WE ARE BRINGING TOGETHER A COHORT OF PEOPLE INVESTED IN BUILDING MOVEMENTS FOR ARTISTIC, SPIRITUAL, COMMUNAL & FINANCIAL SOVEREIGNTY.
THIS MOVEMENT IS A PROMISE WE MADE TO OUR ANCESTORS
TO TAKE BACK OUR POWER OF PUBLIC FUNDING.
this promise brings the right, responsibility and power of public funding back where it belongs: in the hands and hearts of our most dedicated and (r)evolutionary artists, healers and earth stewards.
We know the most crucial personal and planetary work will not get done until and unless we hold the power of public funding in our hands.
We know we must heal from the impact that colonial and capitalist industries have had on our livelihood, relationships, artistic dreams, liberation movement work, how we treat each other & ourselves, and how we do business with one another.
I HAVE SPENT THE LAST SEVERAL YEARS BUILDING A VISION, METHODOLOGY, SPIRITUAL TECHNOLOGY AND COLLECTIVE FINANCIAL ORGANIZING SYSTEM FOR THE MIRACLE AND MEDICINE I HOLD:
A VILLAGE ARTIST GRANT ECOSYSTEM.
BTW: THAT’S ME ↓ I’M SHAUNGA. I AM A LONG TIME COMMUNITY ORACLE, ASTROLOGER AND PRACTITIONER OF ANCESTOR + CELESTIAL + ABOLITIONIST THEATRE. I AM BENGALI, MULTI-GENDERED AND A GENERAL WEIRDO. HERE I AM IN TKARONTO PERFORMING AT “ONE THREAD WEAVES THE WORLD” A FUNDRAISER FOR A FREE PALESTINE ORGANIZED BY DEAR FRIENDS, SZE-YANG LAM AND TRIXI JONES.
ALT TEXT AVAILABLE ON ALL IMAGES.
at its current stage, the ecosystem I’ve designed is a celestial and ecological map,
an erotic engineering system,*
a spiritual technology,
architectural design,
& an altar in and of itself
born from insurmountable grief,
indestructible love,
and the kind of friendship that
literally changes the world.
*CITATION: SHOUT OUT TO AYANA ZAIRE COTTON AND SEEDA SCHOOL WHO HOSTS A BLACK FEMINIST SPACE OF WORLDBUILDING AND EROTIC ENGINEERING.
IT’S BECAUSE I ATTENDED A WORKSHOP WITH AYANA EARLIER IN THE YEAR THAT I WAS ABLE TO RECOGNIZE THE TRUTH OF WHAT I HAVE BEEN BUILDING IS EROTIC ENGINEERING IN ITS FUNDAMENTAL NATURE: DEEPLY RECOVERED SPIRITUAL, artistic TECHNOLOGY rooted in RECLAMATION OF SEXUAL HEALING FROM BENGALI ANCESTORS WHO HAVE EXPERIENCED targeted GENOCIDE AND ETHNIC CLEANSING IN OUR MODERN DAY PERIOD, PRIMARILY VIA MILITARIZED SEXUAL VIOLENCE…
…and our UNYIELDING COMMITMENT TO WEAVE OUR EROTIC HEALING FROM THIS VIOLENCE IN SOLIDARITY WITH BLACK, INDIGENOUS, muslim, CASTE-OPPRESSED, tribal communities and our more-than-human relatives around the world most impacted by capitalism and colonialism.
PLEASE CHECK OUT AYANA’S WORK HERE!
…and, in addressing the erotic to its fullest extent,
we pay tribute and offer our work back
to Beloved Ancestor Audre Lorde, and her seminal essay:
“Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power.”
we acknowledge this essay as evidence that poems are altars,
that when we collectively water, tend to and keep alive,
have the power to take down an empire.
the spirit of Audre Lorde’s essay lives here
in this Village Artist Grant Ecosystem,
for many reasons, including the commitment to our
“grave responsibility, projected from within each of us,
not to settle for the convenient,
the shoddy, the conventionally expected,
nor the merely safe.”
