CRUDELAND FOUNDATION is a newly established Nigerian-based, non-profit international artist-in-residence/creative academy space conceived as a social sculpture and dedicated to promoting capacity building, creative development, cultural dialogue, environmental consciousness and change in the Niger Delta. The foundation - which is currently under construction -and will opened next year - will offer an engaging, multi-disciplinary, and enabling creative environment for talented local youths - aspiring visual artists, designers, musicians, filmmakers, photographers, environmentalist and audiovisual technicians - from marginalized oil-producing communities in the Niger Delta. Selected participant students will be mentored and tutored by international artists and creative practitioners in a six-month residency program. The residency initiative allows invited artists and creative practitioners to research and develop a new body of work in the region while impacting local participants' careers. Ukpong says, ‘the foundation is an ethical-social imperative and critical emergency response to social conditions in the impoverished oil-rich Niger Delta, a region that has been historically distressed by decades of political corruption, poor governance, inadequate infrastructures, community disputes, youth restiveness, poverty, and more than fifty years of environmental degradation and pollution. Ukpong believes the space will act as a catalyst in creating new systems of knowledge productions, expanded form of social art, and capacities for potential and generative futures.