NPN Fall 2019 Development Fund Awards
Through the Fall 2019 Development Fund, the National Performance Network (NPN) announced $45,000 in awards, and leveraging an additional $177,000, to further support six NPN Creation Fund projects. These projects represent a cross section of disciplines, geographies, cultures and practices that reflect NPN’s commitment to advancing racial justice and cultural equity through the arts.
The Development Fund, which is phase two of NPN’s Creation & Development Fund, helps offset managerial, artistic or technical needs when developing a work. These needs can include supporting technical residencies, building or deepening community engagement, relationship building, storytelling, or studio time to adapt a work for travel.
Andresia “Real” Moseley and Art2Action received a Fall 2019 NPN Development Fund award for Five Black Women, a new solo work written and performed by Real, and directed by Andrea Assaf.
Five Black Women is a one-woman show with multiple characters, poetry, a DJ and song that reveals more than the stories of diverse black women. It is about the struggle to identify, and what happens when we contemplate letting go of who the world thinks we are. Five Black Women will be presented at a work-in-progress showing with community engagement activities at StageWorks Theatre in Tampa, Florida, in August 2020. Development funds will support an intensive residency assisting with pre-production including artists fees, rehearsals and sound/lighting design. Five Black Women will premiere in January 2021, co-presented by Art2Action and StageWorks in Tampa.
As part of NPN’s commitment to a more equitable vision for the future, the Creation & Development Fund is open to all disciplines, as long as the project results in a live, experiential exchange between artists and community in the form of public presentations, performances, gallery exhibitions or community activities.
The Creation & Development Fund is made possible with support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency) and Co-commissioners.