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.