What’s Next For NETneXt
When Are the NETneXt National Circle-Up Series Fall 2023 Events?
How Do I Get Involved?
The national ensemble arts community is uniquely poised to navigate this moment of culture change and uncertainty. Our Fall 2023 NETneXt National Circle-Up events are a call to action.
We invite all current and past NET members to come “circle up” with us for NETneXt’s collaborative research and development (Co-R&D) — help turn the transformational practices of ensemble creation on NET itself, and co-create what’s NEXT!
Join us online and in New Orleans (remote access available)!
>>National Circle-Up event details and registration links HERE!
WHAT IS NETneXt?
In Fall 2022, NET embarked on NETneXt, an organizational re-envisioning process to better serve a changing field of ensemble theaters and artists. Approached as a community devising process, NETneXt aims to turn the transformational practices of ensemble creation on NET itself to co-create the organization’s future in collaboration with its national membership.
By igniting our collective imagination, this membership-centered process will radically re-envision what’s NEXT for NET and ensure a vital future for the ensemble arts through:
A refreshed, community-driven vision of how to serve and lead better;
A reframed, more visible story of NET, its members, and the ensemble arts movement; and
A revised NET operating model that is activated by a community of practice and rooted in ensemble values, processes, and structures of power-sharing and distributed leadership.
The NETneXt Bridge Ensemble (a temporary, transitional team drawn from the NET membership), with the support of NET’s staff and Board, has been meeting regularly over the past nine months to begin these investigations as a small group and to collectively imagine and shape the community-centered, public engagement process at the heart of the initiative. As we find ourselves at a significant crossroads, we call on you—the NET community—to dream, plan, and actualize an evolutionary pivot to ensure that NET remains sustainable and responsive.
WHAT IS THE NETneXt NATIONAL CIRCLE-UP?
…a collaborative devising container for NET’s membership community to co-create a plan for NET’s future
…an iterative, participatory collective research and development investigation
…an interactive listening, storytelling, and re-visioning/strategy intensive
…peer-based knowledge sharing by and for the NET community, using a “popular education” approach
…an opportunity to learn together, developing a shared community language and understanding to inform, deepen, and support our collective imagining for NET’s future throughout the NETneXt process
The NETneXt National Circle-Up event series will engage the NET membership in participatory research and community planning through the end of 2023. Led by the Bridge Ensemble, this second phase of NETneXt is organized as an iterative series of participatory community planning investigations that “circle up” the NET membership, arts field, and natural allies beyond our sector for collaborative research & development (Co-R&D). Six online sessions (Sept 20-Oct 16) will lead up to a weekend-long, in-person gathering of our national membership in New Orleans (Oct 20-22; remote/hybrid participation options also available). Additional online sessions will follow in November and December to continue this work through NETneXt Co-Creation Circles. The learning will be synthesized and formalized in Winter/Spring 2024 into an operational plan to chart our path forward to what’s NEXT for NET.
Intended to inform and lead us toward a collective re-envisioning of NET, the NETneXt National Circle-Up investigations will focus on:
identifying community priorities and values;
sharing our stories and exploring aspects of Ensemble Practice in the arts and beyond;
and expanding our learning around community agreements, practices for community care and accountability, and solidarity economy networks for resource sharing.
As we map the ensemble community’s achievements, assets, aspirations, and needs, we will explore the ways that artist-led ensembles and collectives are uniquely positioned in the current performing arts ecology; what our collective power and untapped potential might be amid the shifting cultural landscape; and what organizational structure and shared commitments the NET community needs to build together to best support and accomplish this work. Throughout this work, we will interrogate and integrate our learning by centering frameworks for anti-racism, equity, and justice, and through ways of seeing that are indigenous, intergenerational, interdependent, intersectional, and infused with imaginative play.