July 2025 News
August 5, 2025 • 7 minute read
How Devonta Ravizee is Transforming Birmingham with 5 Lil’ Penguins
In late summer of 2020, the musician, filmmaker, activist, and Southern Artists for Social Change awardee Devonta Ravizee released the short film/music video 5 Lil’ Penguins, which dramatized “the many commonplace cataclysms” that occur in the Black communities of his hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. Ravizee explains, “By shedding light on these challenges and opportunities, we hope to inspire social and economic change, allowing the community to take an active role in bringing about this much-needed transformation.”
That short video was just the start of a project that is still growing, with 5 Lil’ Penguins taking on new life as a dramatic series available on streaming platforms, and inspiring two local programs: Patchwork, an educational curriculum that teaches students Black history; and Black Night, a series of panels where residents and local leaders come together to address critical issues in Birmingham’s Black communities.
In our latest Voices from the Network artist profile, fellow SA4SC awardee Carey Fountain writes about the challenges Ravizee has had to overcome and what motivates him to be “someone who encourages change for the Black community.”
Read the profile and watch the 5 Lil’ Penguins short film/music video.
What Happens to Community Spaces When Institutions Withdraw?
“Eleven years ago, I returned to the church where I was baptized. It wasn’t a church anymore; it was being briefly used as an unauthorized performance space.” So begins Ann Glaviano’s essay about how communities adapt when their sacred spaces are stripped of meaning by forces outside their control. Angered by the visceral feeling of abandonment, Glaviano conceives a new show that will take place in the deconsecrated church, where she can guide the audience through its former identity and thereby return the space to what it once was, if only briefly.
But as she develops the new show, it expands beyond the space that inspired it and into DIY art spaces around the area — physical spaces that, like the church, have been abandoned and reclaimed.
“What happens when an institution persuades a community to invest — materially and spiritually — in a narrative about identity, security, right action,” Glaviano writes, “and then that institution unceremoniously pulls out? The people believed. They bought in, dearly. Now the institution is gone. And they’ve taken the center with them. What happens? What’s left?”
Read the full essay on our Voices from the Network blog.
Registration is Now Open for NPN’s Conference in October!
Good news: Registration for our first in-person conference in years is officially open! The NPN Conference is a space for exchange, learning, and practice at the intersection of art, culture, justice, and power-building. It is an opportunity to turn toward each other in the face of systems designed to divide and destabilize, and to build connection, capacity, strategy, and care. It’s also a great opportunity to catch up in person with old friends and create new friendships in our hometown of New Orleans.
Our Network Is Growing! NPN Welcomes Six New Partners
NPN is proud and excited to announce our Board of Directors has approved the addition of six new Partner organizations to our national Network. On July 1, 2025, our community of learning and practice welcomed BOOM Concepts; Double Edge Theatre; Oglala Lakota Artspace; Rainbow Serpent; SLIPPAGE; and TeAda Productions.
This is the first time in a decade that NPN has added new Partners, and the decision to grow our Network at this moment was deliberate. “At a time of very real and systematic attacks on equity and on the arts, NPN is clear-eyed about our choice to expand rather than contract,” says NPN’s President & CEO Caitlin Strokosch. In the recent past, “We’ve been intentional about keeping it at a more intimate scale to prioritize trust and experimentation with organizations fiercely committed to liberatory practices. Now, we are choosing to grow with purpose.” National Programs Director Stanlyn Brevé adds, “What is needed in this moment is collectivity. It is vital to have a strong community of organizations who are engaged in movement building and are looking towards the future. Organizations who understand the political climate and who are fighting for justice.” The Partners included in this new cohort exemplify this call.
BOOM Concepts (Pittsburgh, PA) – A creative hub dedicated to the advancement of Black, Brown, Queer and Femme artists.
Double Edge Theatre (Ashfield, MA) – A cultural cooperative and ensemble collective committed to artistic rigor, research and experimentation, and the natural environment.
Oglala Lakota Artspace (Kyle, SD) – The first community arts facility on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, providing a collaborative and intergenerational space where Native artists have access to studio space, resources, and support networks.
Rainbow Serpent (Pittsburgh, PA) – An organization that advances Black LGBTQ culture by supporting artists who explore emerging technologies, innovative healing protocols, African cosmologies, and multimedia art.
