New Suns
New Suns is an innovation lab focused on creativity and connection.
What We Do
People are ready for a better future - one rooted in care, fairness, and belonging. But there’s a gap between what the Global Majority wants and what actually gets built. We exist to bridge that gap and illustrate what’s possible, creating connectivity so that people can replicate these models elsewhere and influence culture in practical and visionary ways.We develop and support programs across art, culture, land, climate and ecology to shift culture and address power.Our current slate of innovations includes:Peer-led graduate schools focused on building collective and ecologically informed leadershipCultural exchange programs connecting practitioners across geographiesCommunity-based repair café networks that seed new approaches and advance circular economiesLand access and stewardship initiatives that increase equitable land ownership and useOur work moves locally and globally - across borders, disciplines, and time zones. We don't want to stay in our lane and invite others to join us in a way that isn't limited by geography or sector.We gather with people who recognize the need for change - whether they’re just beginning or already building - in our immediate communities and across the world.
Who we are:
New Suns is an inspired innovation lab that generates new ways of living - grounded in reciprocity, not extraction.
We work at the intersection of art, land, connection, and power. Through experimentation, partnership, and place-based practice, we turn imagination into tangible models for ecological restoration, cultural renewal, and shared economic life.
We don't wait for systemic change - we build the world we want to live in now - in community, and in relationship with the earth.Vision:
We stay curious, we stay nimble, we stay optimistic and examine both old and new solutions to new problems. We envision futures where healing is the default, repair is inevitable, and imagination is an engine for experimentation and change.
We believe there is another way to live - grounded in reciprocity, not extraction. Land, people, ancestral wisdom, and economies co-exist in evolving relationships. Communities function as ecosystems, living extensions of the land itself: adaptive, interconnected, and resilient.We imagine a world shaped by and accountable to the global majority - where joy, ease and shared knowledge guide collective life. A world where we widen who is heard, where decision-making power flows toward those most impacted.The future is not fixed. It is evolving, experimental, and collective - shaped by what we build and what we dare to imagine next. We work to bend that arc toward justice, regeneration, and shared flourishing.Mission:
New Suns exists to experiment our way into new futures. We illustrate possible futures in real communities.
We operate as an innovation lab for alternative world-building. Our work focuses on seeding, growing, connecting, and strengthening ideas and place-based efforts - blending new and ancestral approaches to repair ecosystems and restore community power.We believe the future evolves by experimentation informed by observation and listening; through creating new models that illuminate what is possible, and collective learning across localities and movements.The problem we are responding to:
The systems shaping our world are designed by too few, for the benefits of too few.Decision-making power is concentrated. Economic models reward extraction. Imagination has been narrowed, and the “good life” defined in ways that exclude most people and disconnect us from land.We cannot solve ecological collapse or social injustice using the same operating model that created them.
If we do not change who leads, how we decide, and what we value, the future will continue bending toward harm. New Suns exists to shift that model.
How we work:
New Suns operates as an adaptable innovation lab. We change culture and practice - shifting how we think, live, and build for the better.
We work in three, interconnected ways: convening people and knowledge, experimenting with new models and supporting promising initiativesConvening knowledge and communities:
We create spaces for liberatory education, reconnection, and collective learning. Through gatherings, cultural exchanges, and art residencies programming, we bring together artists, activists, academics, neighbors, families, farmers, and environmental leaders from the Global Majority to share knowledge, build relationships, and explore new possibilities for ecological and cultural renewal.
These convenings generate new collaborations and ideas. We document and synthesize learning through artistic research and shared knowledge-building - creating a living library of inspired practice that supports equitable ecosystem restoration, climate resilience, and affected communities to lead and be heard across geographies.Experimenting with new models for resilience and utopian futures:
From our convenings and exchanges, new ideas emerge - around land access, reparations, stewardship, cultural restoration, and shared economic models. We treat these ideas as prototypes, not theories.
We design and test place-based experiments that explore what regeneration can look like in reality, like
Cultural and artistic interventions that redefine the “good life”
Ecological restoration efforts grounded respectfully in indigenous technologies, local knowledge
Community-led land access and stewardship models
Reparations and LandBack-informed funding initiativesSeeding and Supporting Bright Spots :
We recognize that regenerative futures are already being built - often quietly and without sufficient equitable support.
We identify aligned, place-based initiatives and help them grow through: funding, partnership, incubation, or implementation, helping them learn from one another. Our goal is to strengthen what is already emerging rather than duplicate efforts.
Whenever possible, we connect projects to one another - accelerating shared learning and reducing fragmentation.
