Honoring
Cydney M. Edwards

Cydney was a tremendous artist, Associate Director at the University of Madison, Wisconsin’s Office of Multicultural Arts Initiative, Program Director of The Miami-Dade Urban Debate League, Education Associate with Young Chicago Authors, youth poet of Chicago’s Kuumba Lynx programs, and immeasurable source of light who embodied everything we love about this work.

As an organization, there will never be enough words, poems or lifetimes to fully convey who Cydney was to our movement or what she meant to generations of Brave New Voices youth. She was the best of us — a light in moments when the candle of the world felt close to burning out. She loved Chicago so much that she made sure to weave her Chi-town roots with art and youth voice organizations wherever she went: from Maui to Florida, Madison to the Bay, and everywhere in between.