The Future Is Ensemble, And It Starts With You, Today.
We just lived the future. Now we’re building it. Together.
Earlier this month, on Tongva, and Chumash land, here in Los Angeles, something beautiful happened.
We called it Camp Ensemble—two days of connection, ritual, dreaming, and play across Los Angeles. Ensemble artists, producers, cultural workers, and movement builders gathered around firelight in Topanga Canyon. We shared stories we never tell. We laughed. We named grief. We fed each other—literally and spiritually. We questioned the systems that burn us out. We built speculative societies grounded in mutual aid and solidarity. We gathered around the NET Garden, filled with objects from our lives.
One offering read:
“This is what I used to clean my mother before she passed.”
Camp Ensemble wasn’t just an event. It was a reminder:
Ensemble is not a concept. It’s a practice. A future-making method. A refusal to disappear.
And it affirmed what we already knew: The Future Is Ensemble.
Today, we launch The Future Is Ensemble, a multi-year giving campaign that begins with a 4-week push to raise $36,000 by June 30, the end of our fiscal calendar.
This is not just a fundraiser. It’s a collective call to build the systems that will sustain NET—and the ensemble field—for the long haul.
Here’s what we’re building together:
A shared cooperative employment agreement to help freelancers and organizations access affordable healthcare
Strategic advocacy across local, regional, and federal levels—protecting our sector and fighting for policy that supports justice-based arts practice
Regional gatherings that nourish relationships and field cohesion
Cross-industry partnerships rooted in solidarity economy principles and mutual aid
We’ve all been told “that’s not possible” too many times.
We’ve been under-resourced, overworked, and invisible to systems that were never built for us.
And still—we created. We convened. We survived. We refused to fold.
We built a path where there wasn’t one.
This campaign is about building the infrastructure that can hold that path.
Because every healthy nonprofit needs a public base of support.
And every movement needs its people to be visible.
For 29 years, NET has survived without a real individual giving pipeline.
Now we’re creating one so this work can thrive far beyond any one grant, leader, or moment.
Camp Ensemble gave us a glimpse of that future.
We witnessed ensemble in motion:
Lightning talks on revolutionary love, power, and catharsis.
Play that made room for joy and provocation.
Honest accountability. Shared meals. Big vision. Real belonging.
We didn’t just gather—we time-traveled.
And now it’s time to root that vision in structure.
Your support shows the world that ensemble matters.
Not just to funders. Not just to institutions.
But to us—the artists, organizers, and culture makers who live this work every day.
This campaign is our rallying cry.
Not to survive. But to thrive.
