Ho’n A:wan Productions develops community theater and cultural programs in McKinley County

Ho’n A:wan Productions, a new collaborative partnership of the A:shiwi A:wan Museum & Heritage Center, Zuni Youth Enrichment Project (ZYEP), Edaakie Arts, ShiwiSun Productions and Zuni cultural educators, launched focused development of community theater and cultural programs that aim to expand arts offerings across McKinley County. The initiative brings together the museum’s heritage resources with ZYEP’s youth programming and local production expertise.

Organizers formalized the collaboration on February 23, 2026, signaling coordinated work among the named partners to design productions, workshops and cultural curriculum for local audiences. The participating institutions combine museum exhibition capacity at the A:shiwi A:wan Museum & Heritage Center, youth outreach through ZYEP, community arts production experience from ShiwiSun Productions and arts instruction from Edaakie Arts and Zuni cultural educators.

The partnership emphasizes sequence and roles: the A:shiwi A:wan Museum & Heritage Center contributes cultural and historical content; Zuni Youth Enrichment Project provides access to youth engagement and programming channels; Edaakie Arts and ShiwiSun Productions supply production and artistic direction; and Zuni cultural educators ensure traditional knowledge and cultural protocols are integrated. Together the groups intend to develop community theater pieces and related cultural programming for schools, families and museum visitors in McKinley County.

Ho’n A:wan Productions’ work on February 23, 2026 followed planning conversations among the partners about gathering local teaching resources and production capacity. By aligning the institutional strengths of a museum, a youth nonprofit and two arts organizations, the partnership targets a pipeline from cultural education to staged performance that had previously been handled piecemeal by separate groups in the county.

For McKinley County institutions, the new partnership creates a single, named vehicle for collaborative projects: Ho’n A:wan Productions. The structure gives the A:shiwi A:wan Museum & Heritage Center, Zuni Youth Enrichment Project, Edaakie Arts, ShiwiSun Productions and Zuni cultural educators a formal mechanism to pool staff time, share rehearsal and exhibit space and coordinate outreach for community theater seasons and cultural learning events.

Ho’n A:wan Productions’ development of these community theater and cultural programs marks a concrete step toward sustained arts collaboration in McKinley County. With the partners named and the February 23, 2026 planning milestone completed, the consortium now faces the operational tasks of scheduling performances, recruiting participants through ZYEP and integrating cultural curricula from Zuni educators into productions for local audiences.