February 2025 News
February 28, 2025 • 6 minute read
Reviving Heritage: Nant’a Cougar Goodbear and the Canneci People’s Journey
In this inspiring conversation between Southern Artists for Social Change awardees Carey Fountain and Nant’a Cougar Goodbear, the artists discuss Canneciville, Goodbear’s project to reclaim and celebrate the traditions of his community, the Canneci Tinné (pronounced shaw-neh-shih tihn-neh) people. “Our culture is also art,” Goodbear says. “The things we do, like the pottery, the basketry, our dances, our songs, it’s all intertwined.”
NPN’s Southern Artists for Social Change program provides $75,000 project grants to artists and culture bearers of color living, working, and engaging in social change in urban, rural, and tribal communities of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi.
Take Notice Fund Cohort 4 Awardees
NPN is thrilled to announce the fourth cohort of the Take Notice Fund, honoring 30 artists of color in Louisiana. The fund, which awards unrestricted grants of $5,000, is part of NPN’s Southern Programs and expands upon our vision of a world in which artists of color living and working in the South have the power, resources, and opportunities to thrive.
“It’s clear this grant is impactful for Louisiana artists and culture bearers who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color,” notes Southern Programs Assistant Daniel Pruksarnukul. “The Take Notice Fund is supporting these artists at critical moments in their practices.”
“Centered within each of their practices is the preservation of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color’s identities and stories.” says NPN Director of Southern Programs Stephanie Atkins. “Each awardee epitomizes a unique artistic approach and speaks their truths. Black and Brown people’s experiences are not monolithic, and numerous voices resonate with stories that must be told and celebrated.”
NPN National Partner Spotlight: International Sonoran Desert Alliance
International Sonoran Desert Alliance (isdanet.org) is a community economic development organization with an innovative approach that weaves the arts and artists through their programs’ focus on environment, culture, and economic development. ISDA is an alliance of peoples from three Nations: the Tohono O’odham Nation, Mexico and the United States. They are committed to fostering communication, understanding and cooperation among the richly diverse cultures in their region to preserve and enrich heritage in a way that transcends borders and boundaries.
NPN is proud to count ISDA as a National Partner and encourages you to explore their work, including the NPN-supported Sonoran Artist Residency, Beyond Borders Procession Project, currently under development by Christopher Lutter-Gardella and Buck Sandoval.
Spring 2025 NPN Creation Fund Guidelines & Application Now Available
The NPN Creation Fund is Phase I of a three-part program that supports the creation, development, and mobility of new artistic work that advances racial and cultural justice and results in an exchange between artists and communities. Supporting artists creating new work in its earliest stages, the Creation Fund centers intentional relationship building by ensuring artists and NPN presenters apply in partnership. Applications are due May 19, 2025 for projects “premiering” between January 1, 2026 and December 31, 2028.
The Spring 2025 NPN Creation Fund Guidelines are now available on our website.
Eight NPN-Supported Artists Honored in the 2025 Creative Capital Awards
In January the 2025 Creative Capital Awards presented $2.45 million in project grants to “55 artists to create 49 new works in Visual Arts, Technology, Performing Arts, Film/Moving Image, and Literature, as well as multidisciplinary and socially engaged forms in all disciplines.”
Among the winners were eight NPN-supported artists: Dahlak Brathwaite (Ridgewood, NY), Christopher Marianetti (Jackson Heights, NY), Leilehua Lanzilotti (Honolulu, HI), Ashwini Ramaswamy (Minneapolis, MN), Aparna Ramaswamy (La Cañada Flintridge, CA), Ranee Ramaswamy (Minneapolis, MN), Marike Splint (Los Angeles, CA), and Takahiro Yamamoto (Portland, OR).
NPN congratulates these artists and the full cohort of 2025 Creative Capital Awardees!
Upcoming Creation Fund Activities
National tour of Ouroboros, Nejla Yatkin
Evanston, IL
March 1, 8:00 pm at Studio5
(ticket info)
Washington, DC
March 14 & 15, 8:00 pm at Dance Place
(ticket info)
Boston, MA
March 22 & 23, 8:00 pm at The Dance Complex
(ticket info)
Tampa, FL
March 28-30 at Stageworks Theatre
(ticket info)
Houston, TX
April 4 & 5, 8:00 pm at The Ensemble Theater
(ticket info)
Guggenheim Fellow and award-winning choreographer Nejla Yatkin will embark on a five-city national tour of her acclaimed solo work, Ouroboros, starting February 28th, 2025 in Evanston, with additional stops this spring in Washington, DC; Boston; Tampa; and Houston. Ouroboros is a powerful theatrical solo dance performed in the round that combines movement, live music, and storytelling, and invites the audience to engage with its exploration of paradoxes, cycles, and transformation.
TERRESTRIAL: The Sprout, Makini
March 13-15, 7:30 pm
(Stay Late Conversation on March 13)
New York Live Arts (New York, NY)
TERRESTRIAL: The Sprout is the first performance work in the collaborative series of works, TERRESTRIAL. A solo dance performance, The Sprout wonders about the legacy of a single human lifetime as it relates to the broader expanse of a planet’s geological history. It wanders through the terrain of identity amidst the impossibility of individuation. Conceived by Makini (Durham, North Carolina, USA), with co-direction by Anderson Feliciano (Belo Horizonte, Brazil) and Nefertiti Charlene Altán (Oakland, California, USA).
Femenine (world premiere), Kyle Marshall Choreography
March 29, 7:00 pm
Kean Black Box Theatre at Drew University (Madison, NJ)
The Department of Theatre & Dance presents Kyle Marshall Choreography in the world premiere of Femenine as a part of the Rodney M. Gilbert Salon and Lecture Series. The cornerstone of our Julius Eastman Trilogy, Femenine is an evening-length dance set to Eastman’s most joyous works. The minimalist 67-minute composition “Femenine” (1974) includes woodwinds, marimba, voice, vibraphone, piano, bass, and an ocean of bells. Through this 70-minute journey, we will move through the shadows of queer history, recognize the struggles of our present time, and glimpse a queer future full of power, trust and softness.
What We’re Reading
Each month, NPN’s staff and board engage with a reading that helps shape our analysis of our sociopolitical landscape and deepen our understanding of how to embed liberation practices throughout our work.
Led by NPN’s Department of Racial Justice and Movement Building (DRJAM), the Collective Learning Series this month is centering two readings: Aisha Shillingford’s article Building the Cultural Power Ecosystem and Part 2 of Roberto Bedoya’s NPN-supported paper, U.S. Cultural Policy: Its Politics of Participation, Its Creative Potential.
Sage Crump, DRJAM’s Director will be leading NPN’s staff and board in discussion around how NPN should engage in policy and what forms of governance that NPN should be advancing within the field.
Read Building a Cultural Power Ecosystem
Read Part 2 of U.S. Cultural Policy: Its Politics of Participation, Its Creative Potential