NPN On the Road:

In November, NPN sent a five-person delegation to Facing Race, the nation’s largest multiracial and intergenerational racial justice conference, organized by Race Forward.

Since making racial justice explicit to NPN’s mission in 2017, we’ve sought out spaces that uplift racial justice work beyond the arts, building our connections and practices in new ways.

“The conference made me feel hopeful,” said Stephanie Atkins, NPN’s Director of Southern Programs. “The program is so large and the audience so diverse — racially and ethnically, but also in the sectors represented — that I was reminded how many of us are working to address injustice.”

For Brittany Dudley, NPN’s Data Management and Fiscal Sponsorship Associate, the conference offered practical strategies for navigating the current political landscape. “There was such a spectrum of political identity represented, but we can all still move the work forward together.”

Addam Garrett, NPN’s Director of Operations, was struck by how challenging it is to build a connection with new colleagues on such a large scale, and returned with a greater commitment to center relationship-building in NPN’s conference.

For Sage Crump, NPN’s Director of Racial Justice & Movement Building, the conference was a place to engage with comrades outside the arts, get a clearer understanding of the election results, and spark new collaborations.

NPN staff attended a wide range of sessions, including: “Decolonizing Gender,” a workshop for building tools and shared language around gender identity and expression through a Black feminist lens; “Living Liberation: Building Liberatory Organizations From the Ground Up,” led by practitioners thinking deeply about organizational infrastructure and care; and “The Grab: Talking About State Takeovers, White Supremacy, and How We Keep Our Power,” examining the impact of state power grabs at the local level and the strategies to combat them, from narrative shifts needed to organizing practices that protect community self-determination.

The conference weaved arts and culture throughout, including performances by local artists during mainstage sessions, a walk-through gallery highlighting the voices and visions of local St. Louis and national BIPOC artists, the Race Flicks film series, and an arts track of breakout sessions.

“Seeing so many local artists represented made me want to go back to St. Louis to explore the local arts-and-culture folks more,” said Stephanie.

This year’s Facing Race conference theme was “Our Power, Our Solutions.” “One of the things that we wanted to remind the racial justice movement of was its power,” said Leslie Grant-Spann, Race Forward’s senior director of conferences and convenings. “Despite the shifting conditions of the political landscape, the fact of the matter is that this movement has power.”

Read more in Nonprofit Quarterly’s article, “How the Facing Race Conference Is Meeting the Political Moment”.