“Creating an ambulatory experience keeps you moving forward into the awe and wonder of nature, toward the distant ponds and meadows, less tethered to technology, casting your views upward.” – Sharon Prince
From profound acts of kindness to transformative performances that expand our sense of belonging, certain experiences evoke awe. Awe can be difficult to articulate, yet we recognize it when we feel it – that moment when something vast or beautiful compels us to consider life’s deeper meaning.
In Sharon Prince’s inaugural Grace Farms Lectures with Concert, she described the immersive journey of creating Grace Farms, a cultural and humanitarian center that brings people together to explore nature, arts, justice, community, and faith, as an awe-evoking process. The vision began with the land itself, she said. “Our natural, living landscapes inherently hold awe and wonder, so by preserving and honoring these 80 acres and long vistas, we started off on the right foot.”
Sharon Prince launches the inaugural Grace Farms Lectures with Concert series, which brings together visionary global leaders. The lectures are followed by a chamber music concert curated by Grace Farms Artist-in-Residence Arlen Hlusko. (Photo by Melani Lust)
Prince intentionally oriented the yearslong design of the award-winning River building and Barns around nature. After acquiring 80 acres slated for development, Grace Farms Foundation restored the former equestrian facility into a nature preserve with 10 biodiverse habitats, including native meadows and woodlands. Awe, she noted, can arise from the vastness of nature, encounters with art and architecture, collective gatherings, profound kindness, or even big ideas and epiphanies.
Benefits of Awe
In her lecture Grace and Peace | Space Communicates, Prince reflected on being “highly influenced” by her 16 trips to Iceland’s breathtaking, endless landscapes and her travels across 52 countries.
“Awe provides significant social benefits – it fosters generosity, connects individuals to something larger than themselves, and offers a vital counterbalance to modern life’s individualism, stress, and division,” Prince said. “We become more receptive to new information, new experiences, and life’s deeper meaning.”
In discussing awe, Prince referenced the research of Dr. Dacher Keltner, Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Co-Director of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. In his 2023 book, Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life, Dr. Keltner explores awe as a fundamental human emotion.
“Awe is the emotion we experience when we encounter vast mysteries that we don’t understand,” he writes. “Because we have a basic need for awe wired into our brains and bodies, finding awe is easy if we just take a moment and wonder.”
Interestingly, Prince had already sought to design an experience of “awe and wonder” before encountering Dr. Keltner’s research a few months prior to Grace Farms’ opening in October 2015. “As it turns out,” she reflected, “they play a significant part in advancing good in the world.”
That belief shaped Grace Farms’ early commitment to confront modern slavery. “Our stake in the ground at opening was to address and eradicate modern-day slavery by putting people in proximity to this most brutal, egregious human rights issue – in a hopeful place, so that we, as a society, would be drawn into doing our part versus being repelled which I had often seen since 2001.”
Since opening, more than one million visitors have encountered aspects of awe and wonder through Grace Farms’ initiatives across nature, arts, justice, community, and faith. Interconnected, the collective work has led to outcomes such as Design for Freedom, a global movement launched in 2020 to eliminate forced labor in the built environment. To date, more than 2,550 industry leaders have attended the Design for Freedom Summit, over 50,000 professionals have been educated through global lectures, workshops, and programs, and over 12 Design for Freedom Pilot Projects have been launched across three continents.
“There has been a deeply seeded fire in me to shorten the timeline for the Design for Freedom movement to take hold. We don’t have 30 years to make amends and for DFF to take hold like the Green Building movement did – we aimed for five years,” Prince said.
Design for Freedom has “taken hold” within five years. Besides Prince’s own desire to eliminate forced and child labor in the built environment, Dr. Keltner might also add that awe also factored into building momentum. Awe, he says, can be a “collective” emotion that motivates people to do seemingly impossible goals for the greater good.
