Our
Network

516 ARTS is a non-collecting contemporary art museum in the center of Downtown Albuquerque that celebrates thought-provoking art in the here and now. Our mission is to connect contemporary artists and diverse audiences. 516 ARTS presents relevant exhibitions and public programs, which feature a mix of local, national, and international artists and inspire curiosity, risk-taking and creative experimentation.

Founded in 2006, 516 ARTS engages with timely themes such as the environment, immigration, and the north/south axis of cultural exchange with a focus on Latin America. Our public programs include collaborations with museums and organizations around the region and beyond, public art projects, guest speakers, public forums, the 516 WORDS literary series, workshops, performances and special events. Education programs include exhibition tours for schools and community groups with curriculum support materials for teachers, youth activities, and hands-on workshops with guest artists.

7 Stages is a professional, non-profit theatre company devoted to engaging artists and audiences by focusing on the social, political, and spiritual values of contemporary culture. 7 Stages gives primary emphasis to social justice work and the support and development of new plays, new playwrights, and new methods of collaboration. With over 40 years of producing, presenting, and educating, we continue to offer a home to artists and activists as a global center for the creation of vital conversations through collaborative performance. By creating relationships with and presenting high quality international and national artists, 7S exposes Atlanta to new art and ideas, while supporting the growth of our local community and peer companies that embody our mission.

Alberto Puerto Music creates new classical and guitar music compositions and collaborates across disciplines in the Miami, FL area. Our latest project is a Latin American songbook recording album that crosses Latin American musical song forms with arrangements centered around the classical guitar.

All My Relations Arts honors and strengthens relationships between contemporary American Indian artists and the living influence of preceding generations, between artists and audiences of all ethnic backgrounds, and between art and the vitality of the American Indian Cultural Corridor.

The Arab American National Museum (AANM) is the first and only museum of its kind in the United States devoted to recording the Arab American experience. Since opening in 2005, AANM’s mission has been to document, preserve and present the history, culture and contributions of Arab Americans. Our exhibitions cover the Arab world and the history of Arab Americans from the first immigrants who arrived in the late 19th century to today. We offer safe spaces for open dialogue and community gatherings and provide educational opportunities for children and students of all ages to expand their knowledge and appreciation of Arab American history and culture. We work with established and emerging artists of all artistic mediums to uplift their work and share it with our regional and national audiences. All of this is intended to build community through the arts by showcasing our nation’s cultural diversity in thoughtful and impacting ways.

Art2Action creates, develops, produces and presents original theatre, interdisciplinary performances, performative acts and progressive cultural organizing. We support women artists, artists of color, queer or trans* artists, and creative allies. We are dedicated to these values, and hold them to be of equal importance: Cultural Equity & Aesthetic Innovation, Artistic Quality & Community Value, Performativity & Impact.

Whether developing new work, touring, or acting as a presenter, community process and meaningful engagement is central to all our work. As a mission-driven, artist-led organization, we increase capacity, extend and deepen our impact through multi-year partnerships with local and national institutions, organizations and networks.

Art2Action is incorporated in the State of New York, and the State of Florida. As a presenter, we work closely with our Tampa partners, from the University of South Florida (USF) to the Straz Center for the Performing Arts, to local community service organizations. Presenting venues vary in size and technical capacity, from 50-500 seats; identifying the appropriate partners for each residency is key to our process.

Artist Corps CONNECTS New Orleans music education initiatives with local and national resources to build strong music programs with:

• EMPOWERED Educators
• EMBEDDED Artists and Culture Bearers
• EQUIPPED School Leaders
• ENGAGED Communities
• EXCELLENT Opportunities for Young People

 
Artist Corps:

AFFIRMS that music is young people’s birthright, innovation is New Orleans’ legacy, and investing in the next generation is our shared responsibility.

COMMITS to establishing pathways to excellent, comprehensive, sequential music education for every young person in New Orleans.

HONORS New Orleans educators, artists, and culture bearers – valuing their expertise and amplifying their voices in developing strategy for advancing music education.

CELEBRATES the many dedicated schools, programs, cultural organizations, families, funders, resource providers and supporters that provide music education in New Orleans – and strives to coordinate efforts and focus resources to increase collaborative impact.

CENTERS equity and justice in our work, cultivating systemic opportunity that enables young people to engage in their cultural legacy and grow as musicians and as individuals.

MODELS a reflective practice that respects tradition, integrates diverse perspectives, fosters growth and embraces change.

ArtPower’s mission is to present performing and media arts that engage, energize, and transform the diverse cultural life of the University and San Diego. Through ArtPower’s curation of artists representing a multitude of diverse ethnicities, cultures, and identities we strive to develop more empathetic students and community members that are better prepared to engage in the world around them. Through their participation in high quality artistic programs the program’s goal is to broaden thinking and awareness, deepen understanding, and encourage new dialogues across UC San Diego and the community.

The Arts and Politics Collective consists of a small group of artists and scholars who ask: What is, or ought to be, the relationship between aesthetics and politics? To explore this question, we are creating a cycle of performance works that challenges normative ways of viewing the arts.

The three experimental plays explore music, dance, and the visual art. Each piece engages a canonical work of art: Beethoven’s “Grosse Fuge” (1825), Oscar Wilde’s “Salome” (1891), and Picasso’s “Guernica” (1937). Each illuminates our own time. The works demonstrate how racial and cultural differences affect the arts. Our aim, in the words of Toni Morrison, is to make the work “unquestionably political and irrevocably beautiful.”

To learn more: artsandpoliticsplays.com

Ashé Cultural Arts Center is the primary initiative of Efforts of Grace. Its mission is to promote, produce, create and support programs, activities and creative works that emphasize the positive contributions of people of African descent. We pride ourselves on our commitment to and experience with collaboration and on our ability to combine art, culture and community into a variety of activities, events, performances and exhibits. We are a multi-disciplinary cultural arts organization with a focus on performance art.

We encourage collaborations among and between artistic disciplines and artists in the Ashé artistic family, independent artists, and artists associated with other arts organizations. Ashé collaborates among its directing team to select artists and identify themes of interest that emerge from our artistic family and the community.

Connecting cultural expression and social change, Asian Arts Initiative uses art as a vehicle to explore the diverse experiences of all communities which include Asian Americans. Located in Philadelphia’s Chinatown North, Asian Arts Initiative is a multidisciplinary arts center offering exhibitions, performances, artist residencies, youth workshops, and a community gathering space. Here, all of us can view and create art that reflects our lives, and think critically, creatively about the future we want to build for our communities.

Rising Water is working to amplify the voices of regional communities threatened by rising sea levels through artistic expressions. Local artists have been commissioned to work with threatened communities to create new performance art reflective of the traditions, values, and beliefs that will be lost as rising seas swallow these communities. Through public performances of these works, Rising Water will creatively inform, challenge, and inspire the broader community to take positive action against sea level rise and climate change.

Your support helps us:

• Equitably pay our participating composers, poets, video artists, and performers
• Partner with local schools to hold student poetry contests (winner’s work will be set to
  music by a Rising Water composer)
• Rent community-accessible rehearsal and performance space
• Provide ticket-free performances

If today is your day to give, then please use the donation button on this page. Thank you!

The Bates Dance Festival is an international destination for dance located in Lewiston, Maine. BDF provides rigorous training for dancers, offers residencies for practicing dance artists, and presents performances by a renown roster of local, national, and international dancemakers. Serving Maine, as well as a diverse community of dance audiences and arts lovers, BDF offers unprecedented access to and fosters deep appreciation for contemporary dance. BDF supports approximately 100 artists each summer and 300 students, ages 6-74. Curatorial priorities include contemporary practice, transparent process, diverse dancing bodies, collaboration, and community-designed and engaged work.

The award-winning Birmingham Black Repertory Theatre Collective is a grassroots theatre incubator that operates as a collective of individuals invested in preserving a culture of Black theatre in the city of Birmingham. Our goal is to showcase and introduce Black theatrical work to the city of Birmingham through staged readings, live performance, educational programming for student & professional theatre practitioners through an Afro-Centric lens. BBRTC has a continued laser focus on telling stories of people across the African diaspora who live in the margins and is committed to hiring within those groups as well including; Black women, Black queer people, and Black disabled people. Learn more at theBBRTC.com.

