Elysium is a place for social poets.
Elysium for Social Poets is a dynamic incubator where artists, scholars, activists, organizers, and communities develop creative strategies for social impact.
We cultivate people and projects working across art, education, advocacy, cultural preservation, movement-building, and public life. Poetry is our connective practice: a method of listening closely enough to translate experience into language, language into imagination, and imagination into action.
Our work begins from the belief that communities should not simply be audiences for culture or subjects of social intervention. They should possess the agency to document their histories, articulate their needs, imagine alternatives, and participate in building them.
Perhaps the mission of the university is to train social poets, men and women who, upon learning the grammar and vocabulary of humanity, have a spark, a brilliance that allows them to imagine the unknown.
— Pope Francis (He high key ate with this)
We work toward expanded intercommunal participation among historically marginalized communities; stronger artistic activism within grassroots movements; sustainable community-led responses to systemic challenges; and institutional shifts in how poetry, storytelling, and cultural practice shape policy and public discourse.
Founder & Poet-In-Chief
Jayshawn Lee is a Harlem-raised poet, scholar-artist, cultural strategist, human rights practitioner, and partnership builder working at the intersection of art, public life, climate justice, and cultural diplomacy. His practice moves across poetry, participatory installation, public art, education, advocacy, fundraising, and institutional partnership-building, asking how creative practice can become infrastructure for collective imagination and social action.
His artistic work, programming, and partnerships have reached institutions and platforms including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian museums, Amnesty International USA, Poets House, Governors Island, and the Climate Imaginarium, alongside collaborations and activations with global brands including Louis Vuitton and Bloomingdale’s. His poetry and artistic practice have also been featured nationally on NBC’s TODAY.
Lee is the creator of the People’s Poetry Cart, a mobile participatory poetry installation transforming public encounters into original poems; Climate Haikus, an embroidered poetry project nominated for the Human Impacts Institute’s 2025 Creative Climate Awards; Eco Mythologies, an evolving body of participatory sculptural work exploring ecology, memory, and collective imagination; and The Poem Made Between Us, a developing media, event, and public-art series investigating what becomes possible when poems are created through encounters between people.
His socially engaged practice extends beyond exhibition spaces. Lee has developed and facilitated poetry workshops, public programs, artist gatherings, climate-centered creative experiences, and participatory interventions connecting storytelling with environmental stewardship, human rights, neighborhood memory, and civic imagination. He has served for two consecutive years as Amnesty International USA’s Banned Book Café Resident Poet, as a Poets House Teaching Artist, and as Advocacy Chair of Human Rights First’s inaugural Emerging Leaders Advisory Board.
Lee develops cultural partnerships, commissions, and experiential activations while creating paid opportunities for a network of more than 100 poets. His work bridges artists with museums, nonprofits, corporations, conferences, and cultural value, meaningful public encounters, and sustainable income for working artists.
His broader development and human-rights career spans institutional giving, grant writing, donor cultivation, public funding, advocacy, and fundraising strategy. He has managed and renewed multimillion-dollar funding portfolios, helped secure more than $1.4M in public funding, supported multiple $50,000+ institutional awards, and developed relationships across foundation, corporate, government, and individual philanthropy.
Lee holds an M.A. in Human Rights Studies from Columbia University, where his scholarship examined the Black Radical Tradition and the international human-rights system; a B.A. from NYU Gallatin in the Political Economy of Global Equity; and an A.A. in Writing and Literature from Borough of Manhattan Community College. His poetry has appeared in Poets of Columbia and Black Sheep Collective.
His work has been recognized by CUNY’s 50 Under 50, NYU’s openEARTHstudio Artistic-Activism Award, and NYU’s Interdisciplinary Academic Excellence Award, alongside his nomination for the Human Impacts Institute Creative Climate Awards.
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