*This quote is from page 57 of Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde where you can read this essay. You can listen to a video of Audre Lorde reading this essay here.
RIGHT NOW, THE ECOSYSTEM I’VE DESIGNED IS IN THE FORM OF SOME TYPE OF MAD SPIRITUAL SCIENTIST BLUEPRINT YOU’D FIND IN AN ANCESTRAL HEIST MOVIE WHERE THE MARK IS:
SEEING THE END OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE & THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX…
AND SEEING A WORLD FULL OF MASS COLLECTIVE EARTH STEWARDSHIP
…ALL IN OUR LIFETIME.
When this system runs at its optimal function, we make it possible and habitual to generate rapid-fire, 6+ figure village-raised artist grants for one another repeatedly, in a way that can be practised simultaneously amongst many interweaving circles, hoops, networks and villages.
This is not just a fundraising strategy. This is solidarity, repair and advocacy work in our most needed and miraculous places.
This is Spiritual Decolonization and Cultural Revolution.
We prioritize resourcing chronically exploited labour, chronically unfunded seasons of life, and chronically unfunded essential village roles.
We create the spiritual, psychological, social and interpersonal conditions that fund labour we take for granted and think we could never and would never directly exchange money for.
How about writers just for writing?
(and no, I’m not talking about the substack model 🤬)
Parents just for parenting?
Healers just for sitting at the altar and experiencing the medicine move through you?
How about telling your village that you are going through a major grief portal, and your village comes through at rapid fire pace with an artist grant that actually covers your livelihood, not because you proved you’re in a bad enough crisis, but because we are collectively motivated to recognize & reciprocate the inherent labour of grieving.
It’s time to stop saying, “wouldn’t that be nice” and start recognizing that we have the power to move money for whatever we want, as long as we are collectively willing.
Let’s take it on faith that enough of us are willing. Now all we need to know is “how?“
“How” isn’t a one-time answer. It’s a dedicated practise of ongoing inquiry, practise, experimentation and investment in the process.
On December 6 2025, we hosted a game changer’s circle and safe passage ceremony, where we took a group of folks through an in-depth break-down of our research and how the system works.
FROM DECEMBER 2025 TO JUNE 2026, WE ARE BRINGING TOGETHER AN ANCESTRAL THINK TANK TO CONTINUE LEARNING, INTEGRATING, PRACTISING AND EMBODYING THE PRINCIPLES OF THIS ECOSYSTEM…
…AND CONTINUE EXPLORING THESE RESEARCH QUESTIONS:
✰ how does our design make village funding consistent, repeatable, shareable and scaleable, without losing its integrity, blowing out its capacity or over-extending its stewardship
✰ how do we activate inspiration, ease & accessibility when generating money toward ancestor healing + earth stewardship, and breathe life into places money is currently stuck, scarce, hoarding and/or moving conservatively
✰ how does our design prioritize building personal wealth and financial sovereignty, without feeding the “american dream” complex, and instead builds more solidarity with chronically exploited workers, and eventually snowballs into a universal badass income
✰ how does our system require us to leave behind patterns of monetary exchange rooted in a colonial saviour complex and get us out of the never ending loop of just throwing money on a crisis without the deeper global patterns ever changing
✰ How does our system work to ensure the most important and powerful labour and artistry required to steward massive personal and planetary transformation is always recognized, resourced and protected, including: the inherent daily labour/artistry of friendship, loss and transition, working through trauma, simple, quiet ancestral communion, cultivating joy and celebration, and more
“do you ever think about how much labour goes into practising something as simple and complicated as celebration? how our ability to celebrate our lives, each other and be in good friendship with all parts of life and the universe is maybe our most fundamental sustainable resource during times like these? do you ever think about how much we are shooting our liberation movements in the foot as long as we do not have a widely accessible, well organized ecosystem that can directly fund all seasons of that labour…and become something we pass down to our young people and descendants?”
