The Soul Box Project Blog2022-12-15T19:21:55+00:00

The Soul Box Project Blog

Gun Violence Affects Us All. Art Can Heal.

Last year, late in the day on October 15, I was standing in awe near one end of a 200-foot-long canopy spanning the width of the National Mall. The Soul Box Project volunteer team had just completed installing our exhibit of 200,000 poignant origami Soul Boxes representing the number of U.S. deaths and injuries from gunfire in less than three years. I was thrilled the display reflected the concept drawing I had sketched and [...]

Portland Church Will Help Bring Soul Boxes and Gunfire Awareness to Washington, DC

by Connie Larkman | published on Aug 19, 2021 on United Church of Christ Website The idea was shared by someone at church. Fold a small Soul Box to remember a soul touched by gunfire. The people of First Congregational United Church of Christ in Portland, Ore., have embraced the concept. “This is exactly the kind of activism I could really get a hold of,” said Nanci Tangeman, First Congregational’s Soul Box coordinator. Members of First [...]

“This Loss We Carry”

by Ellen Gadberry and Tim Merritt (taken from blog post on North Decatur Presbyterian Church Website - July 21, 2021) An origami box: two square sheets of paper transformed into a tribute to a person – a father, mother, child, daughter, son, human – a loved one lost to death by gunshot. That is a Soul Box. It’s also the arts activism project that I have worked on with many friends at NDPC for [...]

Those Who Came Before

By Leslie Lee — “It could be therapy, I hoped, for a community that was increasingly paralyzed by grief and rage and powerlessness. It could be a tool for the media, to reveal the humanity behind the statistics. And a weapon to deploy against the government; to shame them with stark visual evidence of their utter failure to respond to the suffering and death that spread and increased with every passing day.”  Cleve Jones, [...]

Authority Magazine Features Soul Box Project Founder

By Leslie Lee—Authority Magazine recently featured me in a rather lengthy article. They have a standard set of questions to ask and it was a bit challenging to answer some of them, like: Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that? Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was [...]

A Thank You to the Soul Box Community

By Leslie Lee —One of my biggest challenges as the founder and executive director of The Soul Box Project is how to sufficiently thank everyone involved.  I have said “thank you”  so many times I fear for its sincerity, even though my heart is in every word. An endeavor like The Soul Box Project did not grow from a hastily published website in 2017 to a thriving national act of ARTivism in 2020 without our passionate [...]

Soul Box Tips from Across the Country

By Nanci Tangeman —You always learn something new at a Soul Box-making session – even the virtual ones! In September Soul Box-makers from Alaska, Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington and California met via Zoom to share their top Soul Box tips: Recycle! Use old magazine pages for the bottoms – nobody will see them. Don’t throw away flimsy paper! Fold two sheets together and leave them together. The "men's tie" stage of folding Paint plain paper with watercolors before [...]

Keeping the Momentum

By Nanci Tangeman – There are so many reasons to look away from the gunfire epidemic right now. A global pandemic. Critical movement against systemic racism. The election season. Each could be a reason to focus our energy elsewhere, yet each is a reason why our work to end gunfire deaths and injuries remains vital. That's why we've kept working. Diligently. Social distancing moved many of our operations into backyards, basements, living rooms and [...]

Powerful Together

By Ellen Stearns —Lives Irrevocably Torn Apart by Gunfire. Every Soul Box holds space for a person killed or injured by gunfire. It doesn’t matter how or why a person was shot. What matters is a life was irrevocably torn apart by gunfire and each person represented in our exhibits is unique. We treat each and every story with care, compassion and respect, regardless of race, cultural background, gender identity, sexual orientation, religious or [...]

We Stand in Solidarity

[from Newsletter of June 6, 2020] A Visual Representation By Leslie Lee The Soul Box Project is designed to be a wake-up call – a visual representation of our nation’s never-ending gunfire epidemic where: --Black Americans are ten times more likely than white Americans to die in a gun homicide. --Guns take the lives of 14 times more black children and teens than those who are white. --Unarmed black civilians are nearly five times [...]

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