An Update on NET/TEN & Current Programs As NETneXt Visioning Process Begins

February 15, 2023

Throughout this time of cultural reimagining, mostly spent physically apart, the NET staff and Board, in consultation with folx across the membership, have been deep in conversation about the organization’s—and the field’s—future. In Fall 2022, with multi-year, leadership support from the Mellon Foundation, NET began the first phase of an eighteen-month process of organizational re-envisioning to better serve a changing field. This visioning process will turn the transformational practices of ensemble creation on NET itself, in order to co-create the organization’s future in collaboration with its national membership. 

As this foundational work begins, our regranting program, NET/TEN (NET Travel & Exchange Network), has come to a natural end. After distributing more than $1.3 million in funding support to NET members through 500+ grant awards, we’ve reached the end of a 10-year funding cycle for the NET/ TEN program—an initiative born out of field needs identified almost 15 years ago. Rather than leap into a new cycle, we’re turning our resources—human and financial—toward understanding what the field needs and wants now, and what’s on the horizon.

Designed to create opportunities for reciprocal relationship-building and knowledge-sharing through open-ended exploration and exchange, the NET/TEN program has strengthened the ensemble arts field immeasurably. We’re grateful to the Mellon Foundation’s generous lead funding (and for the early support of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation), which made the program possible all these years. 

Details of its impact will live on the Shareback Library, NET/TEN’s digital repository of artist reflections and peer-based learning. Over the coming months we’ll upload all the grantee sharebacks to the Library, and so carry the rich knowledge base of NET/TEN’s legacy forward. We will also update the Library’s interface and search functions to enhance its ongoing value as an online field resource. Meanwhile, NET staff will continue to guide and support the final 2021-22 round of grantees through the year ahead, as project periods wrap up their supported activities and reporting. 

As NET dreams forward, we’re moving ahead with event planning for gatherings both in person and online. We’ll be hearing from our Create + Activate BIPOC cohort (a pilot initiative we started in 2021—stay tuned!). And, following a COVID-related hiatus, we’ll re-energize efforts around our CONNECTOR APP for NET members, as part of our overall resource- and knowledge-sharing efforts.    

Please click the link here to see more information on NET’s website about NETneXt, our community-centered, collaborative devising project-in-process to radically reimagine and co-create NET’s future.