Stardust Studio

Hey everyone! My name is Miri, and I run a filmmaking and photography organization called Lush Life Films in my current hometown, Mae Sot Thailand. Currently, we are in the midst of opening an art gallery and studio and we need your help.

Mae Sot is located at the Thai-Myanmar border and is known as a hub for trade and migration. Due to Myanmar’s continuous political instabilities throughout the last decades, and its most recent 2021 military coup, Mae Sot is home to a large number of displaced communities and individuals from Myanmar. Additionally, the town hosts an innumerable amount of NGOs and NGO workers, together with the local Thai society.

Working here as a photographer and in collaboration with local NGOs, we realize the lack of career pathways towards the arts, starting with a lack of artistic spaces within town. This largely limits anyone's access to creative resources, discouraging artistic expression. Art has proven to enhance resilience by facilitating self-reflection and emotional processing and it is widely recognized as a tool to build connections between the self and others. Our previous projects have focused on working with local Migrant Learning Centers, offering training in film and photography. Here, our goal is to encourage and inspire filmmakers and photographers of the future, highlighting that a job within the creative industry is as much of a possibility as any other vocation.

To expand our reach within the communities and to address this lack of artistic spaces, we have now decided to open a gallery and studio of our own - Stardust Studio. Our vision is to introduce a new cultural space to Mae Sot, which encourages any type of artistic expression and provides local artists a platform to share their work within the different communities. The plan is to host creative workshops and trainings in film and photography, community movie nights and monthly art exhibitions.

We have already found the perfect space - a large garage building with 8m ceilings and a beautiful Thai-style wooden house attached. The money raised here will make up for the costs of furnishing and preparing the place for the upcoming training, exhibitions and movie nights.

We truly believe that this project will contribute a lot to the artistic and cultural scene in Mae Sot and that it aligns with our overall mission of using the art of visual storytelling within film and photography as means of empowerment for local voices and perspectives.

Please check out our website to find out more!

https://www.lushlifefilms.com