved and whose ancestral traumas persist to this day. Our goal is to bring this conversation to as many people as possible.

Our environmental justice work advances climate resilience by returning land to those who have long cared for it as family, not commodity. Indigenous and Black communities face disproportionate housing instability and land dispossession, leading to severe health impacts. Meanwhile, the ruling class sustains poverty and restricts access to clean air, water, and land—both through subtle tactics and direct racist policies.

We are facing the federal government’s erasure of DEI programs and personnel, alongside a severe lack of financial resources to address the climate crisis. Our communities and lands are experiencing catastrophic ecological collapse—extreme flooding, landslides, fires, a surge in insect-borne diseases, and record temperatures (both hot and cold)—while those in power continue to increasingly profit from environmental degradation.

Our co-founder, Kenya Lazuli, works at Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust as Co-Director regularly collaborates with their Relationships and Reciprocity program on Indigenous consultation in the Northeast, which will continue to be invaluable for the duration of this project

Rewilding, Restoration and Regeneration

Co-founder Cori Ready leads efforts to restore marine ecosystems in the Oslofjord through a community-centered approach rooted in rewilding, restoration, and regeneration. Collaborating with marine biologists, artists, and local residents, she helps implement innovative projects—like underwater habitats, and fjord cleanups—that invite public imagination and participation. Her work bridges science, culture, and activism to reconnect people with the sea and inspire collective stewardship of our planet's most vital ecosystems.

New Suns Community Center and Libration Library

In rural North Thetford, Vermont, the New Suns Community Center is transforming a historic church into a vibrant hub for BIPOC community connection, resilience, and creative expression. Situated in a state emerging as a "climate haven," the center addresses the urgent need for inclusive, culturally-rooted spaces in an often isolating rural landscape. Led by Co-director Kenya Lazuli, New Suns fosters food sovereignty, artistic exploration, and collective healing—offering a sanctuary where BIPOC communities can gather, grow, and thrive on their own terms.

There Will Be Tomorrows

Co-founder Cori Ready is a part of Oslo-based There Will Be Tomorrows (TWBT), an interdisciplinary collectively-organised group, centred around post-capitalist desire, liveable futures and social sufficiency. Topics are // Collective care // Growing food // Collective ownership // Alternative economies // Climate and ecological justice // Community energy projects // Universal Basic Income // Decolonisation // Post-consumer art and leisure // Mental health under (post-)capitalism // Speculative fiction // Freedom from work // Post-fossil and post-capitalist imagining .