The Black Cherry Tree Project (BCTP) is committed to challenging racial violence and white supremacy through art, dialogue, education, and nature. Focused on honoring the 33 documented lynching victims of Jefferson County, Alabama, BCTP collaborates with local artists to create commemorative artworks and plant Black Cherry trees as living memorials across Birmingham public parks. Each tree is accompanied by a custom-designed marker with a QR code linking to the victims’ stories and an online archive of artworks created in their honor, which are also publicly exhibited to engage and educate the community. As BCTP grows, we are building a reproducible framework to expand “seeds” nationwide—planting trees across states to memorialize lynching victims and support community healing. Through these efforts, public dialogue, and youth education, BCTP aims to inspire policy change and continue the work of dismantling white supremacy for lasting social justice.

Bunnell Street Arts Center is situated on Nichiłt’ana, lands of Ninilchik Village Tribe, stewarded for thousands of years, since time immemorial by Indigenous people of this region. We are committed to resisting colonialism by supporting Indigenous-led programs and artistic practices. Bunnell sparks artistic inquiry, innovation, and equity to strengthen the physical, social and economic fabric of Alaska and beyond. Through exhibits, talks, Bunnell workshops, residencies, artist-in-schools, performances and creative placemaking actions Bunnell increases opportunities, benefits, and resources for a widespread geographic area of diverse rural communities, from Indigenous and Russian Old Believer villages to BIPOC, LGBTQ+, youth at risk, and low-income Alaskans. Bunnell amplifies the voices of disparate, isolated, and historically marginalized communities in educational youth outreach activities, training for community leaders, artists’ projects, and leadership on our Board of Directors. Bunnell seeks diverse participation in programs that challenge systemic White supremacy and elevate Indigenous life ways, build artists’ power and interweave a constellation of support for artists across the circumpolar north and beyond.

Bvlbancha Public Access is a media channel based in Bulbancha, Louisiana. We collect stories, facilitate art, and produce events on Indigenous identity in the Gulf South.

A multinational learning community of Spanish and English–speaking popular theater artists, researchers, students, teachers, and enthusiasts of Caribbean culture and performance. We meet online and face-to-face to share work, ideas, and resources.

The mission of CARPA San Diego is to create a space where Latino artists can showcase their talent through theater, dance, music, and other artistic expressions, reaching out to the community in a non-traditional setting.

Founded in 1969, The Carpetbag Theatre is a Knoxville-based professional, multi-generational ensemble company dedicated to the production of new works. We work in partnership with community artists, activists, cultural workers, storytellers, and leaders to create original, theatrical works. Our mission is to give artistic voice to the issues and dreams of people who have been silenced by racism, classism, sexism, ageism, homophobia and other forms of oppression. Our artistic vision is rooted in the practice of revealing, reframing, and reclaiming the hidden stories of our communities; believing that this process is what reveals the beauty of our collective experiences.We also believe that this process has the power to reframe our experiences and provide the kinds of healing it takes to release us from strongholds that have held us hostage over time.

The Carver Community Cultural Center is a multicultural, multidisciplinary performing and visual arts center who celebrates the diverse cultures of our global community, with an emphasis on its African American heritage by presenting challenging artistic presentations, arts education programs and community outreach activities. The Carver Development Board raises funds to support the arts education and community engagement programs of the Carver Community Cultural Center. The Carver is located on the near East Side of San Antonio, historically home to the majority of San Antonio’s Black community and currently still one of the most under-resourced communities in the City, predominately populated by people of color.

Central District forum for Arts & Ideas is the only organization in the Seattle area solely dedicated to presenting emerging Black arts, artists, and ideas. Our mission is to present and produce Black cultural programs that encourage thought and debate, with a vision of inspiring new thoughts and challenging assumptions about Black culture. We believe in the value of cultural and geographic community, creativity, identity and passion. By focusing on community, we commit to collective efforts that celebrate the diversity of the Black experience. By focusing on creativity, we honor the role of artistic expression and disparate ideas in inspiring conversations leading to social and cultural change. By focusing on identity, we create spaces, experiences and conversations that allow people and communities to see themselves in the arts and ideas we present. By focusing on passion, we acknowledge the intensity and generosity of the work of artists, the interest of audiences, the intellect of thought leaders and the investments of supporters. These values serve as our strategic frame and guide day-to-day operations and curatorial decisions.

Cicada Radio is a New Orleans–based audio production company and podcast network focused on equity, environmental justice, and artistic expression.

The Coleman Center for the Arts is a 36-year old arts organization located in rural west Alabama. Our work is done through five main programmatic arms: arts education for area youth and adults; a community-based artists’ residency that produces socially engaged public art projects and events; exhibitions that feature the work of regional artists; a free, public community garden that promotes small-scale food production; and Pop Start, a storefront space for artists-community experimentation.

Creating New Futures is an arts worker-driven effort speaking to the dance and performance field in what is currently called the United States.

In Phase 1, a group of arts workers came together to create the “living document” Creating New Futures: Working Guidelines for Ethics & Equity in Presenting Dance & Performance, which attempts to frame principles and guidelines for conversations within the dance and performance field to shape our futures in light of the extraordinary chaos and disruption caused by COVID-19. The document addresses concerns regarding cancellations and what future work, funding, survival might look like. More pressingly, it looks beyond the present moment to address longstanding inequities, deficiencies, and power imbalances in the field.

Phase 2 is now emerging and is formed by working groups that include: Black and Indigenous Survivors group, Disability+ group, Intersectional Riders group, and Contracts/Force Majeure group with potential groups in discussion like the Natureculture Watershed group.

The Creative Response Network (CRN) is an emergent and collaborative effort led by a consortium of local arts leaders representing diverse, critical, and justice-focused arts-organizing efforts in New Orleans. Meeting monthly since the start of the pandemic, CRN serves as a resource and advocacy hub. CRN’s approach seeks to reimagine the region’s arts landscape to one that centers on equity, justice, accountability, and sustainable livelihoods through the production, presentation, preservation, advocacy, and cultivation of art. The Network works to address immediate and long-standing forms of inequality and exploitation within the arts through working groups. CRN work focuses on the complicated relationships between place, race, gender, disciplinary practices, and leadership inequality that continues to plague New Orleans’ cultural economy.

Creative Response Network is a New Orleans-based initiative for art, movement building, and radical possibilities. Initiated by Antenna at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March of 2020 and led initially by Antenna, Ashe Cultural Arts Center, and Junebug Projection, CRN provides direct support to artists while engaging a network of 70+ arts and cultural organizations, projects, collectives, and individuals to advance a more just and transformative ecology of equity and sustainability within the arts and cultural sectors of New Orleans and Southeast Louisiana.

D’Vorah Dance Arts’ mission is to create dance works that shift perspectives inspired by the depths of our human experience. I am seeking support to fund the creative efforts in the development and presentation of The Day You Painted The Stars (a work that was created in response to processing grief with the use of meditation and traveling through the sub-conscious), The Witch of Wellington (a whimsical work inspired by growing up in the suburbs finding that your imagination has turned around and upside down from a unique encounter with a perceived witch), and investigating new ideas during a creative retreat in the spring of 2024. Throughout this process, I will also offer master classes that share my choreographic process and workshops that inspire non-dancers to utilize movement as a healing tool.

Rooted in the United States capital, Washington D.C., Dance Place supports movement artists by creating opportunities for creative development, performance, and education. By investing deeply in artists and centering those who have been systemically excluded from such opportunities, we strengthen the dance field.

