Restore Life/Restoration Studios is a non-profit organization located in the Westside neighborhoods of Atlanta, specifically in a community known as Grove Park. Initially founded in 2009 by Jim Moon, Restore Life remained somewhat dormant until re-tooled in 2015 by Danny Iverson and Charles Harper III. Initially formed as a collective impact non- profit, we spent our first year of operation building partnerships and raising funds. While doing this we discovered our greatest strength: developing and investing in leaders and their visions.
Our mission is to discover effective local leaders, develop those leaders, and disperse resources to assist these leaders in their visions for restoration for our community. Restore Life has 12 Restoration Agents focused on various projects that are making ​Atlanta a better place for the people who are already here. We do community development through community people.
in 2016 our community had a vision to see a studio developed that would be a safe place to create. Multiple people had been shot or injured in the violent and drug invested studios of the community and many of us wanted to see the arts in Bankhead take a positive posture and begin changing the culture. We wanted to see the next generation of artists and creatives have a place they could come to receive loving and professional mentorship that would set them up to succeed and impact our city.
In 2017 we began building Restoration Studios in the Center of Grove Park in one of the historic landmarks of the community. We renovated the building into our offices and created a high end safe and secure studio for our art community to utilize. We used donated reclaimed wood from demolished houses in the community, employed local labor and created a community asset that is becoming one of the hottest studios in Atlanta, especially for hip hop artists doing positive and socially conscious music. We are known for our quality and customer service, but mostly for our mission. We use the studio to network and bring in mentors to train the youth of the community on industry-standard gear and with their future possible careers as artists in mind. We leverage every resource we can for the sake of empowering the youth of the community to be all they can be and create excellent art that makes Atlanta shine. We have created, produced, recorded, and released over 120 songs in the last two years and performed at community concerts like Grove Park Festival.