Strategy: Identity

Launch Environmental Justice

An incubator for community-driven environmental projects to improve their operations, fundraising, and implementation.

The Launch Environmental Justice Incubator program supports nonprofit and social enterprise leaders over a six-month journey, blending monthly group cohort workshops, educational speakers, and individual one-on-one technical assistance. Curriculum topics included: Project Planning, Grant Writing + Fundraising, Collaboration, Evaluation, Management, Sustainability + Future Planning.

Watch the Slideshow

2024-25 COHORT

OUTCOMES

  • 26% improvement in ability to community project impact
  • 18% improvement in collaboration with community and institutional partners
  • 13% improvement in project planning and development
  • $ 2,128,585 federal, state, and local grants submitted
  • $   670,000 grants approved
  • $   724,120 grants pending

ABOUT

Launch Environmental Justice is a joint program of New Sun Rising and RiverWise, initially offered as part of the Justice 40 Opportunity Navigator program.

The Awakening Series

The Awakening is a poignant reflection of a condition deeply ingrained in African American families, where young men, swayed by peer influence, veer into violence. Written by local playwright Lorenzo Boone, The Awakening delves into the life of Jason, a young man caught in the grip of gang influence and struggling to find a way out. Set against the backdrop of an African American community, the play explores Jason’s intense pressures and choices as he battles between loyalty to his gang and the love of his family through a journey of self-discovery and redemption, offering a powerful message of hope and the possibility of change. 

With immense pleasure and excitement, we announce

The Awakening Live! 

Coming soon!

Sponsors enable us to provide free tickets to at-risk youth and their parents, build community partnerships, and offer sustainable models where playwriting is a catalyst for social change. Please consider one of the sponsorship packages in the document linked below:

SPONSORSHIP PACKAGES

Purchase Sponsorship Package Here

If you have any questions about the sponsorship packages, please contact Lorenzo Boone, CEO, at 724-624-2527, or lorenzoboone@gmail.com.

Gold Pyramid recognizes the importance of low-income and at-risk youth to attend arts and cultural events and believes that our work is crucial to shifting the narrative without our communities. Through your generosity, we will have a profound impact on our youth by providing an option for them to attend for free. It is our hope that their experience at one of our productions will change lives and save lives.

Click Here to Donate to the Ticket Fund

Founded in 2016, Gold Pyramid Screen and Stage LLC works to produce screenplays, stage plays and teleplays that will instill pride in African American ancestry, motivate real change, and provide insights that will deeply move an audience.

Gold Pyramid also provides training and employment opportunities that would not otherwise exist or be available for our community including opportunities for African American writers, actors, and technicians.

Since 2016, Gold Pyramid has been supported out of pocket and the occasional generosity of private donors. Please consider making a recurring or one-time charitable donation through our recent partnership with New Sun Rising by clicking the link below.

Click Here to Donate to The Awakening Series Project

Queer Resource Center of Millvale (Maude’s Paperwing Gallery)

Maude’s is creating community space for LGBTQIA+ folx in Millvale and beyond! Our goal is to support members of the LGBTQIA+ community on their individual journeys of healing and growth while also fostering community connection. Through events like Queer Coven, Found Family, Queer Prom, and Sober Sundays, we hold space for individuals who crave connection and haven’t yet been able to find a support system that fits their needs and wants. We support the trans and nonbinary community specifically by offering space for exploring gender in a safe and uplifting environment. We want our community to thrive and are honored to be able to create space for them to do so.

Donate Here

Ignite Creative Advocacy

A mentoring workshop + pitch competition to plan your advocacy campaign

Do you or your community have a need that could benefit from advocacy? While advocacy is often focused on changing public policy, creative advocacy includes a broader set of strategies. Maybe you need to share information to create awareness about an important issue. Or maybe your cause needs to inspire people to become better connected and engaged. Your advocacy could also be focused on mobilizing resources to take action such as fundraising.

