October 2025 News
November 4, 2025 • 6 minute read
Joy, Resistance, and Care at the NPN 2025 Conference
“Deep, radical care is how we make freedom real,” Stephanie McKee-Anderson of Junebug Productions included in her opening remarks at NPN’s recent conference.
The convening gathered more than 300 attendees in New Orleans in October for NPN’s first in-person conference since 2019 — artists, cultural workers, activists, organizers, funders, and policy makers from across the country — to imagine and commit to new futures together rooted in collective wisdom and care.
“We choose to turn toward each other, amidst so many forces working to separate us,” Caitlin Strokosch, NPN’s President & CEO, said in her opening remarks, “to be accountable to and responsible for each other in all our messy complexity.”
In the coming months, we’ll share a number of reports, essays, and plans emerging from the conference, including:
- Vision and strategy from our three-day Cultural Movement Assembly, in partnership with Project South.
- The Future of Artist Mobility, a workshop facilitated by Design Studio for Social Intervention, to guide how we respond to the challenges and changes in artist touring.
- Bvlbancha Public Access will share more about their Colonial Shoutout as an evolving part of land acknowledgment practices.
- And we’ll offer attendees’ reflections, stories, photos, and more as we mark NPN’s 40th anniversary year.
Whether or not you were able to join us at the conference, we’re excited to share this work!
Burnaway x NPN Critic-in-Residence Partnership
Burnaway — a non-profit magazine of contemporary art and criticism from the American South and the Caribbean — has launched a new Critic-in-Residence partnership with NPN.
“NPN believes criticism is an essential component of a healthy arts ecosystem, and Burnaway’s regional storytelling contributes to our understanding of the material conditions of artists and arts organizations oppressed by political, economic, and social systems in the US,” says Riley Yaxley, NPN’s Resource Development Manager and a writer and editor with Sixty Inches from Center.
For Courtney McClellan, Burnaway’s Editor and Artist Director, the partnership is a natural fit. “We are thrilled to be able to partner with the National Performance Network, a like-minded art organization that also fights repressive forces and champions the cultural production of the American South. We have long admired the racial and social justice mission of NPN, and we share in its vision of inclusion, activation, reciprocity, and resilience through art and performance in these challenging times.”The partnership launched at NPN’s October 2025 conference. Learn more about the Burnaway x NPN partnership.
Invitations – “Ready to Fly”
“When the movement comes, I want to be ready to fly… Ready to walk this freedom road.”
— Adaptation of a Civil Rights Movement Song
Drawing from movement singing traditions, this card invites arts leaders to prepare for transformation. It encourages readiness for change through embodied practices and reflection on what we need to be prepared for the journey ahead.
Explore this card and others directly on your phone or desktop with our interactive Mixed Metaphor Liberatory Learning Deck.
Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater Named to NYC Cultural Institutions Group
In a rare expansion of the esteemed Cultural Institutions Group (CIG), New York City’s Mayor and the Department of Cultural Affairs announced recently that Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater (an NPN National Partner) is one of five new members of CIG.
“We are thrilled to be publicly recognized as a cultural treasure and to join other beloved organizational representatives of New York excellence,” says Arnaldo López, Pregones/PRTT’s Managing Director.
CIG was established in 1869 to ensure public support for institutions recognized as “necessary public cultural amenities.” Laurie Cumbo, the commissioner of cultural affairs, said these additions give the city “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to foster greater equity in this important source of city support for the arts in all five boroughs.”
Read “Five Arts and Culture Nonprofits Join New York City’s Cultural Institutions Group” at ARTnews.
Announcements
10 Movement Agreements to Build Power, Resist Fascism, and Transform Our World
Project South, the Atlanta-based institute that advances community and movement organizing in the U.S. South, has published the “Katrina 20 People’s Movement Assembly Synthesis Report & Organizing Handbook,” which synthesizes eight months of engagement with “hundreds of frontline organizers, community leaders, artists, educators, and movement elders across the Gulf South and beyond” into a vision for a new movement infrastructure to replace the collapsing legacy systems that have failed our communities.
At the heart of the report are the Movement Agreements, ten practices describing a shared vision for movement infrastructure that you can adapt and incorporate into your own movement work.
Read “10 Movement Agreements To Build Power, Resist Fascism, and Transform Our World” on the NPN blog.
Upcoming Artist Activities
Babylon: Journeys of Refugees, Sandglass Theater
Premieres November 6 at 8:00 pm
How to watch:
- On your local PBS station (check listings)
- Streaming via the PBS App
- On-demand at vermontpublic.org after the broadcast
This action-packed, high-energy production from Sandglass Theater, produced with financial support from NPN’s Creation Fund and Artist Engagement Fund, is a response to the worldwide refugee crisis and its impact on communities in the United States. Using puppets and moving panoramic scrolls, five actor/singer/puppeteers tell refugees’ stories in original four-part choral songs. To create Babylon, Sandglass worked with the USCRI Vermont (US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants) and conducted research and interviews with new residents who immigrated to the US, in order to understand the challenges that face refugees and asylum seekers. For ages 14 and up.
Apollo, Pioneer Winter Collective
November 21 & 22 at 8:00 pm
November 23 at 2:00 pm
The Broward Center for the Performing Arts (Fort Lauderdale, FL)
Featuring a multigenerational cast, Apollo explores queer dynamics, memory, HIV/AIDS, legacy, and ageism in the performing arts. Pioneer Winter describes Apollo as a biomythography, a style that weaves myth, history, and biography in epic narrative. The work draws inspiration from Greek mythology’s Apollo (god of the sun, music, prophecy, and healing), George Balanchine’s 1928 ballet Apollo, and the cast’s lived experience. In the performance, Pioneer Winter is joined by dance artists Clarence Brooks, Frank Campisano, and Octavio Campos, with original composition and live performance by sound artist Diego Melgar.
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 her article “Nonprofits as Battlegrounds for Democracy” at the website Nonprofit Quarterly, Cyndi Suarez takes us through the key arguments of Claire Dunning’s 2022 book Nonprofit Neighborhoods, which explores “how and why American city governments delegated the responsibility for solving urban inequality to the nonprofit sector.”
Buy the book from the University of Chicago Press
Supplemental reading: “How Nonprofits Can Navigate Political Engagement and Maintain Public Trust”
Past Issues
Newsletter Sign Up
Get the latest on events, stories, opportunities, and projects from across the network.
Your personal data will be managed respectfully and responsibly, in accordance with our privacy policy.