VOF FOUNDATION (Vessel of the Future) is a newly established Nigerian-based, non-profit international artist-in-residence space/creative academy conceived as a social sculpture project 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, will offer an engaging, multi-disciplinary, and enabling creative environment for talented local youths - aspiring visual artists, designers, musicians, filmmakers, photographers, environmentalists, and audiovisual technicians - from marginalized oil-producing communities in the Niger Delta. The two-story industrial-architectural inspired structure designed by Ukpong will feature international artistic and curatorial residency spaces, a research library, an architectural and experimental design lab, an audiovisual production studio, a creative academy, a café, a multipurpose hall, a contemporary art gallery. Selected artists and creative practitioners will be mentored and tutored by international artists and creative practitioners in a six-month residency program. The residency initiative allows research and development of a new body of work in the underrepresented 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 catalyze new systems of knowledge production, expand forms of social art, and increase capacities for potential and generative futures.