HELP US BUILD THIS SHIP.
JOIN OUR CAPACITY BUILDING PHASE
DECEMBER 2025 TO JUNE 2026
we are inviting a small but mighty cohort of collaborators into the next 6 months of capacity building for this movement, ancestral promise and big dang ship.
call for collaborators
THIS INVITATION IS RELEVANT AS OF JANUARY 2026.
We are inviting three layers of collaboration: Outer Circle (Good Listeners), Inner Circle (VIP Cohort) & Healed Pericardium (Advisory Council).
In order to run this project we first and foremost need our Advisory Council in place, who will act as our core Spiritual Advisors, Financial Investors and Executive Stakeholders of our Village Artist Grant Ecosystem as we grow our capacity building phase.
We are hoping to officially start our Artist Residency in February 2026. However, we will prioritize bringing in the right core team of Advisory Council members before we begin. Once we have our team in place, we will confirm our full schedule and share details on what all collaborators can expect during the residency.
Check out our call out for our Advisory Council here. If you can help us circulate this call so we can find the right people, please do.
Below is an example of what a 6-month schedule could look like. Keep reading to stay inspired. The schedule we confirm may vary once we have our core team in place.
EXAMPLE SCHEDULE.
AN ADVENTURE THROUGH AN ALTAR:
SATURDAY AFTERNOON TOWN HALL CEREMONY.
On the first Saturday afternoon of each month between February to June 2026, we will meet on zoom and take folks through a series of continuing to learn, integrate, workshop and refine the foundational organizing strategy of our Village Artist Grant Ecosystem.
Throughout the process we will crystalize protocols, best practices, work out the kinks, and get on the same page to deeply understand the nuanced principles anchoring the system.
Every space we hold is Ceremony that honours the Ancestors. We open and close with our signature Ancestor breathing practise: “the breath that stopped a genocide.”
The time we spend in these sessions will not only allow us to integrate the research, we are also listening & receiving core ancestral medicine emerging each month with Shaunga’s guidance.
Each date is on a Saturday from 1-4pm ET.
February 7th: enter through the east.
March 7th: land softly in the south.
April 4th: rest easy in the west.
May 9th: soar through the north.
June 6th: celebrate the win // stay centered and secure.
we are inviting folks to join on a few different layers of collaboration:
OUTER CIRCLE, INNER CIRCLE & HEALED PERICARDIUM.
OUTER CIRCLE: Good Listeners
Come to our Town Hall Gathering at the beginning of each month. Then, between each Ceremony practise with us: abolitionist friendship, ancestor dreaming, and the relationship practices that make this kind of public funding possible.
Each Town Hall will be recorded and sent out to our Good Listeners.
Throughout the month, Shaunga will drop special gifts backstage or on her public platforms that you can tune into on your own time:
☀︎ excerpts from my dream journal: how I unpack and study the ancestral medicine emerging from sleep dreams, day dreams & oracle-conversations with the past-present-future timeline where our spoken and unspoken dreams for a liberated planet have already won
☀︎ script study: how I study my original scripts and scripts from popular TV & film to illuminate thriving village principles & ancestor-healing approaches to building good friendship with ourselves, each other, the spirit world, our more-than-human relatives and movements for liberation + solidarity
☀︎ open rehearsal: play time & practise time for students, practitioners and lovers of ancestor theatre + abolitionist theatre + celestial theatre.
during open rehearsal we invite actors, writers, designers, directors, producers, crew members, and nerdy audience members for live script readings to practise the fundamentals of how theatre & art making changes when you collaborate with ancestors, and feed the creative process into healing the planet instead of “the industry.”
☀︎ small things gifts: good listeners are eligible for pop-up “small things” gifts & prizes in the form of readings with Shaunga in one of her specialty services including: animal communication, quantum astrology, spiritual gift development or artistic mentorship. As we grow our pot of village funding, $500 cash prizes will be shared with lucky winners.
