Announcing the 2026 Praxis Project Fund Awardees
October 16, 2026 • 4 minute read
“Organizing is leadership that enables people to turn the resources they have into the power they need.”
The National Performance Network (NPN) is thrilled to announce its 2026 Praxis Project fund awardees. Praxis Project funds support organizational partnerships between arts and social justice organizations to increase the capacity for local visionary organizing. Visionary organizing, as described by Grace Lee Boggs is “organizing which gives you the opportunity to encourage the creative capacity in people.” Praxis Projects are NPN’s investment in the local justice movements of its National Partner organizations.
Praxis Projects launched in 2025 with 11 projects and we are excited to welcome 4 additional projects to this funding experiment. These projects operate at the intersection of culture, art, civic participation, immigration, community organizing, indigenous sovereignty, political education, and racial solidarity. Praxis Project awarded $40,000 to four NPN Partner organizations and local community organizations/collectives. This fund supports experimentation, collaboration, and the deepening of relationships to deeply embed cultural organizations into the local organizing for change infrastructure. These projects move beyond transactional engagement and toward transformative exchange — fostering collaboration, shared learning, and long-term impact.
Commonalities across this year’s cohort include:
- proposals that paired conceptual and artistic vision with tangible material commitment, rather than symbolic gesture alone;
- partnerships in which each organization’s distinct role was clearly legible in the work itself;
- an honesty about uncertainty, with projects framed as genuine experiments rather than guarantees of a fixed outcome; and
- a track record of demonstrated capacity between partners to actually deliver on what they proposed.
The work embodies the strategic intentions found within the 5s Methodology by the Design Studio for Social Intervention. These qualities, more than any single metric, are what NPN looks for in a Praxis Project partnership.
In Brazil, the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) has long practiced mística, using shared performance and ritual to build solidarity and collective identity among its members. The Praxis Project awardees are working in that same tradition: treating cultural practice not as a complement to organizing, but as one of its primary tools. These projects move beyond transactional engagement and toward transformative exchange — fostering collaboration, shared learning, and long-term impact.
The Praxis Project fund is made possible with support from the Kresge Foundation.
2026 Praxis Project Awardees
DiverseWorks
DiverseWorks, Emily Johnson / Catalyst, and Good Medicine Indigenous Music Festival will work together to develop a series of conversations and programs in Houston rooted in decolonization and Indigenous frameworks as a way to build community, support Indigenous-led action regarding land, history, cultural memory, and Indigenous futures, and increase support for Indigenous artists working and living in Houston, Texas / Šakotayišol Nunuš.
Miami Light Project
Miami Light Project will partner with Americans for Immigrant Justice and Florida International University’s Public Humanities Lab to shift narratives around the lived experiences and creative voices of immigrant artists and foster a more inclusive, humane understanding of immigration and belonging. We will develop a conversation/dinner series to uplift immigrant voices, celebrate creativity, cultural connection, and foster empathy and understanding through the arts.
La Peña Cultural Center
When We Win is a monthly political education film series produced by La Peña Cultural Center in collaboration with local movement organizations, the Freedom Archives, and Center for Political Education. Launched in February 2026, the series uses film, dialogue, and community engagement to explore struggles for liberation, decolonization, and collective futures. Each program combines film screenings with facilitated political education, interactive discussion, and conversations featuring filmmakers, organizers, and activists engaged in movements for justice. The series creates accessible space for critical learning, cultural exchange, and community-building across generations and social movements in the Bay Area and beyond.
Youth Speaks
Youth Speaks and Oakland Rising are partnering on a Praxis Project that positions youth spoken word, storytelling, and performance as a driver of narrative change within racial and economic justice organizing. The project unites Youth Speaks’ youth voice and creative expression pedagogy with Oakland Rising’s powerbuilding organizing infrastructure to explore how youth artists can actively shape public meaning, political discourse, and civic engagement in real time. Through an intergenerational process, youth will identify the issues that matter to them and lead the creative and organizing response, while both organizations learn together about how to build more youth-powered movements.
