we create ourselves. we create our belonging. we create our freedom.
The Underground Rainbow Experiment (URE) is an international 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
The Underground Rainbow Experiment exists to support Black trans and gender nonconforming people in generating, studying, and transforming their inner light through intentional self-creation, creative practice, and embodied exploration. Rooted in the understanding that we all have the ability to define and (re)shape ourselves at will; we cultivate the ability to align with our truth, move beyond imposed identities and binaries, and create new iterations of ourselves. We believe that we create ourselves, we create our belonging, and we create our freedom. Through this work, we honor Black Trans and Gender Nonconforming ways of being as vital to collective evolution, using lived experience as a tool to reimagine identity, community, and the world.
What We Do
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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. -
Connect
Build lasting partnerships and shared live–work artist spaces that support BTGNC artists’ long-term sustainability and collective growth. -
Heal
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 believe that to create oneself is the greatest task given to each of us.
We are autoluminescent beings, capable of generating and regenerating our own light regardless of condition.
Our lives are not fixed—they are consciously authored through our will, practice, and imagination.
1. Self-Creation & Autoluminescence
While systems such as race, gender, and class shape our experiences, they do not define our core.
Our essence—rooted in our higher self—is the foundation from which all authentic expression emerges.
2. Essence As Truth
We embrace continuous transformation as a natural and necessary state of being.
Rebirth can occur within a single lifetime; we honor cycles of death, becoming, and re-creation as pathways to alignment.
Iteration is not fragmentation—it is wholeness in motion.
3. Transformation as Practice
We reject limiting binaries and affirm the full spectrum of existence.
Our essence can be bent, reshaped, and expressed in infinite forms that move beyond socially constructed boundaries.
We honor fluidity, multiplicity, and ways of being not yet fully imagined.
4. Expansive Expression Beyond Binary
We recognize Black trans and gender nonconforming people as vital stewards of transformative knowledge.
Their lived practices of self-creation and survival illuminate pathways for collective evolution.
We are committed to building liberatory systems that hold the full complexity of human existence.
5. Collective Evolution Through Black Trans & GNC Wisdom
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. Grounded in the Theory of Autoluminescent Being, we understand that each of us carries an internal source of light—an essence derived from our higher self—with the capacity to be generated, shaped, and renewed across a lifetime. Through fellowships, events, live–work artist spaces, and an international network of interconnected arts communities, URE cultivates ecosystems that empower artists to lead, imagine, and transform the cultural landscape. We believe we create ourselves, we create our belonging, and we create our freedom—this is the world we are building together.
Meet the Founder
Djérae Sampson Lucas (he/they)
Djérae Sampson Lucas 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 their lived experience reflected in the Theory of Auto-luminescent Being.
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)