Dance Place accomplishes its mission by: Supporting the creation and development of new dance work by artists and companies from the Washington, DC area and around the United States. Presenting dance performances by artists and companies from the Washington, DC area, from around the United States, and from around the world of a variety of dance genres in our theater, online, and in locations throughout the D.C. metro area; Providing opportunities for youth and adult dancers to engage in a wide range of dance classes in our dance school; Serving our city and the arts community therein, through inclusive ticketing options, scholarships to our educational programs, broad access to programs both on our campus and throughout the city, and civic participation in advocacy, local government, and neighborhood growth.

DeDeaux has merged art with new technologies for decades to broaden art and audience engagement. Early works from the 1970s such as CB Radio Booths were works of mobility that travelled the communication systems and streets of underserved communities. Mid-career works were large-scale installations and pioneering immersive, synchronized media environments including Soul Shadows, Women Eating, and The Face of God that premiered at the 1996 Olympics. Latter works, including Project Mutants, The Goddess Fortuna and The MotherShip Series, are inspired by environmental challenges.

Works by DeDeaux have been exhibited nationwide including Whitney Museum of American Art, Armand Hammer Museum, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art of Connecticut, The Contemporary / Baltimore, Canadian Film Society of Toronto, and Ballroom Marfa, Marfa TX. Recent exhibitions include her acclaimed Prospect.2 20,000 square foot multimedia installation The Goddess Fortuna and Her Dunces, and the touring MotherShip Series that adapts the theory that mankind has 100 years left – not to save Earth but to leave. Current exhibitions include a solo exhibition I’ve Seen the Future and It Was Yesterday at Arthur Roger Gallery / New Orleans, her exhibition at MASSMoCA Thumbs Up for the MotherShip, and her participation in the international exhibition Alrededoreson on Chile’s Island of Chiloe in 2018.

DeDeaux is a 1997 Rome Prize recipient as Knight Foundation Visiting Southern Artist at the American Academy in Rome and selected among the eight most important southern U.S. artists by the 1996 Olympics. She is a 2013 Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Artist in Residence, the 2014 Prospect New Orleans Triennial Alumni of the Year, and the 2015 Artist in Residence at Tulane University’s Center for Bioenvironmental Research.

DeDeaux’s work is the in-depth subject of the concluding chapter of Discipline and Photograph, a book by art theorist James Huginin of Chicago Art Institute and, Five Video Artists by Larry Qualls, Associate Editor for Performing Arts Journal, MIT Press. Her work has been reviewed in numerous publications including New York Times, Art in America, USA Today and ArtForum, and the focus of televised features including CBS Sunday Morning and Canada Public Broadcasting’s series The Future.

DeDeaux is also a writer, publisher and founding editor of Arts Quarterly. She is among the eight founders of the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans and served on its Board throughout its formative years. She produced and hosted Louisiana’s first radio program on the arts, Art Now, for National Public Radio affiliate WWNO. As an educator DeDeaux established and directed a comprehensive arts program for a 6,000 inmate facility in Orleans Parish, Louisiana and has been Visiting Artist at a number of institutions including Maryland Institute College of Art, and the Texas A&M Visualization Laboratory within the College of Architecture.

DeDeaux is the winner of the 1976 Demolition Derby in the Louisiana Superdome as the only female contestant in a field of 35 drivers.

The mission of Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator, Inc. is to promote, nurture, and cultivate the vision and diverse talents of emerging artists from the Caribbean and Latin Diaspora through our exhibitions program, artists-in-residence program, international exchange programs, and education and outreach activities that celebrate Miami-Dade County’s rich cultural and social fabric.

DVCAI is attuned to a regional understanding of Caribbeanness, quite different from different parts of the country. Miami Caribbean space is a heavy presence of Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, the English speaking Caribbean , Latinx communities from Latin America and Central America, the French Caribbean and Dutch Caribbean. These communities engage the Black Communities and white, suburban communities.

DVCAI curatorial vision is one that is invested in deconstructing complex contemporary cultural issues and attempts to provide a dialogue within which these issues can be discussed. We face the global south and focus on Caribbean artists in the Caribbean and in Diaspora Miami defined and experienced as a Creole City.

The mission of DiverseWorks is to commission, produce, and present new and daring art in all its forms through innovative collaborations that honor each artist’s vision without constraint. Founded by artists in 1982, DiverseWorks is nationally known for its groundbreaking artistic programming, meaningful engagement with communities, and advancement of progressive art and ideas in Houston and the nation.

Throughout its 40 year history, DW has been committed to equity and diversity in the arts and supported brave projects that cultivate social change. Currently, more than 70% of artists, 50% of staff, and 47% of the Board of Directors are BIPOC and/or identify as LGBTQ+.

DiverseWorks fulfills its mission through a year-round schedule of exhibitions, performances, and community programs presented to the public free of charge. DiverseWorks’ primary audiences are artists and culturally curious audiences who seek experiences outside of the larger, more traditional arts venues. Geographically, the Greater Houston Area is the focus, though the artists and audiences we engage are local, national, and international. Taking an adaptive and artist-centered approach to the use of space, DiverseWorks produces performances and projects in a variety of sites across the city of Houston.

Fusebox is a non-profit arts organization in Austin, TX. At the center of our work is an ongoing exploration of live performance. Our programs bring unique artistic projects to thousands of people in Central Texas; provide support and resources to artists; and address civic issues at the center of contemporary life and culture. Fusebox serves the artist community in Austin, in strong support of BIPOC arts.

FUSEBOX CORE VALUES
We believe in the boundless possibilities of live performance.
We believe in the potential of imagination to shape the world.
We believe in shaking things up.
We believe in access.
We believe in, and are committed to, cultural equity, anti-racism, and diversity.
We believe in supporting arts workers.
We believe in the act of gathering, and the power of presence.
We believe in leading with joy, care, and generosity.
We believe in long-term collaborations.
We believe in a plurality of perspectives.
We believe in the exchange of ideas across artistic disciplines, sectors, neighborhoods, and countries.
We believe exchanges should be relational and reciprocal rather than transactional.
We believe our festival should be free, but that artists’ work should be valued.
We believe that art is central to a healthy society

GALA Hispanic Theatre’s mission is to develop, produce, and present works that explore the breadth of Latinx performing arts, making this work accessible to the broadest possible audience and using theater as a vehicle for social change. In doing so, GALA provides opportunities for Latinx artists, educates and trains youth, and engages the entire community in an exchange of ideas and perspectives.

Global Nola, is an artist-run organization that promotes and preserves world music and performing arts culture in New Orleans and throughout the world.

As global cultural ambassadors, we produce the Global Groove, bringing New Orleans performing artists together with musicians, dancers, etc. across the globe. With roots in Africa, the Caribbean, North America, South America, and Europe, performing artists share their immense talents with our global audience on both a virtual and live stage. These events shine a bright light on the plight of performing artists globally during, and post pandemic. Community and educational events are also essential, and we often partner with organizations that share common goals.

United in supporting justice and equality for all, the performing artists of the Global Groove bring the world closer together in love, harmony, and expanded cultural worldview.

The Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, founded in 1980, is located in the heart of San Antonio’s Westside. It is one of the largest community-based, multi-disciplinary organizations in the U.S. The GCAC provides programming across six disciplines (dance, theatre, visual arts, music, film and literature), offers year- round educational programming through its Guadalupe Academy and free community events, and also produces the annual Tejano Conjunto festival and Cinefestival.

Hammonds House museum and Resource Center of African American Art is a fine arts museum established in 1988 and housed in an early 19th Century Victorian home. The mission is to preserve, exhibit and increase public awareness about art of the African Diaspora. Hammonds House museum attendees gain greater understanding and expanded knowledge about the contributions that artists of African descent make to world culture.

Hammonds House museum is known for presenting artists of merit and artistic excellence. The museum’s curator and curatorial committee use a stringent review process to select exhibiting artists two to three years in advance. The museum remains sensitive to local and/or emerging artists by providing alternate opportunities for exposure, self-development assistance and avenues to realize additional income streams. Hammonds House museum offers a year- round calendar of exhibitions, panels, lectures and symposia, workshops and demonstrations, youth programming, concerts and other unique events.