3 winners have won a prize from our November/December pot. Stay tuned!
☀︎ asking for a friend: Shaunga and her dear friend Ravyn continue to share excerpts from their epic voice notes on their experience of sustaining an abolitionist friendship for over a decade.
We talk about everything from opening our hearts to healing intimacy, sex and community after a lot of trauma, thriving village/abolitionist approaches to moving through complicated conflict, abuse and injustice, behind the scenes of their art projects and so much more.
For a taste of Shaunga + Ravyn’s friendship series, check out this page.
We invite Good Listeners to grab your dream journal, study with us, practise with us, and keep time with us. Or just come to hang out and live, knowing you are landing in an ecosystem devoted to making village funding a reality.
TO JOIN THE OUTER CIRCLE: Invitation to this layer is open and ongoing. You join by making a monthly monetary offering in an amount of your choice before each Saturday-afternoon gathering. Please choose to offer an amount that lives in your field of generosity and capacity. No amount is too large or too small.
Once you make an offering, you will get an email with the password to our backstage area. You can join right now, and get immediate access to our replay from our December 6 gathering.
Whatever money we gather into our pot before we officially start our residency will go toward our “Start Up” fund. This money is so crucial to help us get this project off the ground. When you become a Good Listener now, you get first access to opportunities when we officially start our residency.
BECOME A GOOD LISTENER
INNER CIRCLE: VIP Cohort
As a VIP Member, you’ll work together directly with Shaunga. Bring your most beloved projects, ancestral promises, and commitments to your alivelihood.
Folks in this circle will receive personalized support and guidance on what is going on with your “wealth” body, what you need to move in integrity with your healing journey, and how village funding can support and protect your integrity. We’ll strategize and illuminate what river systems are currently available to you to meet more of your financial, spiritual, artistic desires and collective dreams.
Starting in February, Shaunga will host “ask the ancestors anything” drop-in office hours on alternating Tuesdays and Thursdays. Folks in this circle can pop in and get guidance from Shaunga for personalized oracle readings, “alivelihood” coaching, or ancestor-guided strategizing on any challenges that are coming up for you.
OFFICE HOUR DATES AND TIMES:
Alternating Tuesday Evenings and Thursday Afternoons starting in February.
Tuesday: 6-9pm ET
Thursday: 1-4pm ET
VIP members can drop-in as often as you’d like. Once you come on board, we’ll send you a calendar with the zoom links.
Office Hours will not be recorded. But you are welcome to record your personalized conversation on your own device.
As we grow our pot of village funding, we’ll be able to create a paid role for an “Outreach Advocate.” This is someone who is apprenticing our village funding model, and can provide hands-on support to source money into our VIP Member’s projects and livelihood.
To participate in the inner circle, we ask for an offering that gives us meaningful support.
Meaningful support can be: a 3-digit or more monthly offering in an amount of your choice, and/or a non-monetary offering that directly supports Shaunga’s stewardship and the growth of this project.
Non-monetary offerings can look like:
☕︎ bringing financial resources into our village pot
☕︎ promoting our work & bringing new audience members into the outer circle
☕︎ taking tasks off of Shaunga’s plate
☕︎ something else we mutually decide
TO JOIN AS VIP: Book a time to chat with Shaunga. We’ll discuss your goals, how this project can support you, and what you’d like to offer to help us build this ship. If everything is mutually aligned, we’ll set up a personalized plan for reciprocity and exchange.
If you’re interested in contributing and receiving something meaningful into this project / phase of development, and you want to have a chat before we officially start our residency, please feel free to shoot us an email at mercury@shaungatagore.com or check Shaunga’s calendar to book a time to chat directly.
BOOK A TIME TO CHAT WITH SHAUNGA
HEALED PERICARDIUM: Advisory Council of Co-Producers
We are looking for an Advisory Council of Co-Producers to join this project. We are inviting three different kinds of Producers: Protecting Producers, Practising Producers and Associate Producers.
the “pericardium” is the protective tissue that surrounds the heart.
