a thriving village
prototype
Greetings, Good Listeners. On this page you’ll find the latest updates on our multiverse adventure on grief-centered, regenerative, reparative economy building, for liberation, solidarity, divestment and commitment.
We are currently putting things together to run a multi-year, hands-on research practicum, aka our thriving village prototype. The aim is to experience and grow this foundational principle: “back in the day, the village took care of its artists, healers and essential workers for the planet.”
There will be many mini-projects, cycles, and seasons as we grow this thriving village prototype. There will be opportunities to give and receive, support and be supported.
We are in the early stages of bringing our vision, model and design of a Village Artist Grant Ecosystem to life.
The good news is, the foundation of our vision has now been developed enough to start applying for grants and bigger pools of funding. This is an opportunity for organizations, collectives and institutions to support this life changing, life affirming work.
However, it is of utmost importance that the project remain in its self-determination, its sovereignty, and its integrity. This is not something I am willing to compromise when interacting with bigger funders.
This is a difficult juncture, given that thus far, I have kept this work alive via my own pocket, and I cannot sustain that anymore. It has come at a cost to my physical, financial, mental and spiritual health.
My priority remains with finding innovative, courageous, exciting, refreshing ways to move money into a baseline accessibility fund for my livelihood and leadership, that do not repeat old paradigms or relationship-community-economic dynamics that I can no longer participate in.
I’m determined to make this fun. I believe that’s where the most (r)evolutionary forms of wealth, healing and liberation lie.
Once we build and sustain our baseline funding, I’ll then be growing Shaunga’s Thriving Village Principles Budget.
This is where I’ll look around my life for places that I see disenfranchised labour, resource that labour, and document how these acts take us closer to experiencing the thriving village life that we long for.
This budget will be shared with myself, as well as with queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, people of colour, disabled people, survivors and grievers that I am in community with, with a priority to folks who are helping me sustain and keep this work alive.
For example, here are some principles I already know I want to start with once we begin building this fund:
• a stipend for queer and trans survivors and grievers to get paid to run through sprinklers in children’s parks in Tkaronto (I want this to happen this summer 2026, fingers crossed!!)
→ why is this disenfranchised labour? think about it. for so many of us, we didn’t get a childhood that prioritized our need to play, be relaxed, have fun, and express ourselves.
Our families were financially over-burdened, living under class/economic constraints or in poverty. We had to take way too much adult responsibilities early in life. Some of us were surviving domestic abuse. I don’t think I’ve ever had the opportunity to take a real vacation.
Now, as adults, we recognize that our capacity to rest, relax, and play is essential to the creative spirit we need in order to bring forward our most inventive, audacious, heartfelt and purposeful liberation solutions to meet these enormously challenging times.
And yet, learning how to play again after so much trauma is work. It takes time, effort, and labour. This is an example of our research. A group of us practise being a bunch of weird, queer adults running through sprinklers and water parks amongst the children, and actually get paid to do this socially unacceptable form of life-affirming labour.
Then, we share what we learned from this experience. We unearth more thriving village memories this practise brings up for us. We tell people how our experience with healing and liberation changes when the most important, and chronically neglected parts of ourselves, are actually resourced.
I keep a log of these learnings and unfoldings on my digital archive, so a global audience can grow, follow along, and learn from our model. So more folks can bring their own practices and take the research to more and more bold places.
• a stipend for mistakes, conflict, and failed attempts. When moving liberation work forward at this time, we have to plan for experiments, risks, and bold attempts to try things that haven’t been done before.
Inevitably, we have to plan for trying things don’t work out, make mistakes that become important learning opportunities, and move through unexpected conflict or break-ups between collaborators.
And yet, the problem is here – most often when we make mistakes, they come with devastating financial consequences.
This aggravates conflict and ruins relationships that might otherwise be able to walk away in peace.
A Thriving Village Principles Budget can thus go toward making financial offerings toward mistakes and failed attempts that I’ve been through with others. The point isn’t to try and cover all financial expenses, but to make meaningful offerings in this direction – that can then grow into more of a culture that allows and resources the messy process of growing healing, liberation and transformation.
• I have so many more ideas!!
As we grow resources to fuel this movement, we’ll have more and more capacity for exciting collaborations with radical folks in the tech world, environmental scientists, climate justice advocates, afro-indigenous land stewardship projects, abolitionist journalists, architects, designers, healers, storytellers, artists, crafts-people and service workers of all kinds – everyone invested in building fully and holistically resourced economies that support and hold us through massive personal and collective transformation.
I just wrote 3 grants in June, and will write a couple more this July. Stay tuned if you want to stay abreast on opportunities that arise once that money starts coming in, in 2027 and beyond. You can follow along my new substack newsletter, which will also become the digital archive once we start growing the Thriving Village Principles Budget. Follow along and check out our recent posts here.
CALL FOR COLLABORATORS
I’m looking to bring a team around me to study with me, receive personalized mentorship and spiritual/creative support, and practise a unique form of community organizing, grounded in ancestor-guided storytelling technique/craft, and land-star technology.
However, instead of asking for direct payment for my mentorship, I’m asking these folks to help organize and move money into my self-determined accessibility budget.
In short, I want to make an intervention on the typical coaching/mentorship financial model, and experiment with a model that better reflects our grounding principle: back in the day, the village took care of its healers, artists and essential workers for the planet.
I’m interested in building a model where a village steps in to resource and protect the labour and exchange between queer and trans community members: students and teachers, seekers and healers, chosen siblings/comrades, mentors and mentees, elders and young people, and ultimately – ancestors and descendants.
I’m currently doing an internal call for collaborators who may be a great fit. Stay tuned for more.
Also: I’m looking for my dream co-producer. Whenever this person(s) come into my life, I will legitimately throw a party. You’ll be invited. For now, here’s my desperately seeking susan personal ad. (Although I haven’t actually ever seen this movie.) See the call here.
PS: For those following along, Ravyn Wngz, my previous co-host and co-producer is still a beloved and active part of this project. She is just very, very busy right now!
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