SLIPPAGE (Chicago, IL) – A global think-tank exploring connections between performance, history, and technology; fostering critical interactions; and staying at the forefront of innovative thinking.
TeAda Productions (Los Angeles, CA and Micronesia) – A nomadic theater rooted in the stories of immigrants, refugees and indigenous peoples through original plays.
Play Your Way Forward: Creativity as Organizational Practice
“If what we need to dream, to move our spirits most deeply and directly toward and through promise, is a luxury, then we have given up the core – the fountain – of our power.”
–Audre Lorde
Joy restores us and grounds our bodies and our minds, enabling us to have courageous conversations and be in generative conflict together. When we laugh together, we can cry together too. Card 21 of the Mixed Metaphor Learning Deck offers suggestions on how to identify joy and creativity and channel it into the work of co-creating a new world.
Explore this card and others directly on your phone or desktop with our interactive Mixed Metaphor Liberatory Learning Deck.
Opportunities
NPN Partner the Painted Bride Launches Search for New Executive Director
The Painted Bride has announced a search to fill its Executive Director position with a “visionary leader” who will “take charge of our historic legacy and shape our vibrant future as a uniquely artists-centered organization.” The Executive Director will guide the Painted Bride’s artistic vision and programming, as well as provide strategic leadership, fundraising and financial oversight, community engagement and partnership development, team management and culture building, and board collaboration and development.
For more information, check out the job description (PDF).
Announcements
The Pioneer Winter Collective Calls for Action in the Face of Federal, State, and Now Local Funding Cuts
NPN-supported artist Pioneer Winter writes from Miami, “I hope you’re getting some ease and inspiration this summer, wherever you can find it. Things are getting rougher in Miami, but we’re holding on. I wanted to share that my first-ever op-ed was just published in [t]he Miami Herald. I wish it were under better circumstances, but we won’t stop fighting. In short, [our] mayor is attempting to … slash the arts budget by 52%, folding whatever’s left into the Library system. It’s a devastating move.”
The op-ed lays out the existential threat now facing the Pioneer Winter Collective: after being one of the nearly 700 organizations in Florida to lose state funding, the dance company had a federal grant withheld even though it had been fully executed. And now, Miami-Dade County’s mayor is cutting local government support in half and dismantling the Department of Cultural Affairs, thereby destroying the only official local government advocate for arts organizations.
Pioneer Winter writes, “This is about more than one company’s survival. … Beyond ‘Pride’ month, when so many celebrate queer joy and resilience, it’s important to remember that those things require support. If this work moves you, pour into it. Make a donation, attend a performance, sponsor a workshop. Help keep queer bodies visible, moving and held in the light.”
Please read Pioneer Winter’s full op-ed in the Miami Herald, and share it with others who may be able to spread awareness or otherwise help.
The Painted Bride Celebrates New Home with People Powered: A Project Space Launch Celebration
If you’re in Philadelphia on Saturday, August 9th, you’re invited to join the official public launch of Project Space, the Painted Bride’s new home in East Parkside. The programming includes an opening reception for Project Space’s first exhibition, Receipts: We Have Them, curated by Andrea Walls of the Museum of Black Joy; a preview of Project Space’s inaugural season, Proof of Life; collaborative mural-making; live music, percussion, and dance; an opportunity to meet Painted Bride’s resident artists; plus refreshments, tours, and more.
Painted Bride describes it as “[m]ore than a party — it’s an offering, an assertion, and a refusal to disappear. Come experience what the Bride has always stood for: creative joy, community connection, and the power of collective imagination.”
Learn more about People Powered: A Project Space Launch Celebration.
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).
In July, we explored two excerpts from the book Loving Corrections by adrienne maree brown. Loving Corrections is a collection of love-based adjustments and reframes to grow our movements for liberation while navigating a society deeply fractured by greed, racism, and war. In the book, brown invigorates her influential writing on belonging and accountability into the framework of “loving corrections,” a generative space where rehearsals for the revolution become the everyday norm in relating to one another.
You can purchase a copy of Loving Corrections through bookshop.org. If that’s not an option at the moment, you can read the two excerpts here:
- How to Be Accountable with Your Words (pg 135-139)
- Accountability Begins Within (pg 140-143)
Past Issues
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