New Orleans, As It Is

ArtSpot Productions' "Lower 9 Stories," performed on the Ninth Ward levee that broke during Hurricane Katrina. Pictured: The Positive Outreach Leaders, New Orleans high-school and university students. Part of Junebug Productions' Ec(h)o Environmental Justice Festival, May 1998. (Photo by Libby Nevinger)

In other places, culture comes down from on high.
In New Orleans it just bubbles up from the street.
—Musician/educator/historian Ellis Marsalis

New Orleans is the capital of community arts in the United States. Perhaps I am just an overzealous newcomer, but I have been visiting and living here for ten years, and in that time I have found the place to be a living textbook of how people can call upon the signs, symbols, rituals and stories of their community in order to improve and transform their community. This includes many forms that are unique to the city, such as parades (like “second lines”), foods (like gumbo), jazz funerals, Gospel music and elements of our visual design, masking; jewelry and clothing, dance, architecture and sculpture – each has a style that expresses New Orleans. And miraculously, somewhere among the panoply of expressions, all ages, colors, genders, classes and religions find ways to get involved. No joke: everyone here is an artist. It is truly an amazing place.

In late Summer 2005, our capital came under siege, and not primarily from nature. Hurricane season dealt us some serious blows, it’s true, but that has been happening for centuries. If not for the failure of the man-made levees, waterways and pumping systems on August 29, 2005, the day after Katrina, the city would have been largely spared. At the very least, if our technology had functioned correctly, New Orleans would have been an immediate asset to the regional rebuilding process instead of its poster child. Here are two understatements for your consideration: (1) New Orleans is pissed off and grieving, and will be for some time to come; and (2) New Orleans is going to be the test-case for many American cities in our disaster-prone, globally warmed 21st Century.

As it is, the damage to human life and culture in the wake of Hurricane Katrina is so vast, it will never truly be known. The Gulf Coast, home to arguably some of the most unique and vibrant cultures in the world, will require decades to rebuild. Thousands of artifacts and works of art are lost forever, along with the people who created them. Hundreds of thousands of residents are vacant from the city, their homes decimated. New Orleans public school system alone, according to official estimates, will take at least a generation and hundreds of millions of dollars to regain acceptable student achievement standards.

What does it mean to be a community artist/arts organization in a context like this? What can art accomplish in response to such a tragedy? What does the future hold for community arts in New Orleans? This newcomer decided to find out.

Chapter One: Pre-Katrina

Welcome to New Orleans, Home of the Hits.
And if you’re from out of town, hah!
Welcome to the Third World…
—“What Is Wrong With This Picture?”
Music and lyrics by Galactic (1998)

New Orleans is an island. Whatever it may look like on the map, when you actually visit the place – and especially if you were born here – you realize New Orleans is a self-contained cultural land mass. Upon closer inspection, though, you realize that New Orleans is actually an archipelago of 52 distinct but closely-knit cultural islands: the Calliope, the Bywater, the Broadmoor, Irish Channel, Gerttown, Treme and so on, most with their own parades, landmarks, recipes, architecture and music, churches, social-aid and pleasure clubs and benevolent societies.

But, according to authorities such as the Urban Institute, while New Orleans neighborhoods have been a protean source of American cultural vitality for almost as long as there’s been an “America,” much of it has happened “off the radar” and in opposition to mainstream for-profit and nonprofit sectors. In the days prior to Katrina, cultural grants and patronage in New Orleans were chronically limited in comparison to other parts of the country, and almost nonexistent for the city’s African-American traditional art forms. So New Orleanians have found other ways to pay for our community art through a packed annual calendar of fundraising events, masked balls, membership dues, fish dinners and other grassroots strategies.

Mardi Gras Indians (Photo by Mimi Zarsky)

For example, the Mardi Gras Indian tradition is a uniquely New Orleanian practice said to commemorate American Indians and their efforts to assist runaway slaves. Thirty to 40 Mardi Gras Indian “tribes” create hand-sewn costumes with intricate patterns, beadwork and feathers. The tribes wear the costumes (or “mask”) and compete with each other in spontaneous dance performances on the streets of New Orleans on special days such as Mardi Gras and St. Joseph’s Day.

“Being a Mardi Gras Indian has always been something that is largely financed through the individual family,” says Carol Bebelle, co-director of the Ashe Cultural Center, one of a handful of nonprofit community arts venues in the city that are dedicated to supporting grassroots African-American traditions:

It’s not only pride; it’s the accumulation of racism and class bias over centuries that has created these conditions. For more than a hundred years, Mardi Gras Indians have been masking and Second Line clubs have been parading, and yet, neither our city nor our state had figured out how to support these cultural treasures.

