NPN’s next iteration of Racial Justice work 

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On July 21, 2022, NPN’s Board of Directors voted to support the launch and an initial three years of the Department of Racial Justice and Movement Building: a new programmatic arc of work for NPN. Sage Crump, who has led NPN’s Leveraging a Network for Equity (LANE) initiative, will become the department’s first director. Under her guidance, NPN will work intentionally in the realm of systemic change and movement building by engaging the question “What’s possible in our sector when we are in ideological alignment, deep learning, relationship building, and practice together?”

This department continues and expands the work started within LANE, which focused on the development and wellbeing of arts organizations of color and rural arts organizations to build healthy, self-determined infrastructure. Engaging this work for nearly a decade has helped us understand the insidious ways racial capitalism and white supremacy infiltrates even the most intimate spaces of our institutions and has produced an incredible amount of learning through lived experience. The Department of Racial Justice and Movement Building will work to integrate this learning throughout NPN’s staff, Network, aligned artists, Board, and strategic partnerships both within the arts sectors and within the larger movement for racial justice.

If you are reading this, you are likely part of a circle of humans trying to figure out the levers that will transform society through our work as artists and cultural workers in every part of our ecosystem. This new department is NPN’s way of inviting us all to do this with deeper intention and interconnectedness.