January 2026 News
February 18, 2026 • 7 minute read
Featured Artist Blog
Where Are You in This Story? Hali Dardar on Land Acknowledgments & Colonial Shout-Outs
“What landmarks do you call home? What waterways do you acknowledge? And what colonial systems have terraformed your community?” United Houma Nation artists Monique Verdin and Hali Dardar opened NPN’s 2025 conference with these questions as part of a series of Indigenous-guided conversations to examine our relation to place and each other. During the opening assembly, “Take Me To The River,” Hali and members of Bvlbancha Public Access premiered their Colonial Shout-Out, a video and text capturing the process of dispossession and displacement in this place colonially known as New Orleans.
“What I want the Colonial Shout-Out to do in its best moments,” Hali says, “is plot the track of what has been happening, to show the patterns and the systems. […] We hope people will think deeply on the question, ‘Where are you in this?’ Not just where parts of you are, but where the whole of you exists or resides within this story and pattern. And then, ‘Where do you want to be in this story, and what type of future do you want to see?’”
NPN’s Southern Programs associate, Daniel Pruksarnukul, sat down with Hali Dardar to discuss land acknowledgement practices, the intentions of the Colonial Shout-Out, and how other communities can take on this methodology.
Read their conversation on our Voices from the Network blog.
Voices from the Network
“The Medicine Wheel Is Always Central to My Work”
An Interview with Take Notice Fund Artist Ivan Watkins
To bring more visibility to the Louisiana artists of color who are part of NPN’s Take Notice Fund, NPN sat down with several past Take Notice Fund awardees to talk about their work and careers. Our first interview is with 2023 Take Notice Fund grantee Ivan Watkins, an artist from New Orleans, LA, who has created murals, mosaics, and sculptures both nationally and internationally, and led more than 50 large, community-based public art projects. In this wide-ranging interview, Ivan talks about the power of color and universal symbols, his disenchantment with the mainstream art world, and his multifaceted exploration of spirituality.
Read the full interview on our Voices from the Network blog.
Mixed Metaphor
Standing on the Shoulders of Ancestors
“I see neighborhoods of houses owned by the Black descendants of those who built them.”
The Mixed Metaphor Workbook, a companion to the Learning Deck, contains an abundance of learnings, provocations, resources, and activities. “People, Places, & Communities That Guide Us” from Chapter 2 (page 39) offers an exploration of the people, places, and communities that guided LANE’s work, including inspirational ancestors and movement builders, with Five Senses Poetry examples from Junebug Productions and Su Teatro.
To explore this and other chapters of the workbook, visit the Mixed Metaphor mini-site.
NPN National Partner Spotlight
“Memory Has a Way of Surviving”: Rainbow Serpent Remembers Sacred Lineages
Rainbow Serpent is an art, technology, and spirituality collective and one of NPN’s new national Partners. They presented at TEDxTallin in Estonia with a talk entitled, “What They Tried to Erase.” In it, they shared their vision for remembering and re-embodying the sacred lineages of queer African priesthoods. Their talk confronts the “Role of empire and colonialism in severing sacred connections through violence and erasure,” and shares how they are “reimagining a cosmology of Black queer wisdom for today” using technologies of performance, VR, film, sculpture, and more.
“We came together because we share a conviction: that the sacred lives in us, and that Black queer creativity is a portal to what has been hidden, forgotten, or erased.”
Check out the talk by Rainbow Serpent co-founders Mikael Owunna and Marques Redd to learn about the deep history of queer priesthoods at the centers of African ritual and spirituality and how these priesthoods were erased and exterminated by European colonizers as early as the 4th Century AD.
NPN Award Announcement
Announcing the Fall 2025 Development Fund Awards
The National Performance Network (NPN) is pleased to award $105,000 and leverage $174,588 through the Fall 2025 Development Fund to further support 11 ongoing Creation Fund projects that advance racial and cultural justice.