Protecting Producers: these are folks who are well purposed and feel a heart-pull to act as financial protectors and spiritual/business advisors of Shaunga’s stewardship, this phase of development, and the whole movement of taking back our power of public funding.
This layer is the most crucial for us to fill with the right people in order to run this phase of the project.
These folks can offer a generous and protective monthly reciprocity for Shaunga, the strength & depth of her stewardship, and the growth of this ancestral promise in a crucial stage of its development: when it’s young.
⚖︎ your reciprocity here recognizes the multi-layered nature of Shaunga’s Artist Fee as: Artistic Director, Lead Researcher / Architect / Engineer, Wisdom Keeper, Storyteller, Alivelihood Coach, Multidimensional Space Holder, Carrier of our Collective Altar…and for the Design itself.
⚖︎ your reciprocity not only feeds into Shaunga’s personal accessibility / survivor / griever fee – recognizing that building accessibility is a collective responsibility, and survivors and grievers cannot get free/keep living without the support of a village…
…and also your reciprocity feeds into resourcing the QTBIPOC team of earth stewards who make Shaunga’s work possible: local accessibility support, supporting a team member exit a dangerous housing situation, accessible dance and martial arts education for queer and trans people, abolitionist theatre projects + memoir writing, Afro-Indigenous LandBack promises, Seminal Teachers and Beloved Animal Elders.
⚖︎ AND, as Shaunga grows her village pot, we’ll be able to create more jobs, paid village roles and artist grants for earth-honouring, ancestor-honouring economies – making more of what we want to accomplish in revolution possible and sustainable. We ground in this principle: fund more of the work we would do for free, so we can spend less time doing what we don’t want to do for money.
Protecting Producers can comfortably provide a minimum of 4-figures each month toward Shaunga’s reciprocity.
☄︎ Optional: offer 5-figures each month if this is within your capacity. Make us your best offer!
☊ Optional: you may choose to invest an extra amount into the beginning of this process as a contribution to our “start-up” fund. Doing this is an act of embodying the fundamental principles of this mission.
We need well-purposed folks to do for each other what big banks, tech companies, the non-profit world, academia, hollywood studios and music industry execs have monopolized for too long.
Here we recognize that it is dangerous to allow someone like Shaunga or this project to turn to those conglomerates for essential village services like start-up funds. We can practise this thriving village principle today, “we keep us funded.” Make us an offer we can’t refuse!
⚯ Optional: we weave your financial contribution with an exchange of mutually supportive 1:1 mentorship, skill-building and peer support.
You offer us spiritual and/or business advisement in areas we need support, and we offer you support from our realm of expertise in areas you want to develop, grow or deepen.
This can include spending time in Shaunga’s creative and spiritual luxury spa, bringing Shaunga to your community for a workshop, artist retreat, or hosting Shaunga’s signature live concert aka her traveling one-person-show and “bone closing ceremony.”
Her live concert is a personal and planetary sacral chakra healing ceremony that attunes the audience into the timeline where we end rape culture, domestic violence, and the military industrial complex in our lifetime.
To move forward as a Protecting Producer, book a get-to-know-you chat with Shaunga.
We need at least 3-5 people who are able to pay Shaunga a higher monthly rate in order to run this project.
We are prioritizing folks who are ready and available to join before our February 7th gathering, and book a time to chat before January 18. Please book a time on our calendar only if you feel a heart-pull to this project and are comfortable/confident in your ability to provide at least a 4-figure amount each month between January and June 2026.
BOOK A TIME TO CHAT WITH SHAUNGA
Practising Producers and Associate Producers (Enthusiasm Generators)
Practising Producers: These are folks with a decade or more experience on a liberation-focused ancestral healing journey, extremely dedicated community stewards, and are in a season of life where it is important for you to receive more organized support from your village.
Practising Producers offer us high quality spiritual advisement and wise council that directly supports Shaunga’s ability to sustain this work and lead this ship.