Worse still, in the weeks just prior to Katrina, some of our officials – including several who were elected with the help of these organizations – began quietly withdrawing their support, out of fear for their white and upper-class black constituencies, who were in a panic because of a few violent incidents. Folks took the easy way out and blamed the Indians for problems that were citywide, as if shutting down the Mardi Gras Indians was going to solve the violent crime in our city!

Whether it was intentional or not, people in charge refused to “get” how these events allowed people to come together, to less off steam and to move into the world of others. Since it’s not understood, it is seen as bad.

Inside Mardi Gras Indians and Second Line clubs it is real clear who is in charge. If you are willing to ride with these people, to interact in a place where you are powerless, then you can experience the beauty of these organizations. If not, it must seem like one godawful bunch of hooting and hollering, done by a bunch of raving, scary-looking black men.

Nonetheless, in pre-Katrina New Orleans, it was possible to succeed as a community arts organization. ArtSpot Productions for example, directed by theater artist Kathy Randels, after struggling for years to establish itself and its experimental style, was hitting its stride in August 2005: As artist in residence at the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans, the recent winner of local and national awards for one of its touring productions, and the hosts of a growing political performance event series called “State of the Nation,” ArtSpot Productions was on a roll and poised to celebrate a triumphal 10th anniversary in three months. “It’s hard to get too full of yourself as an artist in New Orleans,” Randels says, “but let’s just say, we were progressing steadily.”

Randels was also part of a community coalition made up of students, teachers, artists, parents and community organizations at Frederick Douglass High School in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward. The coalition was founded in large part around her brother Jim Randels and his colleagues in Students at the Center, a multigenerational creative writing program based at the school. Kathy Randels believed that after years of effort, the work of the Douglass Community Coalition was poised to take off too:

Douglass had been on a decline for more than ten years by the time Katrina came, but we were finally showing signs of making some progress. Not an easy thing when you have four principals in three years and ninety percent of the students functioning below grade level, but that was typical of neighborhood high schools in New Orleans before the storm.

Families in Orleans Parish had become accustomed to an unofficial segregated system with neighborhood high schools like Douglass at the bottom of the option list. It was the type of school where students would spend more time walking around the halls than in class, and activities like pot smoking, cutting leaving early, and coming late were routine. There were great students there – many of them, actually – but they were overshadowed by the neglect of the larger society.

By the summer of 2005, a lot of progress had been made. A strong senior class, many of whom were graduates of the Students at the Center creative writing program, were starting to make demands about improvements to the school facility. Our coalition of community organizations had slowly been putting together this calendar of cultural programming to encourage student achievement and supplement the curriculum. And, we were starting to get good at getting grants, which was enabling us to pilot different ideas and build working relationships with each other.

In the first week of August 2005, after seven years of work and relationship-building, members of the Douglass Coalition – students, administrators, teachers and artists – held an extremely successful two-day meeting where they came to consensus on a four-year plan to turn Douglass High around, in large part through the integration of community-based arts projects. Three weeks later, the school ceased to exist.

Chapter Two: Katrina

You who will emerge from the flood
In which we have gone under
Remember
When you speak of our failings
The dark time too
Which you have escaped.
—Poet Bertolt Brecht (“To Those Born Later”)

Carol Bebelle and Doug Redd of Ashe Cultural Center did not hesitate when they heard on Thursday morning that a major hurricane might hit New Orleans head-on the following Sunday. To, Carol, it actually felt like the culmination of years of planning:

Carol Bebelle at Ashe Cultural Center in New Orleans (Photo by Romaguera Photography, Inc.)

When Katrina came the decision to evacuate was a very easy one. When we realized the storm would threaten us, we made arrangements and protected Ashe and personal property as much as possible and evacuated to Opelousas, where we were provided with private rooms and kitchen to use as office able to set up command center.

It was about a week before I could lift myself from being down; it took that long to find out that my personal belongings were probably okay. One of our curators, G-d Bless Him, stayed and decided to protect Ashe. He put out the word on the street that he was here and was regularly checking in with the center to protect it.

We began working on finding out about folks who hadn’t seemed to make it out, friends and acquaintances, separated or trapped. We used cell phones to coordinate with a friend of Ashe who going back and forth to rescue and secure various neighborhood locations, at which point Doug and I worked for hours at the computer to help rescue and send messages. Once we knew we were not going to be in distress personally, it made a world of difference to be helpful.