As the second phase of NPN’s Creation & Development Fund (CDF), the Development Fund assists in offsetting managerial, artistic, or technical needs when developing projects. These needs can include supporting technical residencies, deepening community engagement, relationship building, expanding storytelling, or studio time to prepare a project for travel. Artists can apply independently or as a team with a co-commissioning partner of their choosing, depending on the needs of the project.
NPN Funding Opportunity
NPN Creation Fund Application Period Is Open
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.
Creation Fund artists receive a minimum of $15,000 of unrestricted funding, but unlike more traditional grants, the NPN Creation Fund is structured so that eligible performing and visual artists work with partner organizations to create equitable, long-running relationships.
NPN is accepting applications for the 2026 Creation Fund now through May 18. However, because of the unique nature of this structure, we strongly encourage interested artists and partner organizations to attend our webinar, “Creation Fund 101,” on March 23, to learn more about the fund, as well as eligibility requirements for artists and partner organizations.
Sign up for the “Creation Fund 101” webinar here.
Announcements
Funding Opportunity
Emergency Grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts
The Emergency Grants program from Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA) provides funding opportunities for artists in dance, performance art/theater, music/sound, poetry, and visual arts:
“Unlike many other emergency programs, we offer small grants ($500-$3000) to artists […] who have sudden, unanticipated opportunities to present their work to the public and there is insufficient time to seek other sources of funding and/or they incur unexpected or unbudgeted expenses for projects close to completion with committed exhibition or performance dates. Grants are given year-round, with panel meetings every month.”
FCA is hosting a virtual information session for Emergency Grants on Tuesday, February 24, from 5:00-6:00pm ET. Interested artists can RSVP here
News
Recent NPN Artists and Friends Who Were Awarded Grants by Other Funders
NPN congratulates the artists, Partners, and friends who were recently awarded Creative Capital, Ruth Arts, Joan Mitchell, and United States Artists grants. We’re grateful to be in community with these inspiring artists and cultural leaders.
Creative Capital 2026 Inaugural State of the Art Prize
Renee Benson, Rosy Simas, Gesel Mason, and Shannon Stewart (NPN Creation & Development Fund)
2026 Creative Capital Awards
Benjamin Akio Kimitch; Carmina Escobar and Dayna Hanson (NPN Creation & Development Fund); devynn emory and Amir ElSaffar (NPN Artist Engagement Fund)
Ruth Arts Core Grants
First Nations Performing Arts
NPN Creation & Development Fund Co-commissioners: BAAD! The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, Dance Space, Abrons Art Center, High Concept Laboratories, Queer Cultural Center
NPN Partners: Coleman Center for the Arts, Dance Place, DiverseWorks, First Peoples Fund (via Oglala Lakota ArtSpace), Fusebox, Kelly Strayhorn Theater, LACE, Native American Community Development Institute, On the Boards, Pangea World Theater, Performance Space New York
NPN Supported Artists: Kinetic Light (NPN Artist Engagement Fund) and Urban Bush Women (NPN Creation & Development Fund)
Joan Mitchell
Gabrielle Tolliver and paris cyan cian (NPN Take Notice Fund)
United States Artists
Shamel Pitts (NPN Creation & Development Fund)
Call to Action
Support Minnesota’s Immigrant Communities
Our colleagues in Minnesota have shared Stand With Minnesota’s directory, which comes from activists on the ground working on behalf of the safety and dignity of immigrant communities. The list includes mutual aid groups, crowdfunding campaigns, frontline organizations, legal resources, and other ways to take action, not just in Minnesota but in communities around the country.
See more at www.standwithminnesota.com.
NPN’s Collective Learning Series
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 liberatory practices throughout our work. The Collective Learning Series is organized by NPN’s Department of Racial Justice and Movement Building (DRJaM).
We return to Amílcar Cabral’s “Tell no lies, Claim no easy victories…” at the start of each year to ground our collective learning. Written to freedom fighters during Guinea-Bissau’s war of independence, the piece is especially poignant in the context of today’s tumultuous times. Cabral reminds us to “Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone’s head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace.”
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