We lift up Durham’s Black community and the broader community around us through programs that preserve the heritage of historic Hayti and promote the African American experience through arts programs, operating as a cultural hub and as a space for engagement. In addition to core programs, we provide space for facility rentals. Our programming includes visual artist exhibitions, a poetry slam/spoken word team, summer/year round youth programming, African dance classes, a music series that celebrates noted black jazz, blues, gospel and other artists performed by local talent, an annual film festival that promotes southern black film, an annual Kwanzaa celebration, and a Juneteenth event among others. “We regularly feature and promote local visual artists by showcasing their works in our gallery space, inviting the public to meet artists and see the work during receptions and talks back, and we promote the sale of our artists’ works. We support performing artists through social media and our website, with focus on local talented vocalists, musicians and deejays. Presenting the arts in our sacred space makes our programming even more memorable and helps preserve the community’s heritage”.

HBC430 aims to help grow an ecosystem of individuals and organizations dedicated to using art, performance, and creative advocacy to co-create a more just and equitable society for Black and other marginalized people. HBC430 is home of Solid Ground Theatre Company, a growing collective of citizen artists and Instinctive Theatre practitioners. Instinctive theater is an art for social justice technique designed by HBC430 founder, Maryam Foye, inspired by African and Black diasporic ritual, psychodrama, and Theater of the Oppressed.

Highways is Southern California’s boldest center for new performance. In our 33rd year, Highways continues to be an important alternative cultural center in Los Angeles that encourages radical artists from diverse communities to develop and present innovative new works. Described by the Los Angeles Times as “a hub of experimental theater, dance, solo drama and other multimedia performance,” Highways promotes the development of contemporary socially involved artists and art forms.

Our mission is to develop and present innovative performance and visual artists, promote interaction among people of diverse cultural backgrounds and engage artists and the communities they serve in cross-cultural dialogues about social, cultural and artistic issues.

House of Lux (2023) is a mutual aid play reminiscent of the care practices of the Black & Brown folk who raised us while weathering violent spatial conditions of american state globalization and urbanization events termed “Vietnam war… the crack era…. war on drugs…. war on crime…. AIDS epidemic…” The play is devised with community story bearers and translated by muthi reed in their avatar, wildin. We are reminiscing about past events for folx who survived it. We are weaving together the wisdoms of our survival.

Sankofarration

• it is for us to remember and tell stories of survival and be cared for in the telling.
• the play is a spatial oral archive that makes resonant the complex divinity and dignity of our lives.

Shaped in community with kinfolk and neighbors’ archives, over the course of three years, we will roll out mutual aid còuture — quarterly goodie bags, play script, art; simulating the parables, dreams and stories of the community.

Reassembling Spaces

• exhibition galleries, storefronts, kitchens, theaters, bookstores, radio airwaves, internet platforms, living rooms, outdoor walls, and open fields will become our portals for dreaming.
• looking at archives within our family and kinfolk communities as the thing Toni Morrison named the source of self regard. The thing James Brown called attitude. And what Andaiye named neighborliness.
• we are experimenting with growing strength through building cultural knowledge within the village.

The play and the making of it will channel a mix of legends, lies, lamentations, travel routes, recipes, remedies, libations, provisions, and conjures for getting free staying free. House of Lux intervention architects time through black ritual in the company of kinfolk.

ISDA is a tri-national creative place-making organization dedicated to preserving and enriching the environment, culture, and economy of the Sonoran Desert. Located in Ajo, Arizona (formerly the three separate, segregated communities of Indian Village, Mexican Town, and the Ajo Anglo Townsite), ISDA uses arts and culture to bring people together across long-standing racial and ethnic divisions, and to build community across the U.S., Mexico, and Tohono O’odham Nation borders.

For the last decade, ISDA has been renovating historic buildings in Ajo’s town center where ISDA now manages 30 affordable live/work artist apartments, an indoor/outdoor performance venue, and the new Sonoran Desert Inn and Conference Center created for meetings, arts gatherings, and artists-in- residence. ISDA presents local, regional and national performing artists. ISDA takes a special interest in presenting community and folk arts, and art that evokes or addresses issues of social justice and racial equity.

Mind Over Mirrors is the ever-evolving project of composer, harmoniumist, and synthesist Jaime Fennelly, who buttresses his modest instrumental foundation of Indian pedal harmonium with an array of tape delays, effect processors, and synthesizers that belong to the world of classic analog electronic composition. Both as a solo artist and with various collaborators, he creates immersive interdisciplinary work that NPR has described as “an out-of-body experience.” His explorations of the natural world’s sensory dimensions and the dialogues between cultural traditions—vernacular and avant-garde—have led him down a path of creating work that deliberately situates itself in a questing, edge-of-earth spirit. After five solo albums on several labels, Paradise of Bachelors released Fennelly’s first work for an ensemble, Undying Color (2017), followed by Bellowing Sun (2018), which was commissioned for its world premiere live performance by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Pitchfork called Bellowing Sun, “one of the decade’s true experimental wonders.” Bellowing Sun received funding from the NPN Creation & Forth Fund.

The John Michael Kohler Arts Center’s mission is to generate a creative exchange between artists and the public. The Arts Center serves as a laboratory for the creation of new works, nurturer of interdisciplinary initiatives, originator of exhibitions, presenter of performing arts, educator, community builder and advocate for arts issues, functioning as a catalyst for ideas that will impact the lives of artists and the public. The Arts Center works with community partners to develop goals and priorities as we reach the local Sheboygan, WI community, Midwest region, and nationally. We envision a world in which communities collaborate and explore the arts to nourish and enrich the lives of all. We believe that art in all its forms is vital to the health of our communities, our nation, and our world; we believe that art enriches the human spirit. We activate creative exchanges through equitable, intentional, and creative opportunities inclusive of artist collaborations, participatory experiences, community partnerships, and accessible resources that foster lifelong learning through the arts.

Junebug Productions emerged from the Free Southern Theater in 1980 with a mission to create and support artistic works that question and confront inequitable conditions that have historically impacted the Black community.

Through interrogation, we challenge ourselves and those aligned with the organization to make greater and deeper contributions towards a just society.

“Come to the garden, and let’s talk.”

JUST SPACE creates a just space for all. This initiative innovatively addresses oppressive systems of power that are rooted in the history and legacy of exploitation. Black and Indigenous youth bear the brunt of the burdens of these systems and JUST SPACE seeks to alleviate part of that.

JUST SPACE is a center for intentional congregation and a program for place reimagination through art. Meet us at the land to garden, make art, laugh, and cry if you need to. The focus is on environmental racism in Indianola, MS. Participants enjoy access to environmental education, art education, and collaborative art production instructed by local artists. This initiative offers free resources to the entire community and is deliberately a safe zone.

Mission: Kelly Strayhorn Theater (KST) is a home for creative experimentation, community dialogue, and collective action rooted in the liberation of Black and queer people.

Focusing on the performing and media arts of our time, KST takes a multidisciplinary and inclusive approach to presenting contemporary performing arts. KST programs examine the questions that define and inspire us as individuals and communities. Our mission supports a vision in three parts: A leading presenter of innovative works in dance, theater, music, and live art; a community resource for youth education, emerging artist support and community partnership; and a neighborhood anchor institution accelerating the transformation of East Liberty as a destination for cultural entertainment and business opportunity.

KST is a leading interdisciplinary producer and presenter of contemporary art and performance committed to the liberation of Black Life and the empowerment of historically marginalized communities. Through performances, artist residencies, and community partnerships KST is where artists and audiences test new ideas and shape public conversation. KST programs examine the questions that define and inspire us as individuals and communities.

Krewe da Bhan Gras represents the South Asian diaspora in South Louisiana. We seek to explore cultural representations of the expansive South Asian community through various artistic endeavors, ensuring all community members feel welcome regardless of religion, country of origin, sexual orientation, or gender.

Last Call is a multiracial collective of queer artists, activists, and archivists. Drawn together by the closing of the last remaining dyke bar, Last Call creates innovative, multi-platform performances, events, and digital media that document and interpret neglected queer history, creating connections between those who lived this history and those who have much at stake if it is forgotten. We conjure up intergenerational gathering places where the movement for queer liberation is carried forward.