In exchange we prioritize sharing the wealth we raise with your projects and “alivelihood” when generating our own village funding.
Practising Producers come on board by invitation-only. Spots are currently filled! To be considered when we open space for our next round of Practising Producers, please first join as a Good Listener, VIP Member or Protecting Producer.
Associate Producers / Enthusiasm Generators: These are folks who have an active platform, audience or network of folks who you believe could greatly benefit from village funding and the spirit moving through the work we are doing here.
To become an Associate Producer, we co-create a plan for you to learn with us, and then share what you’re learning, and how this medicine is changing you, with your audience/on your platform. Through this exchange, you help us reach more people resonant with our work, and we set up a financial reciprocity or commission model for you to benefit from the investors you bring us.
Eventually Enthusiasm Generators will have the tools to integrate a village artist grant model into your own business model or creative practise. This creates more sustainability and sovereignty for you as a practitioner/teacher/artist/organizer, and also creates more wealth for your circles and communities – as you can also start generating sovereign village study grants, research grants, village funded artist retreats and more.
If you feel you are a good match as an Associate Producer, please book a time to chat with Shaunga on her calendar. We will set up a personalized plan for reciprocity and exchange based on our conversation.
BOOK A TIME TO CHAT WITH SHAUNGA
All three levels of Producers make up our Advisory Council of Co-Producers, and together we become The Healed Pericardium.
As part of our Healed Pericardium you are specialized stakeholders in our Village Artist Grant System. We look to you for council & advisement when developing this system, and we offer the work we do back to you. This means we weave and re-direct the money we raise in collaboration with matters we mutually decide we care about and hold most dear.
A Healed Pericardium operates on the fundamental principle of sacred reciprocity in a thriving village: today for you, tomorrow for me.
We come through the door understanding that when a village is thriving, sometimes we receive wealth by experiencing and apprenticing its lessons, and sometimes we receive wealth by investing, offering and feeding what keeps us alive.
In this project, that means people move freely between the role of protecting producer and practising producer. The people who give higher amounts of financial reciprocity in this phase of development are also weaving into an ecosystem that gives you back a village that will pour into you during seasons that you are supposed to receive wealth and not earn it.
CHECK OUT OUR OFFICIAL CALL OUT & APPLICATION FOR OUR HEALED PERICARDIUM.
“QUICK! GET OUR MODERN DAY PLANETEERS ON THE PHONE…RIGHT MEOW.
BECAUSE WE NEED VILLAGE FUNDING YESTERDAY.”
When you book a time on our calendar, please indicate if you are interested in the VIP Cohort, Protecting Producer, Associate Producer, or multiple roles.
this is us
SHAUNGA’S VILLAGE ARTIST GRANT ECOSYSTEM IS CO-CREATED WITH ESTHA AND RAHEL: TWO TWIN BLACK CATS WHO LIVED PHENOMENAL LIVES AND CREATED MIRACULOUS FAMILY TOGETHER ON EARTH FROM 2008 TO 2022-2023. ESTHA AND RAHEL REMAIN IN THEIR POSITION AS ANCESTORS, GUARDIANS AND ESTEEMED EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS OF THIS PROJECT. ENJOY THIS PHOTO CIRCA 2009 – “when we were young.”
explore more
If you’d like to watch our replay from December 6 to get an initial in-depth understanding of our Village Artist Grant Ecosystem before you book a time to chat, you are welcome to do so. Make an offering to our village pot, and you’ll get a link to our backstage area, where you can watch the replay. Make an offering here.
If you’d like to explore the history of this project and body of research we’ve made public, you can visit OUR RESEARCH PAGE.
To get to know Shaunga more, we recommend you check out our live multiverse memoir (aka podcast drama) and choose to dive into an episode that calls to you. VISIT THE LIBRARY.
Or, visit our TIME KEEPER’S CALENDAR for a list of most recent videos, blog posts or podcast episodes to check out.