Whatever the reason, community advocates and nonprofit leaders were encouraged to apply for the Ignite Creative Advocacy workshop: a virtual event held on March 30, 2023. Participants will receive support to develop an advocacy campaign plan that uses public forms of engagement and artistic practice to disrupt prevailing narratives and strengthen community movement toward their goals.

The workshop will include information about concepts and strategies from the Creative Advocacy Playbook, mentoring to develop your campaign plan, and an optional pitch competition where participants share their plans with a panel of judges. Three Creative Advocacy campaigns will then be selected to each receive a $5000 grant and technical assistance to support the implementation of their plan. The Creative Advocacy initiative is a partnership between New Sun Rising and RiverWise as part of their efforts to build community capacity and power across Allegheny and Beaver Counties.

The application deadline for this workshop has passed.

WORKSHOP AGENDA

1:00 – 1:30  Introduction + Learning

1:30 – 2:30  Campaign Building Breakouts with Mentors

2:30 – 3:00  Campaign Pitches

Boom & Bust

Watch as seven residents of western PA travel to the Gulf Coast region to explore what it looks like to live alongside a petrochemical plant. Take a journey along with them as they ask the hard questions and wrestle with the complex history of our past and issues facing Beaver County’s future.

Boom & Bust is produced by RiverWise, in association with New Sun Rising and the Genesis Collective, and created by filmmaker Christopher Padgett of Human City Creative. The project is completely self-organized and self-funded.

Many local community and environmental organizations play an important role in helping residents become more informed and inspired about the public health impacts of industry. While these efforts are very important, the Boom & Bust film was not conceived primarily as a public health, environmental science, or activist project. The goal of the film was to travel to Louisiana, witness what people were experiencing, and to share reflections on what we learned.  During the screening events we will capture audience feedback in order to strengthen community connections and mobilize citizen action.

 

Watch the Trailer

Read the FAQs

Share Community Feedback

 

Screening Schedule

Thursday, July 28th, 2022 at 7 pm 

Iron Horse Theater, 348 Maplewood Ave, Ambridge, PA 15003

 

Monday, August 8th, 2022 at 7 pm

Virtual Screening via Zoom, Register for the August 8th event

A conversation will be held after this screening for those who wish to participate.

 

Wednesday, August 10th, 2022 at 7 pm

The Tull Family Theater, 418 Walnut St., Sewickley, PA 15143, Register for the August 10th event

Concessions will be available for purchase from the Tull Theater during the screening. 

Drinks and conversation are scheduled at the conclusion of this screening for those who wish to participate.

 

Tuesday, August 23rd, 2022 at 7 pm

Phipps Conservatory – Botany Hall, 1 Schenley Dr., Pittsburgh, PA 15213, Register for the August 23rd event

Drinks and a conversation are scheduled at the conclusion of this screening for those who wish to participate.

 

 

This project is inspired by

strengthening community movement by challenging prevailing narratives

Seasons Project- DEMASKUS Theater Collective

Note on Commercial Theater by Langston Hughes

You’ve taken my blues and gone

You sing ’em on Broadway

And you sing ’em in Hollywood Bowl,

And you mix them up with symphonies

And you fix ’em

So they don’t sound like me.

Yep, you done taken my blues and gone.

 

You also took spirituals and gone.

You put me in Macbeth and Carmen Jones

And all kinds of Swing Mikados

And in everything but what’s about me

But someday somebody’ll

Stand up and talk about me,

And write about me

Black and beautiful

And sing about me,

And put on plays about me!

I reckon it’ll be

Me myself!

Yes, it’ll be me.

 

DEMASKUS is a national service-oriented collective of artists and administrators seeking to make known the messages of the marginalized. We achieve this through the production and presentation of quality, compassionate, and inclusive artistic events. Everything around us is changing, but our purpose has not. Now more than ever, we must share profound truths from formally marginalized voices that refuse to go unheard and may even offer solutions and solace in a world in dire need of uncompromising reminders of what makes us most humane.

