NETneXt National Circle-Up Series - Fall 2023 Events
Join us online and in New Orleans for a series of NETneXt National Circle-Up events in September & October!
The national ensemble arts community is uniquely poised to navigate this moment of cultural change. NOW is our moment to come together to dream, plan, and actualize an evolutionary pivot to ensure a vital future for ensemble companies and artists, and for NET. Help turn the transformational practices of ensemble creation on NET itself to ignite our collective imagination and co-create what’s NEXT!
ABOUT THE SERIES
Designed and led by the NETneXt Bridge Ensemble (a transitional team drawn from the NET membership), the NETneXt National Circle-Up events are a call to action. The Fall 2023 series invites all current and past NET members into the community engagement phase of NETneXt, our collaborative process to devise and plan the future of NET.
This second phase of NETneXt is organized as a series of participatory community investigations that will “circle up” the NET membership for collaborative research and development (Co-R&D). To start, six online sessions (Sept 20-Oct 16) will lead up to a weekend-long, in-person/hybrid national gathering in New Orleans (Oct 20-22) with regional and online options for remote participation. Following these Fall 2023 events, we will continue this work through additional online NETneXt Co-Creation Circle sessions (through the end of 2023) with our national membership, colleagues from the broader arts field, and natural allies beyond our sector. We will then synthesize our learning into a formal operational plan (Winter/Spring 2024) to chart our path forward to what’s NEXT for NET.
Intended to inform and fuel a collective re-envisioning of NET, the Fall 2023 NETneXt National Circle-Up events will focus on:
sharing our stories and exploring ensemble practice in the arts and beyond (Sept 20 & Oct 4);
building intentional and specifically ensemble-rooted community agreements (Sept 27 & Sept 30);
and expanding our learning around solidarity economy networks for resource sharing (Oct 11), and practices for community care and accountability (Oct 16).
As we map the ensemble community’s achievements, assets, aspirations, and needs, we will explore 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 structures and shared commitments the NET community needs to build to best support and accomplish this work.
The NETneXt process will center frameworks for anti-racism, equity, and justice, through ways of seeing that are indigenous, intergenerational, interdependent, intersectional, and (playfully) imaginative.
NETneXt: New Orleans
At the heart of our community process, this NETneXt National Circle Up will activate our work both in person in New Orleans and virtually for those who can’t attend in person. Taking place over three days (October 20-22), this Circle-Up gathering is designed and produced by the NETneXt Bridge Ensemble with the support of NET’s staff and local NET members.
Throughout the weekend, we will ground ourselves by asking:
To evolve to a co-created, thriving, and sustainable future for the ensemble arts, and for NET – what collective commitments for engaged action and shared accountability are needed from the NET community?
What’s NEXT? And what does the NET that gets us there look like?
Transformative Justice: Community Care & Accountability (Zoom)
This Circle-Up session invites NET members to engage in crucial conversations around harm, healing, reckoning, repair, and reimagining. We will focus on how to both celebrate and critically examine our history as a field. Through case studies, panel discussions, and interactive dialogue, this peer-based knowledge exchange will delve into real-world applications, challenges, and breakthroughs in incorporating Transformative Justice and harm reduction principles within ensemble practices. Come help us forge a path toward a more equitable and sustainable future for arts ensembles and the NET community.
Solidarity Economy: Mutual Aid & Resource Sharing (Zoom)
A community learning panel on the intersection of Solidarity Economy frameworks and “Ensemble Practice.” Using a peer-based “popular education” approach, we’ll build a shared understanding of Solidarity Economy principles, tools, and practices, as they align with the NET membership’s ensemble values, collaborative processes, and shared leadership structures. We will explore together how the Solidarity Economy model can activate our collective power and help ensembles and NET to thrive.
Imagining & Building NET’s Future (Zoom)
This community devising workshop aims to ignite our collective imagination about what a new, co-created, and evolutionary version of NET might look like – rooted in ensemble practice and designed with care to address both the world we’re in NOW, and our boldest aspirations for what could come NEXT.
Community Agreements: Harm Reduction & Repair (Zoom)
In this virtual Circle-Up, we’ll draft a set of community agreements for harm reduction, accountability, and repair within NET, which the full NET community will refine and adopt as a living document at the NETneXt: New Orleans National Circle-Up in October. We’ll begin to identify helpful Transformative Justice practices around reconciliation and restoration (and will continue this work in the Transformative Justice: Community Care & Accountability Circle-Up on October 16, and at NETneXt: NOLA). We live in a world of hurt and harm, but also of care and creativity. With this in mind, we ask attendees to bring your lived wisdom, embodied experience, and sense of imaginative play to this work session.
Community Stories: Helping Each Other Thrive (Zoom)
This first virtual Circle-Up event is an interactive storytelling, listening, and dreaming session to explore what binds us as a national ensemble arts community, what we gain by coming together, and how we are uniquely positioned to navigate this moment of cultural change.