NETWeek Chicago
Click the button to schedule a meeting with Alex and Monica from Team NET - let’s explore together.
Overview
NETRoots Bay Area takes place Fall 2026, gathering 75+ practitioners for a four-day convening anchored by a participatory installation called NETRoots and co-created with the Center for Unclassifiable Technologies and Experiences (C.U.T.E.) which launches NET’s Ensemble Practice Story & Legacy Project.
This gathering serves as the launch of a multi-year initiative to document, preserve, and activate ensemble practice as essential civic technology, especially the methodologies, stories, and practices that marginalized communities have been building for decades to strengthen democracy through art-making.
The gathering and the installation work together: the installation makes visible what is usually invisible (the interconnected web of collaborative practice), while the gathering activates, documents, and transmits that knowledge to the next generation.
Location
The Bay Area provides the ground (venue, local partnerships, hospitality infrastructure) while participant selection prioritizes national, field-wide representation. Bay Area practitioners serve as a significant anchor presence, with the gathering being in the Bay Area and of the Bay Area, while serving the broader field. This is one site in a five-year, multi-regional initiative.
Participants
NETRoots gathers 75+ practitioners intentionally selected to represent the breadth of ensemble practice while centering those whose stories and methodologies have been systematically underdocumented.
Participant categories include:
Create + Activate Cohort 2
Legacy BIPOC practitioners, Indigenous Ensemble practitioners, and emerging practitioners
Bay Area Ensemble community
National NET member representatives
Service organization and cross-sector movement leaders
Technology-forward artists
Ancestral + Emerging Technology practitioners
The Ensemble Practice Story & Legacy Project
NETRoots is the launch of the Ensemble Practice Story & Legacy Project. We are building a living archive. This means every element of the gathering should be designed to capture and document specific data, stories, and testimonials.
The types of data that will be collected are:
Story Data: Recorded oral histories and practice narratives, Methodology documentation, Lineage mapping, Solidarity narratives
Biometric + Experiential Data: Collective heartbeat patterns, Movement data, Presence mapping
Testimonial Data: Video testimonials, reflections, and soundbites from participants about what ensemble practice has meant in their lives and communities
The stories, methodologies, and practices collected through NETRoots and the StoryCircle interviews become a living, growing archive - not a static repository, but an indispensable resource for the field. This archive serves as a gathering of collective wisdom for preservation and intergenerational transfer, a tool for advocacy efforts by service organizations, policymakers, lobbyists, and organizers, a research foundation for scholars studying collaborative governance and solidarity movements, and facilitation resources for organizations building multiracial coalitions.
Opportunities for Engagement
NET will be engaging both the Bay Area community and the larger NET community in a variety of ways:
Venue Partners: We are looking to partner with local organizations to host both the full group of participants and also smaller subsets.
Hosts: NET will be working with a team of local practitioners to help build relationships and plan the gathering. This is an opportunity to not only help plant the seeds, but to cultivate the garden of the Bay Area Gathering.
Guest Speakers: As the NetRoots program agenda begins to take shape, NET will be inviting in guest artists and speakers to add their voices, stories, stories, practices to the tapestry of the gathering.
Community Partners: NET is looking to partner with local arts and culture organizations for our participants to engage with during their time in the Bay Area
Participants: Join us at the gathering as one of the 75+ practitioners.
Those interested in engaging with NetRoots can fill out the interest form here.
About NET
30 Years Building Collective Power
For 30 years NET has done the work of laying a foundation for collective power.
But after this recent transition, we now understand that nurturing visionary leadership from BIPOC and global majority communities is at the center.
Previously, NET did not focus on or have the infrastructure to hold the network beyond the in-person gatherings or re-granting programs. We know now that is our most important and most resource driven activity.
We now serve over 600 artists, hundreds of organizations, and their three million strong audiences combined. We are distributed across urban, rural, and tribal communities, and while we are focusing on going deeper, we are also building pathways for non-mainstream ensembles and collectives to belong here.
We've been practicing the future together for three decades. Now we're ready to move from practice to cross-sector implementation.
Contact Us
Click the button to schedule a meeting with Alex and Monica from Team NET - let’s explore together.
NETRoots Connections + Community
Check out the Padlet below to see who we’ve connected with, who’s on the docket, and who we’d love some support with reaching! We want to connect with as many folks in the Bay Area as possible - please add to our list below.