Most Christians will immediately associate DEMASKUS with Damascus–the Syrian capital that is home to the road where Saul of Tarsus had his transformative encounter with God. God struck Saul blind and confronted him about his past. High-born and scholarly, Saul was prone to violence toward early adopters of Christianity. The Collective’s name embodies the idea of revealing the truths that lie beneath the mask(s) of our own blind behavior and beliefs. Art, at its best, helps us to rethink and reimagine that which we think we know. Consciously removing a metaphorical mask certainly requires self-examination. (Based on an exchange with DTC member the Rev. Dr. Leah Lewis, J.D., alluding to Acts 9:1-8). Another source of inspiration for our work is the historic and notable poem, We Wear the Mask by Paul Laurence Dunbar. Whatever the masks you wear, we invite you to lay them down and join us on a journey filled with crossroads, but free from the expectations and oppressive standards of others. Our art is about us, made by us at times and is always for us.  There is freedom here. Welcome home.

 

Images: You Wouldn’t Expect Production Photos © Martha Rial
Images: WINE IN THE WILDERNESS- Production Photos © Sager McDill

 

Donate Here

Brown Mamas

What started out as a group of moms meeting in a living room has grown into a community of over 6400 Black moms in the Pittsburgh region, and over 10,000 moms nationally.

That day in early summer, a few women gathered to talk about their common struggles and joys in raising Black children. Muffy was at the tail end of fighting postpartum depression and felt she’d found her tribe. The small gathering transformed to a Facebook group where moms could vent, ask for support and find each other.  That Facebook group grew into programs that support the social and emotional needs of mothers.  The stories spilling out of these interactions built a stage where moms can liberate themselves by sharing their stories with the masses through the Brown Mama Monologues.

Today, Brown Mamas is so much more than a group of moms.  It is a testament to their original idea that making moms better moms, makes dads better dads, children become better adults and, ultimately, communities become better communities.

Donate Here

Contact Us
hello@brownmamas.com

#notwhite collective

THE #NOTWHITE COLLECTIVE IS A GROUP OF 13 WOMEN ARTISTS WHOSE MISSION IS TO USE NON-INDIVIDUALISTIC, MULTI-DISCIPLINARY ART TO MAKE OUR STORIES VISIBLE AS WE RELATE, CONNECT AND BELONG TO THE GLOBAL MAJORITY.

WE ARE BI/MULTI-RACIAL/CULTURAL, IMMIGRANT OR DESCENDANTS OF IMMIGRANTS INVESTIGATING THE MANY WAYS WE ARE SEEN OR NOT SEEN, HOW WE SELF-IDENTIFY AND HOW WE SEEK LIBERATION THROUGH SHARING SPACE AND STORIES; RESEARCH AND ART-MAKING; DISCUSSING THE HISTORY OF IMPERIALISM AND ITS EFFECT ON US, ON THE WHOLE NON-WHITE WORLD. WE ACTIVELY REJECT COLONIALISM THROUGH OUR NON-HIERARCHICAL PROCESS.

THE #NOTWHITE COLLECTIVE EXPRESSES THE HYBRIDIZED AND MULTIFACETED ASPECTS OF SELF-DEFINED LIBERATION; WE ACCEPT CULTURAL FLUIDITY AS A MEANS OF SEEING AND BEING SEEN, EACH MEMBER DECLARING THEIR EXISTENCE, INDIVIDUALLY AND COLLECTIVELY, THROUGH OUR VOICES, BODIES, AND ART.

EXCAVATING HISTORIES. EXPOSING REALITIES.

EXORCISING OPPRESSION.

#notwhite collective members are: Christiane Dolores, Fran Flaherty, Veronica Corpuz, Geña, Maritza Mosquera, Carolina Loyola-Garcia, Liana Maneese, Amber Epps, Sarika Goulatia, Maggie Negrete, Sarah Tang, Alison Zapata and Zena Ruiz.

