November 2025 News
December 11, 2025 • 8 minute read
Reclaiming Artist Mobility as a Human Right
“How can NPN, as a community of relationships, uphold and advocate for mobility as a basic human right rather than a luxury?”
— Stanlyn Brevé, NPN Director of National Programs
In early November on the heels of NPN’s 2025 Conference, Director of National Programs Stanlyn Brevé participated in the ArtsLink Assembly 2025: Defending Each Other. Organized by CEC Artslink and American Freedom Initiative (AFI), this two-day gathering focused on building collective support for artists in the US amid persecution, crisis, and conflict.
Stanlyn’s reflections, shared in her new essay on the NPN blog, weave together the ArtsLink Assembly with sessions from NPN’s conference, including “You Are Not Alone” and “The Future of Artist Mobility”.
Read Stanlyn’s essay, “Defending Each Other: Reclaiming Artist Mobility as a Human Right, Reimagining the Future Through Care.”
Watch recordings from Artslink Assembly 2025: Defending Each Other.
Hurricane Melissa Aid Relief for Jamaica
Berette Macaulay, “a transcultural, transdisciplinary, transnational spirit” and NPN Creation Fund Artist currently based in Washington State, has compiled a list of fundraisers and drives to support Hurricane Melissa relief efforts for her island home of Jamaica.
To support different types of giving, they’ve provided personally vetted links to individuals in need, people who are actively helping others at home, trusted organizations on the ground, and government agencies.
As Berette says, “In Jamaica we have a couple of sayings ’every mikkle, mek a mukkle’ — and — ’one-one cocoa fill basket’. We embrace the idea that no offering is too small, and we are grateful for whatever is manageable to give because it truly all helps.”
See all initiatives here and please feel free to share.
Learning Practices – “Nourishing Beautiful Connections”
“Remember: Oppression thrives off isolation. Connection is the only thing that can save us.”
— Yolo Akili
Centering transformational, equitable, deep relationships — ones that have the capacity for nourishing ourselves and each other—creates the conditions for long-lasting collaboration towards racial justice and cultural equity.
Explore this card and others directly on your phone or desktop with our interactive Mixed Metaphor Liberatory Learning Deck.
Reclaiming the Past and Reimagining the Future with Anna Beatrice Scott’s ART+FACT
In his latest NPN Voices from the Network artist feature, NPN Southern Artists for Social Change awardee Carey Fountain writes about fellow awardee Anna Beatrice Scott and her project, ART+FACT (pronounced “artifact”).
Developed through the Earthseed Collective, ART+FACT, an evolving work in progress, offers a radical reimagining of the historical and cultural narrative of Holly Springs, Mississippi, with hands-on interactive elements and community participation.
“We want people to move through the town, experience the historical sites, and reshape the narrative, empowering those who have been left out of its story,” Scott explains.
Read “Reclaiming the Past, Reimagining the Future” on NPN’s Voices from the Network blog.
Christopher K. Morgan’s The Dulling Effect Urges Audiences to Resist, Reawaken, and Reclaim Their Power
The Dulling Effect, a new dance performance by Christopher K. Morgan and Malashock Dance, draws inspiration from the vibrance and resilience of queer culture, and serves as an act of resistance against recent legislation targeting the trans community and women. But the title, which comes from a 1934 study of radio’s effects on the listener, hints at another aspect of the work: it’s an interrogation of how nearly a century of accelerating technology may have numbed our empathy, engagement, and critical thinking.
Christopher, artistic director of Malashock Dance and a member of NPN’s Board of Directors, says he was intrigued by the way the authors of the 1934 study described the subtle negative effect of radio upon their subjects.
”How might that dulling effect have evolved over the past 90 years,” he asks, ”as technological advancements have permeated nearly every aspect of our lives? Are we, as a society, more disconnected, less engaged, or less capable of critical thought due to the omnipresence of technology?”
Visit NPN’s Voices from the Network blog to read more about The Dulling Effect and watch a micro-documentary on the collaborative processes behind the work.
Announcements
Social Transformation is at the Center of Dance/USA Fellowships
Through community-building and culture-bearing, healing and storytelling, activism and representational justice, and more, the Dance/USA Fellowships recognize the wide variety of ways in which artists engage in social transformation through dance.
“We hold deep respect for the radical ways these artists nurture and sustain our communities,” said Haowen Wang, Dance/USA Director of Regranting, acknowledging that these practices often do not fit into established models of arts funding.
