The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation at the University of Pennsylvania is thrilled to announce the recipients of our 2025 Student Grant Awards. We are proud to share this list of 15 student projects that exemplify the many voices and viewpoints of the Penn creative community.
Application evaluations and award decisions were challenging and not taken lightly. This year’s applicant pool was once again our largest to date and comprised a remarkable array of proposals across disciplines and practices.
Supported projects demonstrate a wide range of creative traditions, such as film, music, visual arts and design, poetry, and dance. A sampling of this year’s grantees includes:
- An exhibition at Penn celebrating the work of Black artists
- A consideration of design and psychedelics through the perspective of landscape architecture
- An immersive multimedia operetta based on a book exploring what it means to be human
- An initiative to document narratives of trans/feminist resistance across Latin America
- A curated platform for refugees in Kenya to share their stories through film
- A print series archiving contemporary histories of Philadelphia
The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation congratulates all 2025 Student Grant Award recipients!
Sachs Program 2025 Student Grant Awards
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Andrew Burke
School of Arts & Sciences, Music Composition, PhD Candidate
The Most Human Human (working title) — an immersive, multimedia operetta loosely inspired by the book The Most Human Human by Brian Christian.
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Alvin Luong
Weitzman School of Design, Graduate Fine Arts, MFA Candidate
Before I was Coral, I was a Refugee — a multimedia project that foreshadows a future of climate migration through a deep investigation into Bidong Island in Malaysia.
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Azsaneé Truss
Annenberg School for Communication, PhD Candidate
What World? — a curated group exhibition at The Arts League of West Philadelphia that reveals how artists (and society) are experiencing a surreal global political moment.
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Celine Choi
College of Arts & Sciences, Political Science, English, C’25
South Korean Feminist Poetics: Gender, Han, and the Violence of the Archive (Mundan) — an exploration of contemporary South Korean feminist poetics that resist patriarchal structures.
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Darren Tindall
Weitzman School of Design, Graduate Design, MLA Candidate
Psycheprocity: Designing for Psychedelics and Psychedelics for Design — a creative consideration of psychedelics and design through fieldwork, workshops, and case studies.
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Ejun Mary Hong and Justin Nam Duong
College of Arts & Sciences, Fine Arts, C’25; College of Arts & Sciences, Physics and Music, C’27
Footprints in the Sand — a mixed-media animated documentary that invites four lymphoma patients from South Korea to share their stories with the world.
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Farrah Rahaman
Annenberg School for Communication, PhD Candidate
Palimpsest — a short speculative film recounting the moment on the brink of deportation, in which visionary cultural organizer and writer Claudia Jones sets fire to her entire personal archive.
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Katie Hindle
College of Arts & Sciences, English, Fine Arts, and French, C’26
Philadelphia Through Copper: Intaglio Depictions of Contemporary Histories — a print series that portrays Philadelphia social scenes as a form of archival contemporary history.
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Lavanya Neti
Wharton School, Statistics and Finance, W’25
Beneath the Surface: Amplifying the Voices of Divers — an immersive 360-degree mini-documentary highlighting the impacts of climate change on marine life and the livelihoods of the diving community.
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Lucila Rozas Urrunaga
Annenberg School for Communication, PhD Candidate
Contra-Archivx — a transnational initiative that documents and shares the practices and narratives of trans/feminist resistance across Latin America.
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Max Johnson
School of Arts & Sciences, Music, PhD Candidate
Web of Sound — a series of workshops, rehearsals, and experimental sessions to develop and refine a concert-length composition by composer and bassist Max Johnson.
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Mira Kwon and Taj Swaminathan-Sipp
College of Arts & Sciences, Cinema and Media Studies, C’25; College of Arts & Sciences, Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, C’25
Voices of Kakuma: A Collaborative Curation with FilmAid Kenya — a collaboration between Penn students and FilmAid Kenya — a nonprofit organization that teaches filmmaking in the Kakuma and Dadaab refugee camps of Kenya — to curate an exhibit and film screening that will present the stories of refugees on their terms.
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Monolith (Student Group)
(Sade K. Taiwo) College of Arts & Sciences, Health and Societies, C’25; (Abigail Florestal) College of Arts & Sciences, Biochemistry, C’25
Monolith Annual Spring Exhibit — an annual exhibit that celebrates and uplifts Black visual art while connecting with people across the city of Philadelphia.
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Penn Ballet (Student Group)
(Lisa Slattery) College of Arts & Sciences, Neuroscience, C’26
Penn Ballet: Winter Showcase — a production of student-choreographed pieces and classical excerpts from The Nutcracker.
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Sithabo Mathe
College of Arts & Sciences, Fine Arts, C’25
Penn Engineering, Computer Engineering, SEAS’25Naive Photographs — a book project culled from a series of black and white photographs documenting the artist’s first return to Zimbabwe, which coincided with the 2023 presidential elections.
Sachs Program 2025 Grant Awards
Additional information about each 2025 Student Grant Award will be published on the Sachs Program website with the upcoming announcement of all Sachs Program 2025 Grant Awards.
Please join us on Monday, April 28, 2025, for an announcement celebration of all Sachs Program 2025 Grant Awards at an event in the Arts Lounge at the Annenberg Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
All are welcome, and we hope to see you there!