There are four interwoven components to Last Call: (1) a digital archive of full-length interviews; (2) a podcast series to cull these interviews into curated stories; (3) live performance that honors these stories; and (4) community events that bring together queer people across lines of race, class, gender-identity and generational difference. Last Call was founded by Rachel Lee, Sara Pic and Lyam Gabel.

Leah Glenn Dance Theatre is a modern dance company dedicated to cultivating a greater understanding of the world in which we live through thought-provoking works of art that entertain, inspire and challenge its audiences.

Links Hall is proud to be a home for independent artists across all performance disciplines, at all stages of their careers — simultaneously a presenter, incubator, and service organization. Founded in 1978 by three experimental choreographers (Bob Eisen, Carol Bobrow and Charlie Vernon), Links encourages artistic innovation and public engagement by maintaining a facility and providing flexible programming for the research, development, and presentation of new work in the performing arts. We provide residency programs, performance series, co-presentations with local organizations and ensembles, festivals, and subsidized performance and rehearsal rentals for self-producing artists. One artist notes, “Links Hall matters because it’s quite easy as an artist to feel like you’re always asking for support and resources from the world around you. Links feels like a place that just gives those things willingly and not only invests in the artist but then reinvests in them over and over again.” Links serves artists from across Chicago, the Midwest, and nationally; and has supported national tours and exchanges with arts partners in Japan and Haiti. Over 50% of Links artists identify as Black, Indigenous, or artists of color. Festivals, ongoing performance series, and residencies are collectively curated by artists or artist-led jury panels.

Current project: A Wonder Wander

Go on a date with someone from the future, take a stroll with your great great grandparent, or meet a vibrant version of yourself in a parallel universe in a Wonder Wander play. This innovative theater walk-and-talk questions embedded inequities in our societal systems while engaging you in a unique live experience.

Wonder Wander Future Date is now available to be produced in your location as part of a season, in a fundraiser or festival setting or as devising project with your ensemble or students.

From March 2023 produced by Mondo Bizarro Productions:

Experience a one-of-a-kind time travel date in the Marigny/Bywater with our immersive walk and talk audio play! Single and ready to mingle? Or just time travel curious? Bring your phone, your headphones and an extra sock. You’ll be transported to New Orleans in the year 2299, where you’ll meet locals from the future, share flirting humor, gravity footwear tips and ponder how the choices we make affect generations beyond us. Just don’t say anything that will change the future.

Responses from the audience:

The self-reflection I did after listening to the tree and thinking about my contributions to the earth was sweet and unexpected.

Smelling the landscape, being asked to pay attention and notice things around us. It was all carried by the wit and humor throughout. It was really funny!

I loved walking around the neighborhood and having what I see be connected with the experience.

I really enjoyed being observed by the public, all walking around in a group and laughing with headphones in…loved being involved with a consensual act with a tree.

The idea that concrete sidewalks etc. were there to protect one from the soil which was harmful, and that sometimes plants break through. (I had been weeding my driveway the day before). Hearing a mushroom and tree talk shifted my thinking about environmental impacts and made me think of the book “Should Trees Have Standing”. While the whole premise is inter temporal dating, it’s the little nuances, (Carbon Dioxide release) that I remember. So, I found it a very gentle way to make a very strong statement about environmental policy.

What: A short immersive audio play for an audience. Rather than a traditional play in a theater, this play takes place as the audience takes a physical walk outside “with” the virtual characters. The experience lasts an hour.

Why now: To take an action in response to the earth’s temperatures rising and remaining elevated for many centuries. To be invigorated by an innovative art form and connect during general apocalyptic malaise.

Where: After a brief time travel orientation, the play takes place outside as the audience takes a walk as a group.

Who: People who have a smartphone and can travel on an accessible walking path.

How: Using wireless internet and developments in communication and haptic technology, the audience members hear the characters speak through headphones and respond through their microphone. The characters are not seen but manifest through speaking and listening to the audience member live and “holding hands” through the audience member’s smartphone. Each script is written with improvisational space to accommodate the audience’s responses engaging the audience member whether they are talkative or reserved. A pre-show survey, research, and strategically placed props along the walk customizes the experience.

Live Arts Miami (LAM) is an action-driven, people-centered platform for powerful performances, impactful community programs and learning experiences that spark dialogue, raise awareness around pressing issues, and open minds and hearts. Its mission is to empower artists, audiences, and students to cultivate change through transformative programs and performances that broaden the local horizon of possibilities to create Miami’s brightest future through the live arts.

Created in 1990 by Arts impresario Olga Garay, Live Arts Miami is proud to be a part of Miami Dade College’s Department of Cultural Affairs. Its programs strive to empower historically underserved cultural producers and audiences, including the MDC student body, the largest, most diverse and one of the most economically underprivileged in the nation.

LAM envisions a democratic creative culture which celebrates the rich complexity of its multicultural city. It embraces practices that restore balance and connection to its communities and the planet we inhabit. Live Arts that foster transformation and advance local and global struggles for justice, equity, and freedom. A culture not just unfettered and free, but one that frees and empowers people to actively participate in the (re)creation of our collective future.

LACE both champions and challenges the art of our time by fostering artists who innovate, explore, and risk. We move within and beyond our four walls to provide opportunities for diverse publics to engage deeply with contemporary art. In doing so, we further dialogue and participation between and among artists and those audiences.

The Mardi Gras Indian Hall of Fame is committed to supporting and maintaining New Orleans grassroots indigenous cultural expressions, particularly the Mardi Gras Indian tradition which has been carried on exclusively in the African American neighborhoods of New Orleans since the 1880s. The Mardi Gras Indian Hall of Fame works year-round to create community among those who mask; honor the individuals and group who create and uphold the masking traditions; and educate the public.

Dr. Roslyn J. Smith and Cherice Harrison-Nelson co-founded the Mardi Gras Indian Hall of Fame in 1998 through the spirit of Big Chief Donald Harrison Senior (1933-1998), founder of the Guardians of the Flame and a past Big Chief of the White Eagles.

The MACC is the most comprehensive multi-disciplinary arts facility in Hawai’i, and a gathering place where people can celebrate creativity through personal and shared experiences of the arts. It is a world-class facility where popular and innovative performing artists can be enjoyed, connecting our community to the world. Looking forward to our next 25 years, we continue to strive for the enrichment of life on Maui through personal and shared experiences of the arts: to engage, to inspire, to educate, and to broaden all of our horizons.

Founded in 1989, Miami Light Project is a not-for-profit cultural organization, which commissions and presents artists from all over the world and throughout Miami. We support the vanguard in contemporary performance – dance, music, theater and multimedia artists who are internationally recognized for risk-taking innovation, technical virtuosity and thought-provoking content. Our programmatic vision has led the way in establishing Miami as an internationally recognized center for art and culture, with a vibrant locally based artistic community. Miami Light Project is an art and culture forum to explore the issues that define contemporary society.

MACLA/Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana is an inclusive contemporary arts space grounded in the Chicano/Latino experience that incubates new visual, literary and performance art in order to engage people in civic dialogue and community transformation.

Founded in 1989 as the result of a broad community mobilization in the City of San Jose and nationwide on behalf of multicultural arts, MACLA promotes a vision of arts programming as a vehicle social equity.

Each year we offer up to six arts exhibitions (including one that features new work commissioned by MACLA) showcasing artists whose work is rooted in a Latino aesthetic and history. Our free exhibitions include artist talks that expand upon the themes and issues addressed.

Our performance and literary arts tract offers perspectives on contemporary Latino culture. Our 100-seat Castellano Playhouse provides space for diverse artists and performing arts groups. As part of the NPN, we offer two artist residencies annually and present national touring professionals.

MACLA’s year-round arts education curriculum serves youth ages 13-18. The Best Buy Teen Tech Center features a gallery, classroom, and music production studio for our youth programs. Our Family Art Day program encourages families with young children to participate in our many arts programs.