What was hard for me was that I had to come to peace with the idea that I wouldn’t be able to solve everything. What I decided was that I could and must do whatever I was able to do. Doug and I decided to use this time to get our act together back at Ashe so that we could hit the ground running.

Chapter Three: Post-Katrina

There will be a little bit of New Orleans everywhere
When our refugees move into your communities.
—Andrei Codrescu
“After the Deluge: A Letter to America”

In the weeks and months immediately following Katrina, few could predict if there was even going to be a city of New Orleans, let alone who was going to live in it. As Carol Bebelle found during this period, it was not about neighborhoods, cities or states; it was about people-to-people relationships:

"All the boundaries came down, at least temporarily. People wanted to know how they could help." —Carol Bebelle

All the boundaries came down, at least temporarily. People wanted to know how they could help, so we provided an intermediary function to connect them with people who needed help. We distributed a round of quick grants to some of our artists and culture-bearers to get them back on their feet. Meanwhile, we wrote grants to gather the general operating resources to keep us going.

The first week of October, we started commuting back and forth almost daily to New Orleans from Opelousas, and then one day we just couldn’t do it anymore. We had to ask our very hospitable friend to bring our luggage back to the City, and Doug and I found temporary homes in the Ashe building until a month-and-a-half ago.

For many during this period, what was acceptable shifted: having a place to stay, having enough fresh food, and being in charge of your life became a precious luxury. Carol and her Ashe co-director Doug Redd began working with the Mayor’s “Bring Back New Orleans” Cultural Planning Committee, they co-sponsored a weekend-long “resource and networking festival” called “Making It Happen” that brought 28 educational, health, civic and economic development organizations from around the country to New Orleans to meet with grassroots groups. They helped to develop the “Mardi Gras Service Corps” program with Tulane University to put college students and tourists to work as volunteer rebuilders, and began “Side by Side,” an artist peer-support network that provides direction and advice to artists on taking advantage of grants and outside support available due to Katrina.

In the immediate weeks and months following the storm, Ron Bechet, Associate Professor of Art at Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans, and director of their Community Arts Partners program, saw a shift of institutions going on, with many smaller grassroots institutions having a hard time getting back to what they were doing before the storm. Said Bechet:

For instance, Richard Thomas, the leader of the Pieces of Power youth graphic design group has been working here in the community for decades, building up this network of graduates, and he’s having trouble just finding where his people are. Richard is relocated to Waterloo, Iowa, of all places, but there he is, in the middle of corn country, working with students in the school system using the methods he developed here in New Orleans over the past 20 years.

Now, I know he’s planning to come back eventually, but like many people he is waiting to see what happens, particularly with storms and flooding. He stuck to his guns during the storm and was taken away by rescue boat; who knows how that experience affects you? If I were him, I’d be pretty careful too before I moved back.

Post-Katrina, Bechet and his colleagues in the Art Department at Xavier began picking up the pieces of their planning process to launch a new Minor in Community Arts Management. More than ever before, Bechet became convinced that New Orleans needed capable arts administrators:

We need more leaders in the field, particularly those that work with community groups. We need to pull our various groups together, share information, advocate, document, promote, organize. The economic and cultural landscape is going to go through enormous changes, and we will need reliable, thoughtful administrators who are intimately familiar with these cultural traditions, and doing things for the right reasons.

Chapter Four: Post Post-Katrina

I’m an Alligator
Alligators live in swamps
Therefore, I live in a swamp
—New Orleans photographer Morris Jones Jr.

These days, visual artist Willie Birch is as likely at a meeting with his neighbors as he is making art. They are working to create The Porch, a new cultural center in New Orleans' 7th Ward. He believes the city is entering a new experimental period in which “the focus being given to New Orleans offers us the chance to establish a much broader understanding of the unique styles of the city,” and

After what I just saw at Mardi Gras, New Orleans is ripe for it. I saw lots of people wearing social commentary on Katrina, FEMA, Bush, environment, destruction of home, everything. People wearing those things in the open – that makes for an enlightened audience.

I am very interested in seeing where this stuff goes, how people’s nature changes as a result of leaving the area for the first time, coming back after seeing things. This stuff is going to be beautiful. This is an incredible moment in history.

New Orleans artist Willie Birch with “A Fitting Farewell for a Worthy Matron” (Photo by Mat Schwarzman)

The Porch is a new cultural organization that promotes and sustains the cultures of the 7th Ward neighborhood, the city and region and fosters exchange between cultural groups. The members of The Porch want to create “a place where all can come to do and share their culture, take care of each other and our communities.”

