Explorer Fund for Living Places

Seeking explorers, photographers, and storytellers documenting the overlooked places that make our world extraordinary.

The Explorer Fund for Living Places supports photographers, explorers, storytellers, researchers, and local communities documenting the places that rarely appear on maps or in guidebooks. We believe every neighborhood, village, landscape, and community deserves to be seen through the eyes of the people who know it best. From remote villages and forgotten landmarks to everyday streets rich with local history, we champion creators building a living atlas of the world—one grounded in curiosity, authenticity, and human connection.

medium:film-storytelling

Eligibility

We welcome photographers, travelers, writers, researchers, cartographers, citizen scientists, and everyday explorers who document the places they know through firsthand experience. We are especially interested in projects that expand public knowledge of overlooked communities, landscapes, and cultural heritage while respecting the people who call those places home.
To qualify for this fund, projects must meet the following eligibility requirements:
- Ground-Truth Exploration: Projects should document places through firsthand, on-the-ground exploration rather than remote observation or AI-generated content.
- Original Documentation: We support original photography, maps, field notes, local guides, oral histories, videos, research, and other authentic documentation created by the explorer.
- Overlooked Places: Preference will be given to projects exploring communities, neighborhoods, landscapes, villages, or cultural sites that remain underrepresented in existing maps, travel media, or public knowledge.
- Evidence of Presence: Projects should demonstrate genuine firsthand exploration through photographs, field documentation, GPS records, timestamps, community verification, or comparable methods appropriate to the project.
- Respect for Communities: Explorers should document places with honesty, consent, and respect, avoiding surveillance, exploitation, or the collection of personal information without permission.
- Service to the Commons: Projects should meaningfully enrich public understanding of a place through knowledge, cultural history, ecological insight, practical information, or community storytelling.
- Authenticity: We do not support fabricated, AI-generated, plagiarized, misleading, or primarily commercial documentation.
- Local Perspective: We especially encourage creators documenting the places they call home, recognizing that meaningful exploration often begins with the streets, neighborhoods, and communities we pass every day.
- A Living Atlas: Above all, we seek projects that help build a richer, more truthful understanding of the world by documenting places with curiosity, humility, and care.

Projects (26)

14 submitted · 12 curated

Project	Status	Raised
adopt a tree	curated	$14,777
ToGather Project, Documenting Living Systems	curated	$8,193
ZuAfrique	curated	$111,330
The Living Village	curated	$1,770
Tena - watch the land	curated	$2,932
SITIO-FLORESTA-ESCOLA	curated	$29,340
My Earth Passport	curated	$0
Plantamor Regenerative Community	curated	$49,636
Permissionless Money in Kibera, Nairobi	curated	$5,002
Mybeenz	curated	$23,970
In Bloom, A Macro Study	curated	$4,751
Nature’s Home	curated	$38,720
THE NEW VANGUARD	submitted	$28,168
Akuya	submitted	$234
The Creator Block	submitted	$6,257
Rise Of The Witches	submitted	$153
What Becomes Possible	submitted	$20
The International Artists Project Documentary	submitted	$563
Element of Chawaza	submitted	$1,356
Manure 2 Gold	submitted	$2,097
Voices of my Community: Anthology Project	submitted	$0
Wild Returns	submitted	$15,350
Northern Heritage Archive	submitted	$559
TravelGems	submitted	$12,468
Choras Forest Recovery After Wildfire	submitted	$256
Housing Sovereignty for All	submitted	$8,011