The awards honor 25 dance and movement-based artists with sustained practices in art for social change, and are co-designed through ongoing collaboration with artists who bring lived expertise to questions of policy, language, and process. This year’s awardees include NPN-supported artists:
- Leila Awadallah
- Carol Bebelle aka AKUA
- Dakota Camacho
- Yanira Castro
- Kayla Hamilton
- Gesel R. Mason
- Sage Ni’Ja Whitson
- Pioneer Winter
Visit Dance/USA’s website to read the official announcement and learn more about the artists.
2025 Creative Impact Awards Recognize Great Lakes Artists
The Joyce Foundation recently announced their 2025 Creative Impact Awards, honoring artists and organizations who have sparked creativity, artistic growth, and collaboration in Great Lakes communities. Administered by United States Artists, the program awards $10,000 to 60 artists and $5,000 to 57 organizations in unrestricted funds. Among them, NPN-supported artists include:
- Ananya Chatterjea
- Andrea Assaf
- Aparna Ramaswamy
- Edgar Arceneaux
- Emily Johnson
- Hannibal Lokumbe
- Kaneza Schaal
- Katie Ka Vang
- Marc Bamuthi Joseph
- Onye Ozuzu
- Rosy Simas
Visit The Joyce Foundation website to read more about the 2025 Creative Impact Awards.
Grammy Nomination for Amanda Ekery!
Artist Amanda Ekery has received a 2026 Grammy Awards nomination for her NPN Creation Fund project, Árabe, recognized in the Best Album Notes category. This accolade highlights the creativity, warmth, and profound personal history woven throughout the album and its accompanying book. “I’m so honored to receive this nomination and share it with everyone who helped make Árabe possible, including NPN!,” writes Amanda.
“Árabe is a loving exploration of Ekery’s family and heritage, and this nomination is a testament to the meaningful work supported by the NPN Creation Fund,” says Alec De León, NPN Senior Program Specialist. Earlier this year, Amanda wrote an essay for NPN’s Voices from the Network about the project, which invites audiences to explore Syrian and Mexican shared history and culture on the El Paso border.
Read Amanda’s reflection on Árabe on NPN’s Voices from the Network blog, and see the complete list of 2026 Grammy nominations.
Counting Our Blessings: The Other Katrina Stories
This new collection of essays “is a testament of humanity coming to the rescue, and what happens when empathy and compassion are on full display.” Edited by Carol Bebelle, co-founder of Ashé Cultural Arts Center (and NPN national Partner), the book is a journey through the lives of 41 New Orleanians in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
“In these unbearable times, when the U.S. government has become an agent of cruelty and uncaring, this glorious book, Counting Our Blessings, offers us a more radiant direction,” writes V. (formerly Eve Ensler). “Twenty years post Katrina, this inspirational oral history not only charts the depth of hardship, abandonment, racism and loss, but more importantly it is a manual for how we the people, through our acts of kindness, imagination and solidarity, can transform suffering and make life worth living. We so often focus on the pain, but this heartfelt collection…compel[s] us to be our better selves in the face of all that is coming.”
For more information and where to purchase a copy, visit the University New Orleans Press.
NPN Creation & Development Fund Artist Sage Ni’Ja Whitson Publishes Transtraterrestrial, Exhibits These Walking Glories
NPN-supported interdisciplinary artist Sage Ni’Ja Whitson recently published Transtraterrestrial: Dark Matter and Black Divinities with Wesleyan Press and mounted a solo exhibition, These Walking Glories, at the California African American Museum (CAAM) — building on their 2020 Creation & Development Fund project The Unarrival Experiments.
Transtraterrestrial is an experimental book documenting Whitson’s groundbreaking performance pieces through letters, poems, photographs, and speculative writings. Premiering at CAAM, These Walking Glories presents a portion of Whitson’s Illumination Catalogue, an ambitious ceremony series and archive grieving Black trans losses and celebrating Black trans living.
The exhibition is curated by Cameron Shaw — former writer, editor, and Executive Director of Pelican Bomb, a now-sunset nonprofit that was a cultural leader in post-Katrina New Orleans, and that NPN fiscally sponsored during its formative years. We are delighted by the kismet of artists from different decades and paths of NPN support discovering organic collaborations.
We encourage people to get a copy of Sage Ni’Ja Whitson’s Transterrestrial: Dark Matter and Black Divinities while copies are available and to see their solo exhibition These Walking Glories in Los Angeles before it closes April 6, 2026.
Congrats, Sage!
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 November, we read “Fundraising Can Be Organizing – If We Let It” by Haley Bash in Convergence.
Convergence is a magazine for radical insights, working with organizers and activists on the frontlines of today’s most pressing struggles to produce articles, videos, and podcasts that sharpen our collective practice by lifting up stories from the grassroots and making space for reflection and study. The community of readers, viewers, and content producers are united in purpose: winning multi-racial democracy and a radically democratic economy.
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