NAVEL to Receive $15,000 Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts
LOS ANGELES, CA — NAVEL has been approved for a $15,000 Grants for Arts Projects award to support ASSEMBLIES. This project brings cultural workers together from Los Angeles and around the world to participate in diverse, community-led arts programs that pursue collaborative research, discussion, creation, and action. NAVEL’s project is among the more than 1,100 projects across America totaling nearly $27 million that were selected during this second round of Grants for Arts Projects fiscal year 2021 funding.
“As the country and the arts sector begin to imagine returning to a post-pandemic world, the National Endowment for the Arts is proud to announce funding that will help arts organizations such as NAVEL reengage fully with partners and audiences,” NEA Acting Chairman Ann Eilers said. “Although the arts have sustained many during the pandemic, the chance to gather with one another and share arts experiences is its own necessity and pleasure.”
NAVEL looks forward to partnering with the NEA, as well as local funding organizations including the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, and the Wilhelm Family Foundation, to realize another year of deep, collaborative learning with the community.
“As NAVEL emerges from a year of reflection and community listening, we are committed to building a caring infrastructure which supports the healing and transformational power of art to imagine new ways of dismantling the systems which impacted our communities the most during the pandemic,” Sustainability Lead Michael Holt said.
About ASSEMBLIES
ASSEMBLIES is where communities of artists come together to collaboratively learn, share experiences, and archive knowledge. The project incubates experimental spaces for artists to pursue the questions they want to explore. The community votes on topics and facilitators, and as a group they engage over multiple sessions in discussion, research, presentation, and artistic collaboration. The result is a dynamic program, where cultural workers gain skills in facilitation, connection, and collaboration.
ASSEMBLIES bring authentic engagement and respectful dialogue to the challenges our community is experiencing, with topics such as anti-colonial media and technology, Black ethics in rap music, the future of labor, the aesthetics and politics of artificial intelligence, revolutionary wealth redistribution, and more. Since beginning the ASSEMBLIES programming in 2019, NAVEL has supported 43 artists and engaged over 300 members of the public in open and thoughtful dialogue.
ASSEMBLIES is also funded by the Los Angeles City Department of Cultural Affairs, the Los Angeles County Department of Arts & Culture, and the Wilhelm Family Foundation.
ASSEMBLIES will return in Winter/Spring 2022. More information on how to sign up, propose, and participate will be announced in Early 2022. For more information on ASSEMBLIES, visit navel.la/assemblies.
About NAVEL
Located in a loft warehouse space in Downtown Los Angeles, NAVEL is a Test Site for Kinship, empowering our collective of creatives with the tools, resources, and space they need to do the work they want to do. We build community and redistribute resources to cultural workers who have been historically excluded — especially those who are Queer & Trans, Poor, Disabled, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. Through residencies, programs, and events we co-create experimental spaces to imagine and build a more abundant, just, and collaborative world.
The NAVEL collective is a group of QTBIPOC cultural workers who work collaboratively to hold and support different spaces within NAVEL including working groups, practice spaces, our physical space and location, and our future-building spaces. Through our one-time events, ongoing public programming, and partnership initiatives, we work to reflect the world in which we want to live and create. Everything we do is guided by our core values of collective empowerment, queer hospitality, fearless accountability, trusting the unknown, and kinship.
Since 2017, NAVEL has hosted 150 free or low-cost cultural programs and events, with more than 15,000 community members attending, which featured nearly 300 artists, thinkers and makers.
For more information about NAVEL please visit navel.la or follow us @navel.la.
For more information about the NEA and to read a full list of recipients, please visit arts.gov/news.