WASHINGTON, D.C.: Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company has announced that its Connectivity department will launch a Core Partner Program for the 2020-21 season. The company’s Connectivity department, founded in 2009, links Woolly’s artistic mission with its social and political mission to both respond to and initiate social change through theatre.

“The Core Partner Program is a natural outgrowth of Woolly’s mission to deeply engage with our world, and desire to practice radical inclusion,” said Connectivity director Kristen Jackson in a statement. “Stemming from the impulse to be of service and honor community needs, the Core Partner program represents one of the many ways Woolly Mammoth can be part of the solution for how we heal in the midst of this collective community trauma.”

The Core Partner Program will operate in addition to the company’s show-specific programming created to spark conversation. The program will promote equitable exchange with D.C.-area organizations that largely serve communities of color and/or share a commitment to inclusion, anti-racism, social justice, and the power of art as a tool for advancing those values. Woolly Mammoth’s inaugural core partners include Howard University’s College of Fine Arts, N-Street Village, the Theatre Lab, the Town Hall Education Arts Recreation Campus (THEARC), and Spit Dat.

“As we look to the future at the kind of civic institution that we want Woolly to be, we know Connectivity is at the center of that vision,” said artistic director Maria Manuela Goyanes in a statement. “For over 10 years, Connectivity has been innovating hyper-local ways for Woolly Mammoth to engage, nourish, bolster, and knit our community together. Under Kristen Jackson’s steadfast and compassionate leadership, we aim to walk this path with intentionality, openness, and reciprocity to become even more attuned to the people of D.C. and what they desire from a cultural organization like Woolly Mammoth.”