Photos: CAI Festival to Launch With Gathering at Astoria Park
Inaugural season lineup includes Direct Action Theatre, James Brandon Lewis, and MasterVoices.
Citizen Arts International Festival kicks off the upcoming 2026 season with a festival launch event set for 12:30PM at Astoria Park on September 7. The event kicks off an inaugural season running through September, featuring contemporary circus, music, dance, and multi-disciplinary performances from around the world, including Direct Action Theatre, James Brandon Lewis and Antoine Le Menestrel, La Compagnie Tilawcis, María José Contreras Lorenzini, MasterVoices, among others. For more information and to RSVP, visit the Citizen Arts International website.
The festival launch invites attendees to Astoria Park to kick off Citizen Arts International with an afternoon of gathering, connecting, and celebrating performance in public space. Attendees can meet the CAI team, get to know some of the artists behind this year's festival, and connect with others who are part of the world of performance and public space. The gathering is billed as an easygoing event centered on experiencing the park as a place for art, community, and unexpected encounters, with no set agenda beyond company, conversation, and starting the festival together.
Citizen Arts International transforms New York City's public spaces into stages for free international performance, participatory art, and cultural exchange. Bringing art into everyday life across the boroughs, the woman-led festival fosters joy, civic engagement, and social connection.
Responding to calls from civic leaders and urban policy advocates to expand equitable access to culture in public space, the festival centers a model of radical accessibility and global cultural exchange, bringing free, high-quality performing arts directly into neighborhood parks and community spaces.
In collaboration with community organizations citywide, the festival's placemaking transforms ordinary spaces into sites of joy, spectacle, dialogue, and shared civic experience. Programming spans new circus, dance, music, theatre, and participatory performance that invite audiences to engage not just as spectators, but as participants in a shared cultural landscape.
Rooted in local partnerships, Citizen Arts International collaborates with organizations including The Ukrainian Museum, Culture Lab LIC, The Bushwick Starr, La MaMa ETC, Citizen Arts and Education, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, NYCEDC's MADE Bush Terminal, Bronx Children's Museum, Barnard Movement Lab, and more to connect performance with community conversation. Through hosted performances, workshops, and intergenerational learning opportunities, the festival creates connections between audiences of all ages to engage with global artists and ideas in spaces that belong to them.
The festival is led by co-directors Meg Araneo, Natalie Rine, and Elena Siyanko. The multigenerational, women-led leadership champions collaboration, artistic vision, and public engagement as central to the citywide festival initiative. With decades of experience in nonprofit leadership, festival programming, international touring, and scholarly practice, they offer a civic-minded, community-focused, and globally informed approach to multidisciplinary performance in public spaces.
'Public culture is civic infrastructure,' said the Co-Directors in a joint statement. 'Citizen Arts International is doubling down on radical accessibility — bringing global performance directly into neighborhoods, free of charge, and using public space to spark dialogue, imagination, and connection across difference.'
About the Festival
Citizen Arts International transforms New York City's public spaces into vibrant stages for free international performance, participatory art, and cultural exchange. Bringing art into everyday life across the boroughs, the festival fosters civic engagement and strengthens social connection.
The Citizen Arts International Festival is produced in partnership with Citizen Arts and Education and the Ukrainian Museum, in affiliation with Social Practice CUNY, with special thanks to the PhD Theatre + Performance Program at the CUNY Graduate Center. The festival is fiscally sponsored by the Graduate Center Foundation Inc.
www.citizenartsinternational.org
@citizenartsinternational
