A five-month residency for six creative changemakers who work across the lives of people, animals, and the environment as one commitment rather than three separate causes.
Named after the desert wildflower that blooms from long-dormant seed after rain.
How we treat each other, the animals we share this planet with, and the living world we depend on are not separate questions. They are the same question, asked three ways.
Almost every fellowship in this field asks a young person to pick one. Fund the climate work or the animal work or the justice work, and set the rest aside. The people who refuse to choose end up without a home — too scattered for the specialists, too serious for everyone else.
Verbena is built for them.
$2,000, unrestricted, toward the work you are already making or the work you are ready to start.
Six people, five months, with guests drawn from conservation, civic life, animal advocacy, and the arts.
Quarterly sessions with founder Jared Milrad, plus introductions across a twenty-year network.
Four days together in the Coachella Valley, ending in a public showcase. Travel and lodging covered from anywhere in the United States.
The residency ends where the name begins. Fellows come to the Coachella Valley for four days — shared meals, studio time, cool nights under the darkest desert skies, and a public showcase presented as part of Movikarma's A Show For A Change Film Festival.
Sand verbena carpets bare ground in a vibrant purple after a wet winter, from seed that has been waiting in the soil for years.
Nothing was wrong with it. The conditions just weren't there yet to thrive.
If you can't explain what you do without naming three causes, this is for you. Artists and filmmakers, organizers and activists, scientists and journalists, builders and public servants. Ages 18 to 30. Already doing the work, or ready to begin it.
We especially want to hear from people who have felt out of place in traditional advocacy and nonprofit spaces — because of who they are, what they believe, or how many things they refuse to stop caring about at once.
Applying costs nothing. Fellows are funded, not charged.
Above all, Verbena offers what this kind of work rarely comes with: a community of people who hold the same convictions about the interconnectedness of us all, and a lasting place to belong.
The Verbena Residency is a program of Movikarma, a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Questions: jared@movikarma.org
