The SOAR Center for Creative Liberation supports Black and Brown girls and gender expansive young people at the intersections of arts, wellness, and organizing in the DC Metro Area.

We build spaces for healing, storytelling, performance, liberation education, radical pedagogy, and collective action.

OUR STORY

SOAR began with a question.

What becomes possible when Black and Brown girls and gender expansive young people are given the tools, the space, and the affirmation to heal their bodies, tell their stories, and lead their communities?

Cierra J. Morris asked that question years ago when she started as a dance teacher and community-based educator. Her students, primarily Black and Brown girls, would come to dance class after a day at school and express their frustrations about what they were – and weren't – learning. They would say things like, "Ms. Cierra, can we learn about Black history in dance class because we don't learn it in school?" or "Ms. Cierra, can we talk about current events because I know the world is messed up and I want to use dance to fix it?" Their questions led to the co-creation of an arts-based curriculum in which Cierra and the dancers leveraged the dance classroom as a subversive space for inquiry, critical consciousness-building, and social change.

As the work expanded, they started with a single cohort, and what we discovered was more than they could have planned for. Girls didn't just participate in programs — they transformed them. They saw their capacity as researchers, performers, historians, healers, and teachers of the adults around them. They built things that outlasted any single program cycle. Then, they started to ask: What’s next?

That is the SOAR model: an ecosystem built with them and for them — one that grows more powerful with every cohort, every story told, every curriculum designed, every stage taken.

We are five cohorts in. We are just getting started.

WHAT WE BELIEVE

We believe healing the body is political. Black and Brown girls carry disproportionate stress, trauma, and grief — and have the least access to culturally grounded spaces for healing. SOAR builds those spaces intentionally, centering Black women's wellness traditions rather than approximating healing through a white wellness lens.

We believe storytelling is a tool for power. Black and Brown girls are constantly narrated by others — by media, schools, institutions, and research that studies them without asking them. SOAR creates the conditions for girls to excavate, develop, and tell their own stories on their own terms.

We believe Black and Brown girls are knowledge producers, not just knowledge recipients. One of the most radical things we do at SOAR is lift girls as researchers, curriculum designers, and professional development leaders for the educators around them.

We believe liberation is not one thing. It is embodied. It is expressed. It is told out loud. It is collective. It is struggle. It is joy. It is organizing. That is why SOAR works across interconnected programs rather than as a single isolated program.

OUR PROGRAMS

SOAR is a living ecosystem — six programs designed so that a girl who enters through any door eventually moves through all of them.

She might arrive through The Black Girls SOAR Fellowship to learn about arts-based advocacy and then arrive at The Embodied Lab, finding language for what her body already knows. Her story surfaces in The Archive Project, preserved in her own words. It finds a stage in The Freedom Stage, turned into testimony before her community. The research behind it becomes curriculum in The Curriculum Table — and she stands in front of teachers, teaching what she knows. Throughout it all, The Sankofa Circle gives her the intellectual and organizing tools to understand the systems she is navigating and the power she holds to change them.

The Black Girls SOAR Fellowship – Community & Shared Knowledge

The Black Girls SOAR Fellowship is the flagship program of the SOAR Center for Creative Liberation. It is how The SOAR Center began. The Black Girls S.O.A.R. Fellowship nurtures Black girls through training in arts-based advocacy, action research, and community organizing to address educational inequities. The first cohort focused on Black history, self-expression, and art-making in digital spaces; the second on arts-based participatory research training; the third on dance and dream-making; the fourth on storytelling and zine creation; and the fifth cohort focused on reimagining monuments and curriculum development to teach about monuments.

The Embodied Lab — Wellness & Artistic Practice

A healing-centered space where Black and Brown girls, women, and gender expansive folks explore movement, mindfulness, and creative expression rooted in Black women's wellness traditions. We believe the body holds story — and that healing the body is political. The Embodied Lab offers dance, yoga, and movement rooted in Black and diasporic traditions; somatic healing workshops; sound healing, breathwork, and meditation; and artistic journaling and poetry as embodied creative practice.

The Archive Project — Storytelling & Scholarship

A research and oral history initiative where Black and Brown girls and gender expansive young people document their stories, activism, and artistry — creating a living archive that asserts: our histories matter, our voices are scholarship, and our lives are worth preserving. Girls are trained as oral historians, podcasters, and publishers of their own work. The Archive Project is both a program and a permanent institution — a digital archive of Black and Brown girls' cultural and political contributions.

The Freedom Stage — Community Engagement & Performance

A community performance series where Black girls use dance, theater, and poetry to name, witness, and challenge the systems that shape their lives. Through site-specific performances in community spaces, partnerships with local organizers, and devised theater and spoken word, the stage becomes a site of advocacy and collective action.

Sankofa Circle — Liberation Education

Rooted in the tradition of the original Freedom Schools, SOAR's Freedom School is a space where Black and Brown girls and gender expansive young people learn what the formal education system cannot or will not teach them. We center Black feminist thought, abolitionist teaching, healing justice, and the organizing traditions of Black and Brown communities. Through workshops, guest educators, and reading circles, The Sankofa Circle builds the intellectual and civic foundation for lifelong leadership.

The Curriculum Table — Youth-Led Research & Teacher Education

Black and Brown girls conduct original research, develop curriculum based on their findings, and present directly to teachers — leading professional development sessions on their own terms. The Curriculum Table produces open-source curriculum guides that extend SOAR's reach beyond its geography.

WHO WE SERVE

SOAR serves Black and Brown girls and gender expansive young people — centering those who face compounding forms of marginalization including poverty, gender-based discrimination, and the particular vulnerabilities of being Black and Brown in systems that were not designed for them to thrive, let alone survive.

JOIN US

SOAR runs on the belief that Black and Brown girls deserve fully resourced spaces to heal, create, and lead. That belief requires investment — of time, resources, and partnership.

Donate. Every dollar goes directly to programming for Black and Brown girls.

Partner with us. We work with schools, community organizations, foundations, and cultural institutions to expand our reach and deepen our impact.

Refer a young person. Know a Black or Brown girl or gender expansive young person who needs this space? Send them our way.

Spread the word. Follow us. Share our work.

The SOAR Center for Creative Liberation is a fiscally sponsored organization of The Progressive Leadership Initiative Education Fund . All donations are tax-deductible.