New Suns Community CenterA community center in Thetford, Vermont. Stewarded by Taylor Barnes and supported by a paid cohort of community members, New Suns Community Center is a place for our community to gather, learn, and be supported.New Suns Community Center Calendar
Last Thursday of month - Elder network Luncheon 11-2pm
Tuesdays and Wednesdays - Tai Chi 9-11am
Sundays - UTC service 9-11am
Saturdays - improv dance 12pm
Saturdays - Tool library open hours
TBA
Ongoing scheduled events:
Reading groups
Community co-working
Rollerskating meetups
Ceramics room use
Events & celebrationsMore about New Suns Community Center . .
We received our first land donation (Thetford Church), a significant step towards our goals.
Media Recognition: We were featured on VT Public Radio and the Valley News (regional news publication) raising awareness of our mission.
Liberation Library & Tool Library: We've established a community resource center with books, tools, and other resources for BIPOC Vermonters.
Engaging Events: We've hosted a variety of events at the New Suns Community Center, including workshops, skillshares, movie nights, and celebrations. These events foster community connection and learning.
The Team
LeadershipL-R
Cori Ready, Kenya Lazuli, Rebecca Villalobos, Taylor BarnesNew Suns is led by Co-Executive Directors Kenya Lazuli and Cori Ready. Rooted in collaboration and experimentation, they work at the intersection of art, resilient generative systems, and community. Together, they bring decades of senior, cross-sector experience shaped by their work as founders, program directors, researchers, artists, designers, and community leaders.Cori Ready is based in Oslo, Norway. She is a three-time founder with extensive experience building and scaling projects in industries including consumer products, hospitality, technology, and design. She specializes in developing cross-cultural teams and launching initiatives that operate across geographies and industries. Drawing on her background in startups, events, and brand building, she brings a practical approach to building ambitious projects with limited resources and growing them across borders She feels that the time is right to bring these skills and others out of the private sector and straight into work that centers people, art and the earth over profits. In addition to her work at New Suns, Cori serves as Advisor at Marea Oslo, an organization focused on regeneratively restoring and rewilding the Oslofjord.Kenya Lazuli is based in Corinth, Vermont. She has a background in art and design (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) with over twenty years experience in running her own businesses blending ecology with the arts. In addition to her work at New Suns, Kenya is the founder of the Every Town project focused on equitable land access, granting making and mutual aid. From 2020, she worked as a Co-Director of Northeast Farmers of Color Land trust managing the reparations program, developing Vermont state policy, supporting mutual aid and community programming and fundraising.Rebecca Villalobos
Fundraising Consultant
Based in New York City.
Rebecca is a seasoned business strategist, fundraiser and ethical supply chain expert with a deep passion for education and social entrepreneurship, including equipping the next generation to create impact.Taylor Barnes
Collaborative Steward of the New Suns Community Center in Thetford, Vermont
Board Members:L-R
Francine Miller, Samanta Lagevin, Sarah DanlyNew Suns is governed by a board of leaders with deep experience transforming food systems and advancing community empowerment. The board meets twice annually to guide strategic direction, steward long-term vision, and ensure organizational accountability.Fran Miller acts as Board Chair. She serves as a senior staff attorney and adjunct faculty member at the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems, where she supervises students in the Food and Agriculture Clinic and focuses on farmland access for historically marginalized communities. She also consults privately on projects related to collaborative land ownership and business formation.Samantha Langevin is the Director of Partnerships & Community at Liberation Ecosystem, a Vermont-based network created by and for Black, Indigenous, People of Color to advance racial equity in land, environment, agriculture, and foodways. Additionally, Samantha is also the Vice President of the Board of Directors at the Middlebury Natural Foods Co-op.Sarah Danly is the program manager for the White River Valley Consortium Working Communities Challenge, Food & Farm, Housing at Vital Communities. Prior to joining Vital Communities, she spent five years at the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund as the Network Manager for the Vermont Farm to Plate Network, a statewide collective impact food system initiative.
Principles
Our Principles
We start with people. It's time to widen the set of voices we listen to and make decisions from. We actively center the voices and needs of the global majority - those most impacted by ecological harm and systemic extraction - as leaders, knowledge-holders and architects of what comes next.
Through artistic research, education, ecological partnership and deep relationship with land and sea, we create the conditions for utopian futures to be practiced now as lived reality. We learn from the earth, let it lead. We approach the earth not as something to dominate or extract from, but as teacher, partner, and guide.
New Suns is rooted in community organizing traditions, including the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing and the spirit of Buen Vivir - movements that remind us that justice, land, and collective well-being are inseparable. We are guided by our core values:INCLUSIVE ECOLOGY
we relate to land as kin, believing in the interconnectedness with soil, water, flora, fauna, and ancestral memory.
REGENERATION AS PRACTICE
we take actions that revive ecological and cultural vitality.
LIBERATORY VISION
we experiment boldly and dream expansively.
OPTIMISM AS A STRATEGY
we choose abundance-oriented futurism. Optimism powers invention, community building, and planetary healing.
ARTISTIC RESEARCH
Art is how we communicate, sense, and understand. We use artistic research and practice to explore ecological, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of our shared future