Fueling Creative Citizenship

Announcing our 2025 Jená Cane Citizen Artist Fund recipients

Jena Cane at the Civic Saturday podium
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The work of a citizen is to help co-create our shared future, to take part in shaping the ways we all live together. And this co-creation–especially when it asks us to dream up ideas that are yet to be realized – is an inherently creative act. To build the type of community–the type of country–we want to live in, we need to play, to dream, to awaken our senses and think in new ways.

Our Citizen University Co-Founder, Jená Cane, knew this in her bones; that being a citizen should feel real and lived—in our bodies and souls. Art is a pathway to try out new ways of living, solving problems, and being together. This is why we created a fund in Jená’s honor, to help support catalysts in our CU network with resources to bring more creativity and art-making into their civic practices.

This year, we are proudly supporting nearly 20 catalysts through the Jená Cane Artist Fund. Here’s a glimpse into how some of these artists, makers and facilitators are sparking serious inspiration, spreading powerful values, and helping bring a little more light and color into this work of building our shared future.

Words Into Action - Dara Harper

In Akron, OH, Dara Harper’s Words into Action is a project blending theater, storytelling, and visual art to spark conversations about civic character with young people across the city. It will begin with a community-created performance, followed by a guided “talk and learn” where participants reflect on what it means to live with civic integrity. Then, using blank book pages as their canvas, attendees will create personal works of civic art—layered with images, words, and insights from the day. The final product: a collective community book filled with this art, binding together the voices and visions of Akron’s neighborhoods, that the town can return to over and over again. Words into Action will turn abstract civic ideas into something tangible and enduring—a lasting artifact of connection, co-creation, and shared values.

Civic Sparks - Sindhu Dwarampudi

Sindhu Dwarampudi’s Civic Sparks will be a short-form video series designed to kindle connection, courage, and a sense of belonging. Each episode, launching this summer on YouTube, will blend personal storytelling and historical anecdotes to explore both timely and timeless civic questions: What does it mean to be a citizen? How do we make space for public grief, counter burnout through acts of care, or reclaim purpose in the face of overwhelm? Far from passive viewing, Civic Sparks will invite reflection and action—with each video offering prompts and questions that are meant to ripple into everyday life. When so much in our digital world is designed to distract or turn the heat up, Civic Sparks creates space for pause, perspective, and the quiet power of showing up.

Citizen Redefined Camp - Leslie Garvin

At this year’s Citizen Redefined Camp, Leslie Garvin brought student leaders from across North Carolina together to explore citizenship not just as a concept, but as an identity and a daily practice—one rooted in responsibility, community, and personal meaning. Built from from Citizen University’s Citizen Redefined curricula, this year’s camp utilized the Theater of the Oppressed, Augusto Boal’s powerful method for using theater as a tool for change. CR “campers” surfaced real experiences of injustice, embodied those stories, and rehearsed new ways to respond—as neighbors, leaders, and citizens. Through movement, performance, and connection, they built courage to communicate, practiced deep listening, and discovered new easy to practice power. It wasn’t just theater—it was a rehearsal for the kind of civic life they want to lead.

The Debt Gala - Ivey Lowe

Ivey Lowe is part of the organizing force behind The Debt Gala—a dazzling, art-filled night in New York City that blends queer celebration to support economic justice. More than a party, the Gala is an extended act of civic love: supporting grassroots groups doing the often unseen work of care and mutual aid; facing hardship not with despair, but with a commitment to joy. In a time when many feel distanced from real avenues for change, The Debt Gala offers another way in—through irreverence, creativity, and shared purpose. From a DIY red carpet to a lineup of drag, circus, music, and comedy, every moment is an invitation to show up fully and build something bigger together. The result? A civic ritual disguised as a party—where joy is strategy, and celebration is power.

Other recipients of this year’s Jená Cane Artist Grants include: 

  • Jinna Kim, who, through a Devoted Artist Music Residency, is  weaving together common patriotic tunes and original music from her short film, Chinese Girl Wants to Vote, and playing summer-spanning sets in Charlotte, NC.
  • Jenna Eastman, who launched the Civic Saturday Akron Film Club, which uses film and subsequent discussion as a medium for encouraging people to consider the diversity of WHO can create civic change and HOW they can do it.
  • Oral Historian Mi’Jan Celie Tho-Biaz, who collaborating with the Black Unicorn Library & Archives and Pittsburgh Queer History Project towards a Public History Summer School Live Interview Event, designed to build community and honor historically marginalized LGBTQIA+ legacies, for ongoing stewardship and strength.
  • Farhana Amedu, who developed “Drawn Together,” a one-month art program through The Melton Center; a safe haven for self-expression that aims to fosters Community, Creativity, and Connections among children who commonly come from marginalized and low-income backgrounds, in West Chester, PA.
  • Lonnie Firestone and Ron Emile, whose organization, Exploring The Narrative, uses storytelling and exploration of theater – analyzing and enacting scenes from acclaimed plays – to forge and sustain relationships between students from different schools in New York, deepening their understanding of each other, dissolving stereotypes, and increasingly seeing one another as integral to a shared society. 
  • Sanda Balaban, who is organizing You Matter and You Are Enough, a musically-rooted Civic Saturday for teens and intergenerational allies in New York City, featuring humanitarian-recording artist Maya Azucena, who writes and sings songs that uplift, empower, and amplify the voices of those whose stories are muted by circumstance.
  • Erin Kelly, who is infusing the annual Indianapolis-based Spirit & Place Festival with spoken word, “Connected by Nature,” featuring local artist and community advocate, Manón Voice will serve as both an invocation and a meditation on what NATURE can teach us about our connection to Earth and to one another.
  • Mumtaz Cooper, a Youth Collaboratory alum from New Jersey, who will be writing a trilingual children’s book on citizenship: We the Kids / نحن الأطفال / Nosotros los niños


“While participation is a responsibility, it need not be chore. Joining in civic life can and should be full of joy and full of love. Civic joy is a commitment to creative possibility in the face of pain and struggle. Civic love is the bond of trust and affection that turns strangers into neighbors and place into home.”

— From, “Habits of Heart and Mind: How to Fortify Civic Culture”

How will you shape your civic work with artistic expression? How can you invite others into imagination, co-creation, and the act of “making stuff” together?