Network of Ensemble Theaters Launches NETWeek Bay Area

The Network of Ensemble Theaters launched NETWeek Bay Area in Oakland and San Francisco on Oct. 5, bringing cultural workers, artists, and organizers together for a week of movement-building and infrastructure design. The confab runs through Oct. 10, featuring events across Oakland and Berkeley such as a cooperative healthcare design table and an Artist-Organizer Matchmaking Initiative. The gathering arrives in the middle of a national debate over the state of the American nonprofit theatre sector following Public Theater artistic director Oskar Eustis announcing his 2028 departure and declaring that the movement is over.

Network of Ensemble Theaters Advances Cooperative Infrastructure Pilot

NETWeek Bay Area serves as a continuation of a pilot program that began in Chicago in May. Organizers designed the week to build infrastructure among movements and people, bringing cultural workers, artists, and organizers together on the same land and streets to build the systems that old models never provided. Alexandra Meda, co-network director of the Network of Ensemble Theaters, responded to Eustis’s remarks by publishing the essay The Movement Is Alive.

Oskar Eustis is right that something is ending: the arrangement that built $80 million buildings while the artists who make the work still can’t count on health insurance from one gig to the next. The movement is alive, and next week in Oakland you can watch it work: artists, co-ops, and labor designing portable healthcare for cultural workers through a new pilot with one of the largest labor unions in the country. Directors retire. Movements don’t.

Alexandra Meda

Bay Area Cultural Workers Fight for Local Ground

The West Coast gathering arrives as Bay Area cultural workers fight to hold ground amid municipal budget challenges. In June 2025, Oakland eliminated its cultural affairs manager position to close a budget gap, prompting artists and organizations to protest until the city reinstated the role in December, and named Lyz Luke to the position in January 2026. Nationally, funders are beginning to capitalize shared infrastructure, highlighted by nine foundations committing $25 million on Sept. 15 to the Nonprofits Insurance Alliance, a member-governed insurance cooperative for nonprofits. The Federation Table program during NETWeek addresses the question of who covers the artists and cultural workers inside those organizations.

Federation Table and Matchmaking Events Set for October

Programming takes place at various regional sites, including Understory in Fruitvale, Sogorea Te’ Land Trust at Pinnantak Garden in Huchiun, the SUMUD: Resistance Until Liberation mural on 26th Street in Oakland, EastSide Arts Alliance, and BAM House in Oakland’s Black Arts Movement Business District. The Federation Table is part of a national design phase for the NET Federation, a cooperative offering pooled benefits, mutual aid protocols, portable healthcare, and shared purchasing. An Artist-Organizer Matchmaking Initiative also opens, pairing frontline workers and community organizers with artist facilitators.