Birch’s current artistic project is a large-scale two-dimensional piece entitled: “A Fitting Farewell for a Worthy Matron,” and is made of charcoal, acrylic and fixative. In the shape of a cross and made up of eight panels totaling 30 feet long x 80 inches high, the piece depicts Willie’s mother’s funeral and deals with the rituals of the Eastern Stars (sister group to Masons), which she was a part of. He hopes to show the piece one day at the Porch:

My point is, if we’re here at all, we’re all thinking big right now. The Porch is still an abstract idea, but it has enormous potential to transform how we use culture. I envision us hosting lots of different kinds of events, including an international symposium that features thinkers and artists from our neighborhood. I see cultural exchanges between local groups and groups from Cuba and the Caribbean. Instead of going down to the tourist areas, those people will come to us.

The goals and objectives of a lot of people in New Orleans are sounding similar these days. There seems to be a spontaneous pattern of increased programs and planning activity following Hurricane Katrina among neighborhood-level, community arts centers, both formal and informal, incorporated and unincorporated, established and new. As a result of my research, I can name at least a dozen groups throughout the city like the ones I’ve referenced, intent on establishing or expanding themselves in response to community demand.

From what I’ve seen, heard and experienced, there is a great sense of possibility regarding community arts. Perhaps, as Carol Bebelle suggests, New Orleanians are saying to themselves: “‘If we are going to live in a swamp, let’s at least dig in, make some deeper connections with each other, so when the time comes,” she says, “we know each other.” She goes on to say that one of the main points of agreement between the Cultural Plan and Education Plan of the Mayor’s official Bring Back New Orleans Commission is the development of what they are calling “community nexus centers.” The idea is to create places in underutilized or empty schools and other buildings that are supportive intersections for those working to return to their homes and community lives. Art and culture could be at the center of this idea.

Holly Sidford is an outside cultural-policy consultant with AEA Consulting, Inc., of New York City and London; engaged by the City of New Orleans to help develop the Bring Back New Orleans Cultural Plan. This is what she told me:

The problem and the opportunity are the same here. What is really distinct and challenging about New Orleans is the whole construct of community arts, all the neighborhood stuff – Mardi Gras. The Mardi Gras Indians, the Second Line companies, the Brass Bands, all of these entities. All of these groups are really rooted and essential to the fabric of the neighborhoods, but they but don’t fit the usual community arts frame. So right from the start there needs to be a different kind of thinking about what community arts means in this context. That’s one point.

Second point is those entities have not been recognized much by mainstream funding structures whether it’s the public agencies or the private foundations. And from our research, they have taken devastating hits to their ability to function. Their equipment has been completely lost, and many of them have lost members, perhaps disproportionately, to the institutions that are wealthier or more mainstream.

And now, the city is taking the opportunity to set some new policies which may be lethal to these organizations, charging them additional fees for performing and police protection and for licenses, the permits to march, etc. So, while it may seem obvious to people in the neighborhoods, it seems no one is thinking about it yet from an ecological, policy point of view.

Similar to the people I spoke to who are working on the front lines, Sidford believes that one idea worth serious consideration in New Orleans is a central, permanent, city-supported agency for neighborhood community cultural groups and centers. She suggests that one good example may be found in the San Francisco Neighborhood Arts Program, in operation since 1966. According to my research, while it has evolved a lot since its inception, the basic program consists of two elements:

1. A network of neighborhood cultural centers with a line item on the city budget: independently operated facilities throughout the city, each of which is managed by a nonprofit group directly accountable to the families and elected officials in that neighborhood.
2. A central bureau of neighborhood cultural services, such as: warehouse/office space that houses lights, sound equipment, costume bank, etc., available for below-market rent; along with other basic services, such as shared security, permitting and risk management support

One reason this might work well for New Orleans is it would provide grassroots groups with some of their essentials – facilities, equipment, technical assistance and mutual support – without making them dependent on annual appropriation from funding sources. “Creating a mechanism that helps the Indians replace their equipment, without getting them hooked on grants,” Holly concludes, “might be a perfect intervention.”

At least one of the candidates for Mayor of New Orleans agrees. Greta Gladney is a 41-year-old fourth-generation Lower Ninth Ward resident, mother of three and grandmother of two, a trained facilitator, educator and community developer, and a member of the Douglass Community Coalition, and she is running for mayor (http://greta_gladney.newstrove.com/) in part to see neighborhood-based initiatives like this become reality:

Greta Gladney, candidate for Mayor of New Orleans, supports the idea of a community-based arts plan for the city.

