Endangered Cultural Arts Exchange
Description
Roots Studio is a social enterprise reimagining cultural sustainability onto new formats through IP licensing. Described by TechCrunch as the “Shutterstock for Cultural Art," we lead the largest Cultural Assets Exchange, an archive of over 20,000 endangered art and crafts, traceable back to every artist across a growing portfolio of 42 communities globally. Partnerships include Patagonia, Chanel, Cartier, A24, NOAH, National Geographic, REI, amongst others, with over 5.1 million products in distribution over multiple seasons, increasing their artists' annual income by 23% - 300%. Roots Studio has been featured in The Business of Fashion as "The Antidote to Cultural Appropriation” and Vogue Business 100 “Champions for Change”, amongst others. By integrating decentralized technologies, we can more profoundly move from extraction to one of respect, reciprocity, and remuneration. Provenance tools are not just a tool for truth-finding, but it can enhance the financial value of human-created expression. By leveraging decentralized ledgers, smart contracts, and cryptographic signatures, Roots Studio is pioneering verifiable cultural IP on Stellar that preserves Indigenous artistic heritage while creating equitable revenue streams. Our platform currently manages 20,000+ digitized artworks from 42 communities, enabling licensing partnerships with brands like Patagonia, Chanel, and REI. We now aim to integrate Stellar’s blockchain to: 1. Build a decentralized provenance ledger to trace and protect Indigenous works. 2. Implement artist-controlled permissions (e.g., “sacred” vs. “shareable” works). 3. Develop a decentralized licensing and payment system for direct brand-artist partnerships.
