Learn more about our work over the years to illuminate forced labor in the building materials supply chain and create market transformation within one of the largest global industries.

curated by Grace Farms Creative Director Chelsea Thatcher
on view, Grace Farms West Barn

With Every Fiber: Pigment, Stone, Glass demonstrates innovative approaches to ethical sourcing and proves that fair labor practices in the construction industry are within our reach. This installation focuses on three at-risk materials: stone, pigment, and glass.

The stories of these materials are told through a number of newly commissioned artworks, on view in the exhibit: a portrait of Nasreen Sheikh, painted by artist Hannah Rose Thomas, PhD; a painting by artist and professor, John Sabraw, using pigments made in his studio from recycled mine drain off in the Ohio mountains; a new glass installation by Nina Cooke John, Principal of Studio Cooke John Architecture and Design and designer of With Every Fiber; and a sustainable prototype for stone truss work demonstrating engineering solutions, designed by Steve Webb, of Webb/Yates, and fabricated by the Stone Masonry Company.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra, which has a long partnership with Grace Farms, recorded Woven in Tears, composed for this exhibit by Evan Williams. Woven in Tears responds to Hannah Rose Thomas’s portrait of Nepali activist Nasreen Sheikh. The portrait features a shawl created by Sheikh herself, along with the lush nature of the Grace Farms.

The Design for Freedom Pilot Project Program is a unique platform that highlights Design for Freedom principles in action and offers leaders and innovators the opportunity to be exemplars by demonstrating ethical supply chains and leading human rights due diligence in completed works. Three fundamental and inextricably linked principles guide our joint actions:

Find and address embedded forced labor – so that project stakeholders no longer profit from the slavery or exploitation discount.
Pursue ethical decarbonization – ethical decarbonization recognizes the link between the climate crisis and embedded forced labor in our building materials.
Prioritize circularity – by shortening the supply chain by reusing and recycling materials, we reduce the risk of forced labor at the source or extraction level of the supply chain.

There are over a dozen Design for Freedom Pilot Projects currently in design or completed on three continents, with a range of typologies.

Officially launched in October 2020, The Design for Freedom Working Group has brought together more than 100 industry leaders from the architecture, engineering, and construction industries, and beyond, to harness the power of the built environment to uphold and support human rights and remove forced and child labor from the building materials supply chain. Within a short time, the Design for Freedom and its Working Group, led by Sharon Prince, CEO and Founder of Grace Farms, has raised global awareness and created institutional responses through media, high-level events such as the Design for Freedom Summit, and international Pilot Projects.