Shared Studios · Founder · 2014–present
A gold shipping container connects strangers across the globe.
Shared Studios is a public art project and a global network of Portals: shipping containers painted gold, fitted with life-size real-time video, and connected to identical rooms around the world. Since launch they have linked more than a million people across more than 100 Portals in 42 countries.
Shared Studios started in 2014 as an art project. I put a gold shipping container in New York and an identical one in Tehran, fitted each with immersive audiovisual equipment, and connected them. You entered alone. On the far wall, life-size and in real time, was a stranger in the other city.
The prompt was just, “What would make today a good day for you?” Personal, intimate, simple. People talked for twenty minutes about whatever they wanted, which turned out to be their children, their music, their work. Then they came out. And again and again, in different cities and different languages, they said a version of the same sentence.
The first moments and awkwardness gave ground to joy.
Gold book · New York ↔ Tehran, March 2015
The project is about encouraging people to recognize another person as a person, which is the precondition for everything else.
How it started is told here.
The documentary · PBS
PBS made a film about the Portals.
Passion Projects: The Portal tells the story of the Portal set up in Richmond, Virginia, and how it opened the community to the world.
Over a decade
Every Portal we built
Every Portal location — 78 places, 42 countries.
North America 28Anchorage, USA · Andover, USA · Arlington, USA · Austin, USA · Baltimore, USA · Boston, USA · Brooklyn, USA · Chicago, USA · Colorado Springs, USA · Dallas, USA · Greenwich, USA · Ithaca, USA · Las Vegas, USA · Los Angeles, USA · Milwaukee, USA · Montezuma, USA · Montreal, Canada · New Haven, USA · New York City, USA · Oakland, USA · Panama City, Panama · San Francisco, USA · San Juan, USA · Seattle, USA · Sunnyvale, USA · Tempe, USA · Washington DC, USA · Windham, USA
Europe & Central Asia 17Astana, Kazakhstan · Athens, Greece · Berlin, Germany · Brussels, Belgium · Copenhagen, Denmark · Crowthorne, UK · Ede, Netherlands · Ede-Wageningen, Netherlands · Hamburg, Germany · Lesvos, Greece · Malaga, Spain · Oxford, UK · Paris, France · Stockholm, Sweden · Turin, Italy · Utrecht, Netherlands · Yangon, Myanmar
Middle East & North Africa 8Amman, Jordan · Doha, Qatar · Dubai, United Arab Emirates · Erbil, Iraq · Gaza City, Palestine · Isfahan, Iran · Jerusalem, Israel · Tehran, Iran
Latin America & Caribbean 7El Progreso, Honduras · La Paz, Bolivia · Medellín, Colombia · Mexico City, Mexico · Santos, Brazil · São Paulo, Brazil · Walkers Savannah, Barbados
Sub-Saharan Africa 7Addis Ababa, Ethiopia · Bamako, Mali · Johannesburg, South Africa · Kigali, Rwanda · Lagos, Nigeria · Nairobi, Kenya · Nakivale, Uganda
South Asia 6Bengaluru, India · Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh · Herat, Afghanistan · Kabul, Afghanistan · Mumbai, India · New Delhi, India
East Asia and Pacific 5Adelaide, Australia · Jakarta, Indonesia · Melbourne, Australia · Seoul, South Korea · Tokyo, Japan
The gold books
At every Portal there was a book, and people wrote about their experiences in gold pen.
“Life has thrown me a gift — wrapped in a gold shipping crate.”
Visitor · Milwaukee“Amazing how the first moments and awkwardness gave ground to joy.”
Visitor · New York ↔ Tehran“So poignant to be able to speak with people from somewhere that I have only known through our media.”
Maria H. · Wellington College
The Portals Policing Project
Portals to uncover narratives on policing.
Professors Tracey Meares at Yale and Vesla Weaver at Johns Hopkins turned the Portals into a unique national listening platform. Residents in fourteen neighbourhoods across six cities talked to each other—not to researchers—about their experience of policing. It produced more than 850 conversations: the most extensive collection of first-hand accounts of policing in America assembled to that point.
In Milwaukee, the Portal stayed and became something the neighbourhood ran itself.
“I have a lot invested in this community. My daughter goes to high school here, I went to high school here. I even was shot in this neighborhood, I lost my brother in this neighborhood. I’ve been incarcerated before. I’ve been shot. I’ve lost siblings to gang violence and gun violence. I’m a person who a lot of kids look up to in this neighborhood. I have an intimate connection to this neighborhood. And I thought who better to run this Portal than me? And it’s been working wonders for this neighborhood. We been utilizing the Portal in so many ways and it’s been helping control the violence that goes on in these neighborhoods. It’s been doing a world of a difference.”
Lewis Lee · Milwaukee Portal Curator
Research
Two doctoral dissertations took the Portals as their subject, and four peer-reviewed papers used them as a research instrument. Learn more here →
Some of who came through
Case studies
Portals have been deployed across institutions.
Twitter’s most successful consumer-facing campaign
Read the case study →
Deepening culture by connecting baristas to coffee growers
Read the case study →
Inspiring the next generation of STEM learners
Read the case study →
Connecting to a global network of game designers
Read the case study →
Exploring past and present of displaced communities
Read the case study →
Connecting Obama to social entrepreneurs
Read the case study →Global We · with UN Live
Portals powered a global dialogue on climate action.
In 2022 the Museum for the United Nations (UN Live) launched Global We, a live dialogue platform built to put normally unheard voices from the global majority in direct conversation with each other. It runs on UN Live–branded shipping containers fitted with the same life-size video and audio. Shared Studios executed it, alongside hundreds of local organizations in the portal locations.
Sessions are captured, analysed, and carried upward to the formal leaders of the world, including UN leadership. Each month one question opens the exchange. What does home mean to you? What makes you hopeful?
With Cortico, the non-profit that works with the MIT Center for Constructive Communication, UN Live has gathered more than 2,900 recorded perspectives on climate action from 25 locations since November 2022. This is the largest recorded climate conversation assembled to date. The portals are still running.
Host partners include the Anchorage Museum · HAP Services, Cox's Bazar · Wirred Barbados · Procomum, Santos · Parque Explora, Medellín · SPACE10, Copenhagen · Rotary Ethiopia · Science Gallery Bengaluru · Compound 13 Lab, Mumbai · the UNICEF Harsham IDP Camp, Erbil · Impact Hub Jakarta · Impact Hub Nairobi · Centro de Cultura Digital, Mexico City · RAUM, Utrecht · Mercy Corps and Gaza Sky Geeks, Gaza · Rwanda Build Program, Kigali · Victoria Yards, Johannesburg · Opportunigee, Nakivale. Supported by the IKEA Foundation and the Augustinus Foundation.
Partners and hosts
Museums, agencies, camps, campuses, brands.
What it became
Shared Studios showed that presence at life size changes how people connect across distance. Life-size is different than small screens. Noro is the permanent version of the shipping container Portals. It is set up in workplaces and schools worldwide, connecting to one another and to the global network.
- Select partners
- The United Nations · The Smithsonian · Google · NASA · TED · LEGO · Starbucks · The Obama Foundation · The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum · World Economic Forum
Shared Studios
Bring a Portal to your community.
Shared Studios builds and runs Portals worldwide. Join the network.