Our Network Is Growing! NPN Welcomes Six New Partners
July 24, 2025 • 5 minute read
The six new Partner organizations to our national Network: BOOM Concepts; Double Edge Theatre; Oglala Lakota Artspace; Rainbow Serpent; SLIPPAGE; and TeAda Productions.
The National Performance Network (NPN) is pleased to announce our Board of Directors has approved the addition of six new Partner organizations to our national Network. On July 1, 2025, BOOM Concepts; Double Edge Theatre; Oglala Lakota Artspace; Rainbow Serpent; SLIPPAGE; and TeAda Productions joined NPN’s joyous community of learning and practice.
By growing our Network during a time of uncertainty, NPN continues to build the infrastructure and community necessary to transform the relationships between artists and presenters and advance liberation and justice in our sector.
NPN’s Network is at the core of how we fulfill our mission: contributing to a more just and equitable world by building artists’ power; advancing racial and cultural justice in the arts; fostering relationship-building and reciprocity between individuals, institutions, and communities; and working towards systems change in arts and philanthropy. NPN is unique compared to other traditional service organizations because we curate our network of more than 60 national Partners committed to presenting new work, advancing artist equity, engaging responsively and responsibly in their communities, and working collectively to bring about systems change in our sector. NPN’s Partners reflect the geographic, artistic, cultural, curatorial, and experiential diversity of our sector. And the intimate scale of our network ensures NPN and our national Partners are in deep learning, adaptation, and accountability together.
“At a time of very real and systematic attacks on equity and on the arts, NPN is cleareyed about our choice to expand rather than contract,” says NPN’s President & CEO Caitlin Strokosch. “Our network has grown smaller over the years, as we’ve been intentional about keeping it at a more intimate scale to prioritize trust and experimentation with organizations fiercely committed to liberatory practices. Now, we are choosing to grow with purpose.”
National Programs Director Stanlyn Brevé affirms NPN’s timely decision to expand our Network, “What is needed in this moment is collectivity. It is vital to have a strong community of organizations who are engaged in movement building and are looking towards the future. Organizations who understand the political climate and who are fighting for justice.” The Partners included in this new cohort exemplify this call.
This cohort is the first time we’ve added new Partner organizations since making NPN’s commitment to racial and cultural justice explicit in our mission. While previous Partner searches prioritized representing the diversity of cultural and artistic practices in the US, NPN focused this search on organizations that have invested deeply in the skills, infrastructure, and relationships that offer artists and communities support amid political, social, and economic turmoil.
NPN’s six new Partner organizations represent a vibrant tapestry of cultural engagement, each bringing unique strengths and rooted in distinct communities:
BOOM Concepts (Pittsburgh, PA) is a creative hub dedicated to the advancement of black, brown, queer and femme artists. Their programming provides holistic support at all stages of their careers to create connections for career sustainability, peer to peer mentorship, and overall improvement of the field.
Double Edge Theatre (Ashfield, MA) is a cultural cooperative and ensemble collective committed to artistic rigor, research and experimentation, and the natural environment. Their work is grounded in three pillars–Art, Living Culture, and Art Justice. These principles anchor a breadth of organizational activity including outdoor spectacle performances; holistic artist training; and principled, reciprocal community building.
Oglala Lakota Artspace (Kyle, SD) is the first community arts facility on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and provides a collaborative and intergenerational space where Native artists have access to studio space, computers, classroom and gallery space, and a hub to establish connections with other arts and cultural activities across the geographically vast reservation.
Rainbow Serpent (Pittsburgh, PA) advances Black LGBTQ culture by creating, publishing, and promoting artistic works, exhibitions, and performances, with a particular focus on artists who explore emerging technologies, innovative healing protocols, African cosmologies, and multimedia art.
SLIPPAGE (Chicago, IL) is a global think-tank exploring connections between performance, history, and technology; fostering critical interactions; and staying at the forefront of innovative thinking. Located on the campus of Northwestern University, SLIPPAGE builds on the urgent need for intentional, critical, and timely interaction among artists, researchers, audiences, engineers, faculty, students, and general public in the arts.
TeAda Productions (Los Angeles, CA and Micronesia) is a nomadic theater rooted in the stories of immigrants, refugees and indigenous peoples. For over 25 years, TeAda has collaborated with community-based organizations across the country, creating original plays rooted in the experiences of immigrants and refugees. TeAda impacts tens of thousands of community members annually, offering acts of service through transformative theater workshops and performances.
These new Partners are united by their deep community engagement practices and recognition as leaders within their communities. Each organization understands meaningful cultural work requires both challenging existing paradigms and contributing constructively to community growth, creating spaces where tradition and innovation can coexist and thrive together.
We believe it is significant that these new Partner organizations—in addition to being presenting organizations—are also producing organizations with artists at the helm. This ensures artists’ voices are overwhelmingly represented in our efforts to transform practices between presenters and artists. By bringing more artists directly into NPN’s community of learning and practice, we are able to more effectively change the material conditions of artists and arts organizations living under racial capitalism.
We recognize artists and arts organizations in this country are in a moment of crisis. Instead of scaling our resources or censoring ourselves to weather a moment of uncertainty, NPN is investing our time, resources, and joyous collaboration into our Network and these new Partners who share our commitment to systems change in arts and philanthropy. Reciprocity, mutuality, and collectivism are powerful tools in the movement against authoritarianism, and NPN will continue to prioritize these in our Network. We hope you take a moment to learn more about NPN’s six new national Partners and allow yourself to be similarly inspired by their commitments to the creation of experimental, transformative art; their communities; and resisting oppression.