Even on a personal level, Dr. Keltner says awe is a “salve for a turbulent mind,” beneficial not only emotionally but physically, according to The New York Times. Additionally, a 2025 study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Natural Capital Project at Stanford University, found that even 15 minutes spent in nature can provide significant mental health benefits.
In the sold-out event on March 7, Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, invited the public to explore how we might reimagine our relationship with the living world in her Grace Farms Lectures with Concert. In her book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Dr. Kimmerer calls for a shift from unchecked consumption to reciprocity and care – a transformation rooted in wonder, gratitude, and responsibility.
Reimagining our relationship with each other and the world may also require hope, that change given all our societal challenges is indeed possible. “A space infused with light communicates hope,” Prince said. “When building, light is one of the critical determinants of spatial dignity.” “The River building was the only building at opening with 203 individually sized and curved glass panels installed on site.” The River building’s open architecture is designed to break down barriers between people and nature, inviting conversation, curiosity, and proximities.
Music & Awe
The elimination of these barriers can be profoundly experienced within Grace Farms’ 700-seat Sanctuary, an indoor amphitheater for lectures, events, and performances. Overlooking the expansive landscape, world-class performances in this one-of-a-kind setting – from Yo-Yo Ma to the London Philharmonic Orchestra – deepen our sense of beauty and belonging.
Yo-Yo Ma (Photo by Austin Mann)
“Music does evoke a sense of wonder and awe for lots of people,” neuroscientist Daniel Levitin of McGill University noted in a 2023 NPR interview. In the same article, Dr. Keltner added that awe-inducing experiences like music can counter one of the epidemics of our time: loneliness. Through shared experience, we feel part of a community. That sense of belonging directly supports our health and well-being.
Grace Farms celebrated its ninth anniversary with a special benefit performance by a 31-musician chamber ensemble of the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO), conducted by LPO 2023/24 Fellow Conductor Luis Castillo-Briceño.
“Our spaces communicate values that will either contribute to disruption and exploitation or grace and peace – human flourishing,” Prince said.
As Grace Farms launched its 2025–2026 season, Chief Strategic Officer and Founding Creative Director Chelsea Thatcher, reminded us: “We all build,” each of us having a stake in advancing good, locally and globally. Perhaps recognizing our individual and collective contribution begins with a pause – a moment to reflect on purpose and possibilities. “I have long loved to perch on roofs, where boundaries are not seen and the possibilities are as open as the landscape,” Prince said. “Seeing possibilities is the beginning of creating something new.”
Sharon Prince on the River building’s single long roof, designed to flow like a “river” along the natural contours of Grace Farms’ expansive landscape. (Photo by Dean Kaufman)
While rooftop gazing may not be always possible, we can immerse ourselves in the awe and wonder of nature, music, architecture, and acts of great kindness. Less tethered to technology, we can cast our views upward and beyond.
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About Grace Farms
Grace Farms is a cultural and humanitarian center in New Canaan, Connecticut that brings people together across sectors to explore nature, arts, justice, community, and faith at the SANAA-designed River building and Barns on 80 acres of publicly accessible natural landscape. Since opening in 2015, Grace Farms has welcomed 1 million visitors from around the world to experience its unique integration of arts, architecture, nature, and purpose.
As a destination for arts and culture, Grace Farms presents innovative programming in music, visual and performing arts while fostering contemplation and connection through architecture and nature. Its humanitarian work includes leading the Design for Freedom movement to eliminate forced labor in the building materials supply chain and advancing initiatives to foster more grace and peace locally and globally.
The integration of cultural programming and humanitarian action reflects Grace Farms’ collaborative approach to generating new outcomes and meaningful change.
Membership
Grace Farms members can visit without advance registration and enjoy a 20% discount on paid programs, retail, and dining, invitations to members-only gatherings, complimentary events, and a welcome gift from Grace Farms Tea & Coffee.
Becoming a member helps us advance our mission to pursue a more peaceful world and supports the preservation of the River building and its surrounding 80 acres.
For more information, visit gracefarms.org/membership.
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