A Latino-based multidisciplinary arts and multicultural arts organization, MECA provides arts education, support services, and multicultural artistic programming to underserved, underrepresented families that help build community, discipline, self-esteem, and cultural pride.

MECA predominantly serves BIPOC communities in Houston and its surrounding areas. However, its doors are open to all communities regardless of color, sex, race, or religious beliefs.

The MECA Presents Performing Arts Series is a platform that convenes community through the arts and encourages dialogue about issues ranging from social justice and equity to diversity and community transformation. From incubating works in progress to presenting local and touring artists, MECA seeks to work with innovative and socially engaged artists whose work expands the boundaries of tradition and practice. MECA is especially interested in projects that bring to light the experiences of life on the margins of societies, economies, and cultures.

The mission of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) is to be an innovative and compelling center of contemporary art where the public can directly experience the work and ideas of living artists and understand the historical, social and cultural context of the art of our time. The museum boldly interweaves exhibitions, performances, collections and educational programs to excite, challenge and illuminate our visitors and to provide insight into the creative process. The MCA aspires to engage a broad and diverse audience, create a sense of community and be a place for contemplation, stimulation and discussion about contemporary art and culture.

The MCA presents more than 20 different projects yearly involving close to 100 performances in dance, theater, music and interdisciplinary performance. MCA champions U.S., international, and Chicago-based artists and pursues innovation, collaboration and community engagement. Audience-engaged residency activities are integrated with the public performances. The performing arts programming actively promotes diversity, featuring the voices of culturally and racially diverse artists. The MCA works with arts and community cultural organizations to co- organize and co-present about one-third of the performing arts programs, thereby utilizing the MCA as a shared resource for the city.

Music Inside Out with Gwen Thompkins is a weekly public radio broadcast that showcases musicians who have made profound contributions to the musical landscape of Louisiana and the wider world. Host Gwen Thompkins and her guests talk extensively about the fire and sweat of the creative process and parse songs that reflect Louisiana’s unusually varied cultural heritage. Each week, Music Inside Out explores unexpected layers of curiosity and inventiveness in the work of modern-day musicians. Just as Louis Armstrong loved Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana, and played an aria from that opera every day, contemporary Louisiana artists live with their ears wide open. Music Inside Out airs on WWNO 89.9 FM- New Orleans Thursday evenings at 7:00 p.m. and Saturdays at noon. In addition, web users can access any program at musicinsideout.org.

Mutual Dance Theatre and Arts Centers was formerly known as Contemporary Dance Theater (est. 1972) and MamLuft&Co. Dance (est. 2007). The two small organizations recently merged to become the single organization in Cincinnati to self-identify as Modern Dance-dedicated.

Mutual Dance Theatre’s mission is to enrich and improve lives by bringing palpable Modern Dance to people in Cincinnati, reducing barriers to experiencing the art form. Mutual seeks to engage diverse populations by providing opportunities for both children and adults to experience hands-on participation, to get closer to the art form, and to gain more and deeper understanding of dance in theaters, schools, and community hubs. The organization prioritizes dance that speaks to non-eurocentric experiences and works with community partners to raise the reach of marginalized populations. Our collaborative and creative models emphasize discovery, as well as a value for process, pluralism of voices, and individualism. Mutual highly values racial representation and works to change longstanding biases and embedded exclusion in dance, which begins with a goal for at least 50% BIPOC representation at all levels.

The Myrna Loy is an outstanding rural arts center in Helena, Montana that presents live performances, arts education experiences, community-building events of all kinds, plus two movies daily, to our community in the Northern Rockies. We also host a monthly online program, The Myrna Soundstage, celebrating Montana artists. We serve as a gateway to multiple cultural expressions, bringing performers from many cultures into our rural landscape. We are small yet mighty. We instigate happenings. We support new works. We are rural, hard to get to, with expensive travel costs, and all our wealth is in relationships. The Myrna Loy lives in a transformed 100-year-old granite jailhouse. Our motto is “Art transforms everything.” Come see why.

New Orleans International Muralists, LLC (NOIM) create murals that provide artistic looks into the past, present, or future within communities. Our murals are educational tools for the community, as points of interest(s) for tourism, or simply appreciated for their aesthetic beauty. NOIM’s current project is Tchoupitoulas St. Floodwall Mural: 300 Years of New Orleans History depicting the city’s vibrant 300-year history through imagery created by lead artist Jamar Pierre. Our murals are created to enable the community to gain a better understanding of why cultural preservation is important.

New York Live Arts is a center devoted to the creation of live art that elevates the human spirit and brings people together in shared humanity. We are a place that brings people together to explore common values through live gathering and performance reminding us of our humanity and elevating the human spirit. At the core of our programming is our certainty that art has the ability to create communities and platforms for the exchange of ideas.

Launched in 2016, No Dream Deferred started as a vision for equitable and inclusive theatre in New Orleans. As a community-anchored theatre that prioritizes New Orleans’ community audience, we produce culturally relevant work written by playwrights that have been historically marginalized. Our values ensure that our productions are relevant, accessible, and affordable for all in our community.

Our vision is to employ a revolutionary approach to art making in our city for our communities and in doing so create theatre that is anchored to place. We, through our programming and advocacy, are building a future where art leaders of color are not the exception but the norm.​

• We work to amplify the voice of historically marginalized playwrights.
• We empower theatre-makers of color in the city of New Orleans and beyond.
• Our approach to theatre-making is equitable in its visioning, design, and implementation.

OUR CORE VALUES

• EQUITY | POWER
  Claiming and giving a rightful share of the artistic pie.
• CULTURAL AUTHENTICITY | REALNESS
  We bring authenticity to the workspace, rehearsal room and table in a way that is essential, valued, and encouraged.
• ​LEGACY | WEALTH
  Excellent stewards of what we have been given. Intentional about what we contribute. Generous with what we leave for future generations.

Founded by artists in 1978, the mission of On the Boards (OtB) is to introduce audiences to international innovators in contemporary dance, theater and music while developing and presenting new work by Northwest performing artists.

As one of the leading organizations of our size and focus in the U.S., OtB produces unique performance projects by leading artists and creates one-of-a-kind experiences for our audiences. We program approximately 12–15 productions per year from September through June. We present contemporary performance from all disciplines; typically companies are in residence for one week. Production residencies and commissions are selected on a case-by-case basis as part of our overall programming curation. OtB is committed to a range of resources and events that provide in-depth information and complimentary social experiences to frame the art on our stages and create dynamic access for our audiences. Alongside our live performances we also create and distribute films of full-length performance through our OntheBoards.tv initiative.

Onye Ozuzu is a performing artist, choreographer, administrator, educator, and researcher currently serving as the Dean of the College of the Arts at the University of Florida. Ozuzu has dedicated much of her work as a dance artist to cultivating space for diverse dance forms to exist in a pluralist relationship to one another. The deep juxtapositions in her birth and upbringing (biracial, intercultural, with American-Nigerian parents), her orientation towards physical training, and her professional practices have all resulted in understanding the body as technology and an archive that has the capacity to thread meaning through and across diverse languages. Physically, Ozuzu has negotiated the intersectionality in her body between many movement forms from tennis to ballet, West African dance to hatha yoga, freestyle house to salsa, contemporary dance to aikido. Rather than just “collecting” these dance styles, she has cultivated the ability to make choices among these techniques, like the relationship of a maker to their tools.

Artistically, Ozuzu has focused on the body as technology. Space Carcasses is the convergence of her interests in technology and the body and in trans+space+time Africanness. This interdisciplinary performance juxtaposes, superimposes, and amplifies the contested African diaspora relationship between the vaults on Factors Row in Savannah, Georgia; the architecture of La Rochelle, France; and the history of similarly complex sites (in terms of their connection to histories of humans traded as commodities) in Northern Nigeria. Developed in collaboration with visual and graffiti artist Native Maqari and video and projection designer Simon Rouby, the project will use 3D audio and visual technologies to record, recontextualize, and re-remember these spaces that echo with the impact of the events and experiences they have contained, particularly regarding African diasporic migrations. Interfacing the ephemeral residue of the body’s presence with these geographically disparate sites, Space Carcasses will reveal how space, place, history, and lineage are linked together.

