we create our freedom
The Underground Rainbow Experiment (URE) is a national affinity network for Black Trans and Gender Non-Conforming (BTGNC) artists, dedicated to building sustainable artist ecosystems through professional development, community events, and the creation of interdependent live-work artist spaces.
Our Purpose
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Teach
Deliver professional development and experiential learning opportunities designed by and for BTGNC artists. -
Amplify
Activate community-centered events that connect BTGNC artists to their cultural sectors, audiences, and opportunities. -
Network
Build lasting partnerships and shared live–work artist spaces that support BTGNC artists’ long-term sustainability and collective growth. -
Love
Create spaces where BTGNC artists can heal, see, and love ourselves and our communities deeply through aligned connection with each other and our world at large.
URE reimagines arts and entertainment as equitable, cooperative, and accessible ecosystems. Grounded in Black feminist theory, African-Diasporic healing traditions, community care, and cooperative economics, we create pathways that transform creative practice into stability, ownership, and collective power—offering a North Star for how U.S. cultural sectors can move from extraction to collaboration while centering those most impacted by structural inequity.
Our Values
We embrace BTGNC artists as leaders and visionaries, supporting autonomy, agency, and creative freedom.
Liberation & Self-Determination
We prioritize long-term stability, fair compensation, and systems of care that allow artists to thrive beyond visibility.
Sustainability Over Extraction
We cultivate aligned connections, resources, and spaces that support collective growth, collaboration, and shared success for BTGNC artists.
Ecosystem Building
We treat care, rest, access, and healing as essential components of sustainable artistic practice and leadership.
Care as Infrastructure
We honor artists as culture-bearers while committing to non-extractive practices, transparency, and responsibility to our communities.
Cultural Stewardship & Accountability
Our Vision
We imagine a world where all Black, Trans, and Gender Non-Conforming (BTGNC) artists have the freedom, resources, and community to thrive creatively and economically; a world where cultural spaces are cooperative, accessible, and rooted in care, where artists are recognized as essential architects of our collective future, and where creativity strengthens communities rather than being extracted for profit.
Through fellowships, events, live–work artist spaces, and a national network of interconnected arts communities, URE cultivates ecosystems that empower artists to lead, imagine, and transform the cultural landscape. This is the world we are building, because together, we create our freedom.
Meet the Founder
Djérae Lucas (he/they)
Djérae Lucas (F.K.A. Rae the Conjurer) is a singer, composer, cultural organizer, and arts administrator whose work bridges sound, strategy, and liberation.
An anthological being, an ever-evolving constellation of creation, gender, and story, Djérae creates cinematic soul music and visual albums that weave jazz, soul, and reggae into narratives of healing, self-definition, and cultural reclamation rooted in African Traditional Religions (Diasporic Isésé) and lived experience.
With over a decade of experience in cultural strategy and arts administration, their background spans marketing and research at the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance, labor and community organizing with Restaurant Opportunities Center United, and program direction and design at Queer Cultural Center in San Francisco, where they manage the Creating Queer Communities programs and curate the National Queer Arts Festival.
Djérae founded The Underground Rainbow Experiment (URE) in response to the burnout, displacement, and exclusion faced by BTGNC artists nationwide. Grounded in the belief that BTGNC people deserve an abundance of love, stability, creative freedom, and ownership of the spaces where they live, work, and create.
Photo taken by Liam Woods
Join the Experiment
We welcome you to reach out to us.
Currently seeking:
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Members (BTGNC Artists)
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Institutional partners (In and outside of the U.S.)
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Funding
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Accomplices (Allies who're ready to help us build)