 Good afternoon. Good afternoon. My name is Peggy Sullivan. I'm the program manager for the National Theater Project at the Liquid Foundation for the Arts. And I'd like to thank you all very much for joining us today. This gathering, like when we did in Mississippi last year, is important to the National Theater Project. It's important to its advisors and its future grantees. Some of which we hope will come from here. And I really appreciate all the effort you're making to come out on a Sunday afternoon in this gorgeous, gorgeous weather. I guarantee you it's nothing like what's your happy day in Boston. And so I really want to say thank you. But before I say anything more, I'd like to acknowledge that we are the other lands of the indigenous people that were here, the Odo, the Apache, the Yaki, and the Apana. And I want to thank them, the ancestors past, present, and future for being with us today and sharing with us. I'd also like to thank the NW Bowling Foundation without whom this would not be possible. Here, here. Our partners, the Tucson Pima Arts Council, DNA Works, and the Performing Arts Department at the Institute of American Indian Arts for their guidance. Their input, which was invaluable for us in putting this together, to one of those things where you're in Boston and you want to do something somewhere else, you have to have people on the ground who really know what's going on, who know the people, and who have connections, because obviously we're young and I really want to say thank you to our partners. I'd also especially like to thank Roberto Bedoya, Marcellino, Marcellino communities. Thank you so much. Daniela is the NTP program coordinator, often referred to her as my other brain, and she is probably one of the most important people in the national community. So thank you. I'd like to recognize Kathy Gatt-Wartz, who is NEPA's executive director back in the back. And Jane Creston, who is the deputy director of NEPA. The NW Bowling Foundation of the Arts National Human Project is a six-year-old project. There's a lot of information to bring, a lot of advice, a lot of something. And like any six-year-old, we're in that phase asking questions and wanting things to be fair. As a stage, I hope that we actually never grow up. So what does that mean for a national project? Well, first it means we have to take a look at who's applying and who's receiving grants. And then ask ourselves, if this is a national project, why aren't you seeing more applicants from the south, from the Midwest, the Northwest, the Northeast, the Southwest? And how can we make our grant making a more equitable representation of the country? One of the many possible answers, and you know, many people are thinking about this and how can we do this, but one of the many possible answers is that you can't grant equitably if you don't know the country, the issues the artists outside of your own comfort zone. So we could study those areas from afar, assign readings, do surveys, et cetera. But as one of his own history has been rewritten by outsiders, I know that that results in a very skewed picture. It takes going to a place, listening, learning from, asking questions, and eating with the people who know best what's going on, know best where the issues are. And this day is not nearly long enough for that, to do all of that. But it is a start. But we believe that a convening like this, where we have artists and presenters and surface organizations, there's voters sitting down, eating and learning and discussing, is an opportunity to take another step towards that more equitable grant. And towards a more equitable national theater project. I know from last year's gathering that it is an audit that artists in the area get the opportunity to participate in this kind of discussion, networking and working together to sit down and spend a few minutes outside or running around, maybe to see each other's shows, to just sit down and talk. And so it's very important that, not only that we learn, but that we also allow space for that connection to happen. And I'm also. At the end of her poem, drinking under the moon, she goes laughing. My friend, Margo Thomas, a Ulipa Apache author, scholar and activist, has a call to action that spoke to me a long time ago about what it is we can do going forward. And she's a very dear friend and texting her this morning going, guess what, I'm going to use this again. She's like, okay, fine, whatever. But I would, this is the last passage from the poem. To the great mother rabbit on the moon, always with a sorrowful look on her face, make the medicine, be artistic, do what is necessary. If you wanted to know more about Margo, Margo, I think it would be all kinds of information. But that's from her both great eyes. So I said, kutapatush. Thank you for being here. I'm going to turn it over actually to Carlton Turner, Turner World Round Conductions, Executive Director of Alternate Roots, and NTP advisor to talk about last year's Gathering and Necessity. And then Christina will orient you more where we are, what this place is, and the work is doing. Thank you. Good afternoon. And we're about to do one. Great. Thank you all for those of you that live here for welcoming us to this beautiful space, just a beautiful part of the country. My name is Carlton Turner. I'm the Executive Director of Alternate Roots and NTP advisor. And I'm really excited to be here to be a part of this conversation and this community. Last year in Mississippi, we hosted the first of these gatherings as a grateful to the NTP program. The cohort meeting is a meeting that happens with those at NEPA that run the NTP program, the advisors on the program, and the grand recipients for that particular year to talk about their projects, to learn more about the opportunities, to help think through ideas and issues and challenges with their work. And so as we're in the process of conversations about where these grants will go, going through the panel process, NTP is offered a really valuable space to have conversations about what does it mean to live out values of equity, diversity, inclusion, what does it mean to challenge the status quo and rub up against the real infrastructure challenges that we have within our sector that mirror the challenges that we face within our society. This has been a place that has been really welcoming of those conversations. As part of my work on the panel, it suggests that we do a one-day gathering and I first offered to host it in Mississippi, which was a challenge in and of itself, but that on the turn of that, we spent a day having the conversation about the southern region and how these conversations that we have on the panel reflect in the way that we have these conversations in our community. So we brought together a great deal of people from the southeast together in Mississippi for one-day conversation to talk about the infrastructure challenges that we face and the differences between Mississippi in Alabama and Louisiana and Arkansas and Tennessee and how they're not in New York and Chicago and Minneapolis and Los Angeles and San Francisco and how we have to be conscious of these differences in the infrastructure that exists to support the development of artists, how are artists being supported in local communities, what are the educational opportunities, what are the job opportunities, what are the spaces that are helping to support or produce or commission work and how are those things that are happening in the local community influence the way that we receive applications on the panel and making a connection between those two things so that we're not having a conversation in the panel process that is independent of understanding the challenges that are on the ground in these communities. So if we sit in the room and wonder why we're not seeing applications from Alabama that it's not just well too bad they didn't apply this year but it's a really factoring in and understanding the challenges that exist in those communities that do or don't support the development of artists to be a part of the process. And if we're truly a natural program how do we then begin to have those questions challenge us to shift practices and shift policies and procedures to be more inclusive and so it was really helpful to have that conversation specifically. We're continuing to bear the fruit of what that meant to have so many enlightened and amazing individuals that are working on this work across the country in our community and those conversations that continue to evolve locally. So I'm really excited to be here and to have this opportunity to share another year of these conversations and hopefully they will continue to advance the way we think about our work as we go from here and many of my friends the advisors will be meeting to start the panel process in a few short weeks and so thank you for that opportunity to do it in Jackson and I'm really excited to be here. Thanks. Hi, I'm Christina Abseger I'm a program coordinator and Chico is my organization this is actually our 40th year existence and we were started by a local group of Chico artists and we do a wide variety of programming we promote indigenous culture through different art space programming we do youth art workshops in the community we do diados, mortals festivals we do print making workshops this is actually where you are now is our gallery space and also our working studio space so artists come in from the community and create one of a kind prints which are on the walls right now and we also do artists in residence we host to local artists and we give them free space for the year right over here on our office space and I would just like to welcome you all to Chico and those of you who aren't from here welcome to Phoenix and thank you for being here