Creativity is Our Birthright.

RISE was born of a simple, unyielding philosophy: creativity belongs to everyone, and access to sacred third spaces should be fully accessible to the entire community, not just a privileged few.

Our founder, playwright, filmmaker, and cultural arts leader Somalia Seaton, has spent over twenty years working at the sharp intersection of professional theatre and grassroots education across London and New York. Her extensive practice spans creating, architecting, and establishing specialized theatre-in-education curricula for and with leading international theatre houses, professional theatre schools, and academic theatre departments across both the UK and America.

From founding No Ball Games Allowed in South-East London, reclaiming spaces that told marginalized youth they didn't belong, she brought that exact, defiant practice to Brooklyn. In the summer of 2024, RISE piloted a theatre program in Ditmas Park.

Today, we have firmly planted our roots at 1035 Cortelyou Road. We are building an intentional, intergenerational sanctuary for making, gathering, and collective healing. We may Be Likkle, but we talawah.

At the very core of Somalia's work is a deep, inherited passion for gathering people of differing walks of life to commune and reason. This practice, sitting in circles to share truth, philosophy, and spirit, is a sacred tradition passed down from her Jamaican Father and Nigerian Igbo Mother, who would routinely gather their community inside their South-East London living room.

RISE is the natural expansion of that living room. We exist to bridge the gap between world-class professional creative practice and a deeply rooted, on-the-ground community hub. We build with local businesses and partners of the global majority, ensuring our families don't have to leave our neighborhood or be priced out of it to find serious artistic training and radical care. We believe in the power of specificity: particular, named rooms make safer ones.