Building on a 53-year legacy, the Painted Bride brings together artists, audiences and communities to push the boundaries of how we create and experience art. Since our 1969 founding as part of the Alternative Space movement, we have focused on supporting Black and Brown artists, LGBTQ+, women, disabled and other intentionally oppressed and overlooked communities. We believe that our work is to support marginalized Philadelphia artists and communities to create, express, and influence how our neighborhoods and our city will evolve. We work with artists who are generous, open and collaborative, and committed to building relationships with audiences.

Pangea World Theater illuminates the human condition, celebrates cultural differences and promotes human rights by creating and presenting international, multi-disciplinary theater. Pangea constitutes a vital new force in American theater, bringing an international perspective to the Twin Cities’ community. Since its founding in 1995, Pangea has been dedicated to the production and presentation of work that brings together people from different backgrounds and ethnicities, and the contextualization of work by artists from all backgrounds for a multiracial audience. Our theater works, drawn from multiple sources and multiple traditions, have always challenged dominant European-American paradigms and definitions of theater. As we create work that is truly inclusive in its scope and artistic aesthetic, we are also developing a critical language to describe our work. We are engaged in work that involves a cross-cultural perspective, illuminating issues of social justice and human rights.

The artistic and literary directors select the artists we present. members of the ensemble and staff make recommendations. In addition, we have created a community committee that helps with audience development. The selection process is ongoing. We prefer to see live work but documentation is also considered. Our aesthetic is not fixed; it includes the voices and artistic visions of multiple voices and realities.

Rooted in the Latin American and Caribbean diaspora, La Peña Cultural Center collaborates with and unites communities by preserving and celebrating cultural traditions; producing creative new works; and nurturing global grassroots social justice movements with artists, activists and allies.

Performance Space was founded by artists in a decommissioned public school building in the East Village in 1980. For over 42 years, we have been commissioning and presenting artistic works that dissolve the borders of performance art, dance, theater, music, visual art, poetry and prose, ritual, night life, food, film, and technology, shattering artistic and social norms alike. Our new mission is:

YES To Artists

YES To Risks

YES To Community

YES To Every Body

YES To ______* (an invitation to the public to propose a 5th affirmation)

The artists of Performance Space foreground emergent movements in contemporary art and performance. New work takes risks, which is why “YES to Risks” is the second affirmation in our mission right after “YES to Artists.” This is not the first time our community has lived through a pandemic and political turmoil. In the 1980s and 90s, the organization was at the epicenter of the AIDS crisis and Culture Wars. Historically, the organization has had LGBTQ leadership and served LGBTQ communities, which reflects our founding by LGBTQ artists who created spaces for free artistic expression in our East Village neighborhood. Today, Performance Space remains a haven for queer and radical voices.

PICA is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center supporting artists through residencies, commissions, exhibitions, performances, publications, and the annual TBA (Time-Based Art Festival.) PICA’s offices and core program spaces are in 10,000 sq ft flexible warehouse space in NE Portland. PICA’s programs are curated and produced by a team of three artistic directors, Roya Amirsoleymani, Erin Boberg Doughton, and Kristan Kennedy. Our curatorial practice is collaborative and artist-centered, with a focus on supporting experimental, multidisciplinary, and evolving work, with a priority on LGBTQ and global majority artists. We redistribute resources through the Precipice Fund which offers funding to artist-driven projects and groups, the SPACE program which provides access to space, equipment and production support for self-produced work and community-led initiatives, and as fiscal sponsor for BAEP (Black Art Ecology of Portland) and FNPA (First Nations Performing Arts.)

The focus of POSTCARDS FROM OVER THE EDGE is to raise awareness and engage the community in:

1. the creation and production of a theatrical work that is a truthful-telling of the historically separate and unequal treatment experienced by the LBGTQ community and woman of color as it relates to the illegal sale of sex in Louisiana,
2. the creation and distribution of postcard art works to organizations providing services such as shelters that serve women and children and other organizations that work with women who have been trafficked,
3. the cultivation of allies and fostering of network building by connect those in the general public that want to be more involved with organizations actively working with the homeless, particularly homeless LBGTQ youth.

Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater is an award-winning acting and music ensemble, multidiscipline arts presenter, and owner/steward of bilingual arts facilities in The Bronx and Manhattan. Our mission is to champion a Puerto Rican/Latinx cultural legacy of universal value through creation and performance of original plays and musicals, exchange and partnership with other artists of merit, and engagement of diverse audiences. Our year-round programs offer attractive and affordable opportunities for arts access and participation to NYC residents and visitors alike.

Pregones/PRTT champions an expansive view of the performing arts by opening its Bronx and Manhattan stages to extraordinary theater, music, dance, film/media and visual artists from the U.S. and around the world. Our two-stage Presenting Program is equal parts kaleidoscope and Spanish accent: We program for a general audience and from a Latinx perspective, always making room for meaningful contrasts and discovery. We feature seasoned and emerging artists in both standalone and multiple performances. Engagements often extend into residencies harboring other activities such as workshops, public dialogues, and master classes.

The Reclaiming Legacy Project (RLP) is centered around preventing the erasure of the hard-earned legacies of African Americans, Indigenous Peoples, Mexican Americans and other people of color who have contributed greatly to the progress of America. RLP seeks to do this by combating revisionist history with historical accuracy by unearthing, reclaiming, and giving visibility to these contributions, one legacy at a time, by any creative means necessary.

We’ve chosen to begin our inaugural project with the legacy of Captain André Cailloux, one of America’s first Black Civil War heroes. RLP is organizing the FIRST Civil War Reenactment for New Orleans proper. The FIRST Civil War Reenactment that honors a BLACK Civil War hero and the FIRST Civil War Reenactment done partially in giant, 10-12ft puppets. These life-like marionettes along with hundreds of human reenactors dressed in period clothing will bring to life the 3 mile HISTORIC funeral procession of André Cailloux. This epic funeral attended by tens of thousands, defied all odds and turned into an organic, racially unifying event.

Founded by artist and philanthropist Laura Merage in 2008, RedLine’s mission is to be a diverse urban laboratory where art, education, and community converge. Our vision is to foster forms of social practice in the arts that inspire inquiry and catalyze change. RedLine also connects artists with the community. RedLine encourages artistic growth in our two-year residency program that provides an environment where artists can cross the red line to lose the inhibitions that may hold an artist back, while gaining support systems to excite the senses and realize one’s dreams. Artists are required to share their experiences and their personal creativity with the community as part of their residency.

Remade Ruins is a future land-based oasis in the magical Black south where beautiful dwellings live, delicious foods grow, and creative spaces thrive to preserve Black history, live a Black present, and inspire Black futures. Rooted in Mississippi, it centers on radical racial and social justice through rest, creative and performing arts, agriculture, and architecture.

Remade Ruins’ four pillars are: Black joy and rest, Black arts and agriculture, Black innovation and liberation, and Black land ownership.

Mississippi is the “blackest” state in America. Yet Black folks own little of its land. Remade Ruins will own land that houses, protects, nourishes, and grows what Black folks have always planted here in Mississippi: the arts, foodways, and culture.

The Spiritual Technologies Project seeks to generate, document, and transmit performative practices that unify and transform individuals and groups of people. The project will manifest through recordings, writing, and live laboratories in which artists, culture bearers, and other creative practitioners explore old and new tools for personal and collective transformation.

We just completed our first digital storytelling project, A Charge to Keep, which explores the contemporary practice of metered hymn singing in African-American churches in Central Georgia and Coastal Georgia and South Carolina. We are excited to share this work with the world!

Collaborators:

• Ron Ragin
• Tamara Roberts
• Michaela Leslie-Rule

REDCAT, a center for contemporary performing, visual and media arts, introduces diverse audiences and artists to the most influential developments in the arts from throughout the world and provides Los Angeles artists with opportunities to develop new work. Opened in 2003 by the California Institute of the Arts, REDCAT is located in the frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. REDCAT features a flexible black box performance space and a 3,000 sq. ft. exhibition space.

