Author and filmmaker JM Balbuena is collaborating with artist Lizzy Jeff, founder of Zen & Kush, to expand Green Renaissance into a multimedia experience. The collaboration connects Balbuena’s new audiobook and AI multimedia experience with a companion playlist and Green Renaissance-inspired programming at Zen & Kush events.
Green Renaissance, created by Balbuena and published by Synergy Studios, is a book and multimedia storytelling platform exploring the history, culture, prohibition, and reemergence of cannabis. Its creative universe spans literature, audio, film, AI-assisted historical storytelling, education, and immersive experiences.
The expansion begins with the launch of the Green Renaissance audiobook, featuring music by Palo Xanto and Rudi Fate. An author-led AI series will reimagine pivotal moments in cannabis history through a first-person historical travel narrative.
The next chapter includes a Green Renaissance-inspired companion Spotify playlist developed in collaboration with Jeff. The playlist will connect listeners with the sounds, artists, cultural movements and historical eras surrounding cannabis, extending the experience beyond the audiobook.
Elements of Green Renaissance will also be brought into select upcoming Zen & Kush events through immersive, culture-centered programming. The collaboration is envisioned as a meeting point between history, sound, visual storytelling, performance and community.
“We have spent years talking about cannabis through the language of prohibition, legalization, regulation and business,” said Balbuena. “That work matters and it continues. But cannabis also has a cultural history that deserves to be protected, celebrated and experienced.
Green Renaissance encapsulates both elements. Zen & Kush gives it a space where people can come together and feel it.”
“We are not trying to introduce cannabis as culture,” Balbuena said. “Cannabis has always been a huge part of the culture. We are adding our voices to that ongoing story and creating a space for people to engage with it.”
“Music holds memory, and intentional experiences allow people to reconnect with what those memories mean,” said Jeff. “This collaboration creates space for history, sound, plant medicine and community to speak to one another.”
Jeff’s Zen & Kush is an elevated lifestyle brand and immersive event series that has long created environments where music, wellness, sensuality, plant medicine and creative community exist together. Balbuena’s work approaches cannabis through historical research, film, literature and advocacy.
The collaboration connects those perspectives without claiming ownership over a culture that existed long before either project.
The timing is intentional. As cannabis continues to evolve legally, socially and commercially, Balbuena and Jeff believe cultural storytellers must be present in the conversations shaping what comes next.
Before cannabis became an industry, it was a medicine, a material, a ritual, a muse and a source of human connection, according to the project’s framing. It traveled through ancient civilizations and became part of spiritual traditions, healing practices, resistance movements and communities around the world.
As cannabis enters a new era of public acceptance, Green Renaissance and Zen & Kush hope to inspire a broader conversation. That conversation recognizes cannabis not simply as an industry, but as a living thread woven throughout human civilization.
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