I’ll give you three reasons why community-based arts projects are needed in New Orleans right now: preservation of local culture, the opportunity for public participation in neighborhood planning, and as a creative outlet for residents burdened with the process of rebuilding their lives.

It is essential that any public planning process, especially now in New Orleans, include residents as stakeholders. Residents are most directly impacted by decisions about neighborhood development. Community arts activities are a useful tool to engage residents in the creative process of visioning the future of their neighborhood.

Plus, New Orleans has a large pool of talented artists who should be called to service in support of community revitalization. Indigenous artists working in collaboration with the broader community insure the preservation of local art forms and local culture.

Lastly, residents need a vehicle for rebuilding the fabric of community. Our struggle with details and logistics including interactions with insurance companies, contractors, FEMA and SBA leaves little room for social engagement. These face-to-face interactions, formerly part of everyday life in New Orleans, are missing from our daily experience while necessary to rebuilding safe livable communities. Neighborhood-level arts programming encourages multiethnic, multigenerational participation across gender and socioeconomic classes thereby facilitating true community building.

Final Thoughts (For Now)

Before saying anything else, let me say this: I have been extremely, extremely lucky through this whole thing so far. May I repeat that? I have been extremely, extremely lucky. Yes, my wife Mimi and I have damage to our home, yes, we were displaced across the country for three months, yes, it is traumatizing to live in a city of ghosts. And yes, our current health and well-being, fragile though they may be, are to a large extent the function of our skin and class privilege, a fact that anyone with a shred of conscience thinks about every day these days in New Orleans.

Mardi Gras Indian (Photo by Mimi Zarsky)

But all that being said, we are here, and we have a lot of work to do.

I find myself thinking a lot about how, in the coming days, months and years, it will be smart for New Orleanians to learn from the ways people do things in other places. We have something of a blank canvas to work with, and regardless of the reasons why, we need to take full advantage of it by employing the best practices and models we can find to rebuild our city.

And yet, at the same time, I wonder if it will be possible to make sure those who help us also reflect upon those things that New Orleans – as it is, was and will be – has to teach the rest of our country and the world. And I do not refer only to the arts here, but fundamental human values about fellowship, creativity and the purpose of life. In an increasingly homogenized, corporatized, simulated world, the extent to which this rebuilding process can save what’s authentic and positive about New Orleans, while improving the circumstances of our residents, will say a lot not only about this city, but the general direction of our society. I hope the world pays full attention.

Honestly, it feels pretty good to be a community artist in New Orleans today. Sure, our capital is decimated, but we’ve got a lot of smart, dedicated, creative residents to rebuild it. Spirits are diminished, but not down, and more of our people are returning every day, many overcoming considerable economic and health risks to do so. So, what if these types of storms tend to continue in ten-year cycles? Hell, I’m an alligator!

Your truly,
Newcomer to New Orleans

Mat Schwarzman is director of the Crossroads Project for Art, Learning and Community and a practitioner, student, instructor and writer in the field of community-based arts since 1985. He is co-author with cartoonist Keith Knight of the new book "Beginner’s Guide to Community-Based Arts" (New Village Press, 2005).

Sources:
Dobard, Philip M., “Through The Potholes: The New Orleans Arts And Culture Community, Metaphorically Speaking,” Occasional Paper Number Ten, National and Local Profiles of Cultural Support Project (Arts Policy and Administration Program at Ohio State University, 2000)
Bring Back New Orleans Commission Reports: http://bringneworleansback.org/
Andrei Codrescu: http://codrescu.com/
Galactic: http://www.galacticfunk.com/
Jackson, Maria-Rosario (2006). “Rebuilding the Cultural Vitality of New Orleans,” report from the Urban Institute: http://www.urban.org/publications/900927.html
Willett, John, et al., eds. "Bertolt Brecht: Poems 1913-1956" (Methuen Publishing, 1976, pp. 318-20)

Web links:
AEA Consulting: http://www.aesconsulting.com
ArtSpot Productions: http://www.artspotproductions.org
Ashe Cultural Center: http://www.ashecac.org
Willie Birch: http://www.arthurrogergallery.com/artist_pages/Birch/birch_press.html
Douglass Community Coalition (WtW): http://www.npnweb.org/wtw
Students at the Center: http://www.strom.clemson.edu/teams/literacy/sac
Xavier University of Louisiana Art Department: http://www.xula.edu/art

Special thanks to transcriber Shelley Warner, plus Nicole Garneau and the Center for Community Arts Partnerships at Columbia College Chicago for my weekend writing retreat. Special thanks to John O'Neal, who suggested I come down and visit New Orleans in the first place.

Original CAN/API publication: April 2006