REDCAT’s programming values artists who blur the boundaries between artistic disciplines, cross international borders in their collaborations, experiment with artistic traditions and invent or use new technology in developing new forms of expression. Each year as many as 200 events are presented, including performances, screenings, discussions, readings and exhibitions. most performing artists are selected 12 to 18 months in advance. The gallery director and curator program the exhibitions.

Sandglass is dedicated to the arts of theater and puppetry as a means of exploring contemporary issues, inspiring dialogue, and sparking wonder. We create original ensemble performances and collaborations, present diverse theater artists, produce events that serve our communities, and teach our art.

The Skirball Cultural Center is a museum and cultural center rooted in Jewish values to welcome the stranger, seek learning, pursue justice, show kindness, honor memory, and build community. The Skirball presents exhibitions and public programs that seek to bring people of all backgrounds together to experience shared humanity. We serve multiple audiences throughout the greater Los Angeles area, including tens of thousands of LA schoolchildren who receive free busses to our campus each year. Public programs encompass music, literary, film, performance, and civic gatherings.

Since its founding in 1986, Space One Eleven has advocated for social justice through the visual arts. SOE’s mission is to provide paid opportunities for visual artists, to create a forum for public understanding of contemporary art, and to offer art education to area youth.

Attendees at SOE art exhibitions and related programs are diverse in race and gender identity. Racial makeup closely aligns with the demographics of the Greater Birmingham Metropolitan area which is 66% white, 32% Black.

Exhibitions at SOE showcase artists who investigate issues such as racial injustice, gun violence, and LGBTQ rights. These topical exhibitions are paired with artist talks and panel discussions to facilitate public conversation and a call for advocacy.

Su Teatro Cultural & Performing Arts Center’s mission is to promote, produce, develop and preserve the cultural arts, heritage and traditions of the Chicano/Latino community, to advance mutual respect for other cultures, and to establish avenues where all cultures may come together. Su Teatro, the resident theater company born out of the Chicano Civil Rights movement, is the third-oldest Chicano theatre in the U.S. While having a strong theatrical bent, Su Teatro also presents music, poetry, visual and film artists.

Artist collaborators are programmed into Su Teatro’s season that also includes the Chicano music festival and the Neruda Poetry festival. Artist collaborators fit within the Chicano aesthetic and represent an emerging vision of the Latino World experience. Residencies are structured within the curriculum of Su Teatro’s Cultural Arts Education Institute.

Synamin Vixen is a performing artist, community healer, and educator. She has more than 25 years of dance experience locally and internationally, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Black Studies and Dance Composition from Swarthmore College. She has been studying Afro-Diasporic herbal and traditional care practices, reiki, and sex doula work for the past 3 years. With a wide range of experiences, Synamin explores how all of these different artistic interests live in one body and influence each other.

Her choreography sparks conversations on identity and social memory. Much of Synamin’s work explores how individuals relate to and influence groups, and how our narratives on similar events can differ greatly based on our lived experiences. Her work in burlesque (on and off stage) focuses on how the body is a sensual site of transformative healing. In 2021, she released her first book of ancestral poetry entitled Daughter of a Nymph Divine. In 2022, she collaborated with her performance family Haus Contraire in residency at the Contemporary Art Center.

Synamin’s mission is to use movement to create a safe space for dialogue and change.

The Theater Offensive presents liberating art by, for, and about queer and trans people of color that transcends artistic boundaries, celebrates cultural abundance, and dismantles oppression. This is done through programs informed by Queer Aesthetics.The idea of aesthetics helps us understand the ways we experience beauty, and gives us a framework to talk about how we name and claim beauty and why we choose what we choose. Aesthetics are reflected in the realms of belonging. They communicate a shared set of ideas, values, geographies, and historical defining moments.

The Constant State of Otherness is a multi-layered performance project exploring the feelings of isolation and displacement that come from a sense of not fitting in. A devised “otherness template” will fuel a new taiko and dance performance, and also prompt engagement with artists and communities reflecting these complex and diverse stories of identity and emotional impact. The work is inspiring from co-director Michelle Fujii’s experience as a great-granddaughter and wife of Japanese immigrants, and feelings of isolation, alienation, and displacement that come from not having an easy sense of belonging, both as a physical place and an emotional space. These feelings are heightened during our uncertain political times — of deepening socio-economic disparities, ongoing debates of travel bans, border security, gentrification, and hostility towards immigrants.

Unit Souzou ensemble members will explore otherness in their deeply personal stories: identifying as immigrant, navigating privilege as a biracial person, finding space and place as a female leader in a masculine world, being African-American in a Japanese referenced cultural art form. Root questions to create this work will illuminate the following: How have I been othered? How have I othered myself? How have I othered others?

‘Souzou’ can be written in three ways meaning ‘creation’ (創造), ‘imagination’ (想像), or ‘noisy’ (騒々), alluding to a force by which new ideas are born and take shape in the world. Inspired by these words, the mission of Unit Souzou is to build creative, imaginative works while honoring the history and roots of the taiko art form. The core of Unit Souzou’s artistic voice is personal and authentic, sound shaped and inspired by form and by movement. The essence of Unit Souzou is an expressive blend of taiko and Japanese folk dance, forging new traditions for evolving communities. In addition to creating groundbreaking professional theatrical works, Unit Souzou is deeply committed to share taiko through community performances and collaborations, public classes for adults and youth, and school-based education programs.

An internationally respected contemporary art center, the Walker is a catalyst for the creative expression of artists and the active engagement of audiences. We take a multi-disciplinary approach to the creation, presentation, interpretation, collection, and preservation of art. The Walker houses one of the largest museum-based performing arts departments in the country and annually supports dozens of commissions, developmental residencies, and presentations. The McGuire Theater, opened in 2005, serves not only as a stunning platform for presentations but also as a working laboratory and production center, offering innovators the support, time, and resources to finish technically mounting large-scale work. The Walker commissions and presents new work on local, national, and international levels and continues to present a wide range of global work. We support established and innovative masters, mid-career artists and a range of emerging voices in contemporary dance, dance theater, experimental theater, new music-theater, performance art, new puppetry, avant-jazz, electronic music, contemporary classical music, international/global music and experimental pop/rock. We mainly select artists with whom we have ongoing relationships or those we have researched and sought out, but we remain open to receiving proposals and inquiries from artists who fit our mission and who are forging new directions.

The Yard is a creation and performance platform for artists from around the globe with a focus on dance. We offer exhilarating, wide-ranging, and educational arts experiences through performances, residencies, and community activities. We present performances by national and international artists; provide paid residencies for choreographers; offer intergenerational engagement programs; and bring dance and creativity centered education programs into schools. Our programs run year-round and can be found on The Yard’s campus and in partner locations across the island of Martha’s Vineyard. We serve the island’s year-round population of ~17,000, as well as the significant influx of summer residents and tourists. With the exception of the summer months, Martha’s Vineyard is a characteristically rural place. The Yard provides a unique bridge to the performing arts mainland. Our curatorial vision is in the process of being revisited, following the retirement of a long-time artistic director. The Yard’s current roster of artists were primarily selected under this previous director’s leadership, with a focus on relationship building and presenting artists who represent various viewpoints, life experiences, genres, and stages in their careers.

BACKGROUND
Youth Speaks is an established youth arts education organization celebrating 25 years of amplifying youth voice for positive social change in 2021. During this time, YS established a brand and global online reach within the field of youth voice, spoken word, and SLAM poetry to “advance the movement” aka, create large-scale social change.

OUR MISSION
Through the intersection of arts education and youth development practices, civic engagement strategies, and high quality artistic presentation, Youth Speaks creates safer spaces that challenge young people to find, develop, publicly present, and apply their voices as creators of societal change.

APPROACH
A major focus within Youth Speaks over the last three years has been to shift our internal practices towards an anti-oppression, liberatory framework, employing transformative justice in the planning and delivery of our work.