Photo credit: Veronica Corpuz.

Impact REdevelopment

IMPACT REdevelopment is a real estate investment company whose goal is to transform transitional areas in the path of progress from vacancy to vibrancy and improve target neighborhoods, while helping people along the way and making things more beautiful for everyone. We rehabilitate residential and commercial properties to raise property values and rental rates, as well as improve business district real estate value. IMPACT manages single- and multifamily dwellings and apartment complexes, focusing on customer service and providing clean, safe and affordable living.

Impact REdevelopment repurposed the vacant 900 Wood St building into a pivotal community asset, providing resources to the small businesses and nonprofits and helping to revitalize Wilkinsburg. The second floor includes a co-working space and conference room which serves as home base for the Launch Wilkinsburg Incubator and small office tenants include the Wilkinsburg Chamber of Commerce and Mansmann Foundation. Plans for the first floor include a coffee and donut shop, job training center, and food retail establishment.

Center for Civic Arts

Center for Civic Arts is led by Jody Guy with a vision to inspire civic engagement through the arts and humanities. They accomplish this by valuing citizens as the creators of culture, and stewards of their environment. CCA expand opportunities for people to connect through arts education, public arts and creative placemaking. Programs include socially engaged art programs, formal and informal arts education programs, public arts, and creative place-making. Civic Arts provides a third civic space catalyzed around the arts, as a place to develop independent thinking, and new perspectives and solutions for communities.

Virginia Dere Swimwear

Virginia Dere, LLC was established because the visionary, Gabrielle Haywood, recognized that the swimwear industry was not meeting the emotional and subconscious needs of women who required a swim suit. To solve the need for more modest coverage without forfeiting style and fashion Virginia Dere created their flagship product, the “Knee-Kini”. Often times, swimsuit shopping causes such anxiety for women, that women don’t want to participate in or attend aquatic events.

We are solving that problem with the “Knee-Kini” having bright bold patterns and fashionable designs that gives more coverage below the thigh area. A proprietary fabric will provide the comfortable slenderizing fit and the modest coverage. What makes the Knee-Kini different is that it is specifically designed for women who still want a little color, fun bold patterns but want to feel comfortable and confidently fashionable in public. The Knee- Kini not only provides colorful fashionable coverage below the thigh but also provides another important factor, UPF50+ sun protection as well as chlorine resistant.

Ignite Culture

A mentoring workshop + pitch competition for projects building community culture

New Sun Rising believes that embracing the unique characteristics and knowledge of people is critical to promoting equitable change in our region. By building awareness of our culture, we can better understand the shared values that lead to trust and resiliency.  

Projects which creatively engage, explore, or express culture within their community are encouraged to register for the Ignite Culture workshop on March 24th. Participants will be eligible for awards (taxable) to start their project. While everyone can apply, we strongly encourage projects from NSR Launch communities (Allentown, Beltzhoover, Knoxville, McKees Rocks, Millvale, Northside, Wilkinsburg) and fiscally-sponsored projects.

Registration is full

What to expect

Ignite Culture propels idea development for businesses, projects, and their leaders through a one day ignite & pitch workshop. Bring your new idea to work through with peers. Those who are interested (up to 10) have the option to enter the pitch competition for $5,000 in total financial awards.

Through a one-page business plan, workshop participants will receive mentoring and a quick primer on pitching your idea. Awarded projects must be completed by November 30th, 2018 and help create community vibrancy.

Vibrancy Funds

New Sun Rising is pleased to announce the Vibrancy Funds, a new funding opportunity to launch organizations and collaborations who build culture, sustainability, and opportunity within their community. Led by the generous support of the Henry L. Hillman Foundation, the fund will support people who promote innovation, engagement, and equity in the Pittsburgh region.

 

Supported by:

Choolaah Indian BBQ