The Porch — A Cultural Center in the Seventh Ward of New Orleans

This is a conversation between Ron Bechet, Willie Birch and Helen Regis (on March 10, 2008, in New Orleans, La.) about the Porch. The Porch is a new cultural organization that promotes and sustains the cultures of the Seventh Ward neighborhood, the city and region, and fosters exchange between cultural groups. Throughout the transcript, the portions in italics have been added by the authors to provide context and critical information not included in the initial conversation.[1]

Ron: How much do we want to talk about the blow-by blow-history of the Porch?

Helen: It seems important to try to define some of the critical moments that helped to make it happen. ‘Cause if we don’t tell that story, other people will.

Ron: It seems to me there were a number of critical issues that we have faced: to “501(c)(3)” or not, to board or not, issues of governance seem to be really important decisions we had to make as a group. At first, we were really, really open in terms of who we were inviting in, whether they lived in the neighborhood or not. So, it was really interesting to see who remained from those initial meetings. At first, we had Don Marshall and we had a bunch of people there at the beginning.

Willie: I never saw them as coming to join. I saw them as coming to see who these folks were doing this thing — this impossible dream. That’s what I saw, most of those folks who came initially.

Ron: Sounds like we need to turn the tape recorder on. That was a really good line.

Willie: Yeah, well I want to start at the beginning, in terms of the inception of this piece. On a personal level, the idea of creating a cultural center was a dream of mine when my daughter was in college, because she was in theater, and there was a connection that she and I had developed about how we can use our arts as a tool to redefine a community. And so, after being invited to Loyola to be on this panel [the Reinhabiting NOLA symposium, 2005] and going to the Ninth Ward and seeing what my artistic ideas could possibly become, I realized that the concept of doing something that was very, very large was not real. And the idea of making it as small as possible became part of the reality, and that’s what I presented at Loyola. The dream comes from an idea called “Birch Tree” that developed between my daughter and myself.

Willie: This was after I decided to stay here [in New Orleans]. Like 1997-98, something like that, after I decided I was going to be here, that I wasn’t going to go back to New York. Yeah, that’s when I realized that I couldn’t live in this community without making another type of contribution, and there was a piece of property on the side of me that became available, but I didn’t have enough money, and I asked the writer, Kalamu [ya Salaam], if I bought the building would he help me put in a library, and have Sunday poetry readings, and Ama could do theater and MaPó [Kinnard] could do art classes in there, but it was a way galvanizing this community and using its natural resources around itself to get it to understand the beauty and strength of what it is and what it possibly could be. So, all I did was brush that off that night after visiting the Ninth Ward, and the next day I presented the idea at this symposium.

But, I remember coming to Helen and saying, “The only way I could do this is with you.” And I had already picked out Ed [Edward Buckner] in my head, cause I’ve watched Ed in the community, and watched him with his children in particular. And I knew Helen and I knew that this was possible — and I knew I had you, Ron. So, I had a core of people who could make an immediate impact on this.

Dan Etheridge, the co-organizer of the Reinhabiting NOLA symposium, is also a resident of the Seventh Ward and became one of the founding members of the Porch. Rachel Breunlin was a member of the organizing committee. Several other Porch members and supporters were active participants in this event. The story of the Reinhabiting NOLA gathering is told in Etheridge, et al. [2]

Willie: Yeah, Dan was in the group, but I didn’t know Dan yet and I really didn’t know Rachel [Breunlin]. I only knew you and Helen that was there, and I knew about Ed. So, I felt that that was the strong core group that could pull this off, whatever it was, and so, that was the beginning of what eventually became “the Porch.” The name came out of a telephone conversation with Dan, and the two architects [Nils Gore and Rob Corser] from the University of Kansas. We were talking about African retentions. And, the porch kept coming up in that conversation in terms of an African addition to the European vernacular in terms of architecture, and I said, “That’s the name!” And they said “Yeah, the Porch,” and we all agreed. The name was the Porch. We talked about the significance of the kitchen and the porch was also the place that we all sit down every afternoon, particularly in the summer time. So, they’re both meeting places, so they were ideal in terms of that. And, what was it? I moved back here January the 15th, deliberately, and we had a meeting at the Porch — at my studio — when was that?

Helen: It’s in the archives, but it was within a couple of days. [January 19th, 2006, was the first meeting in Willie’s studio and we met nearly every Thursday at 7 p.m. for many months after that.]

Willie: I moved back [from New York] deliberately for that meeting and, wow, I was very surprised. There were between 15 to 30 people who showed up at the first meeting, and — it was on. And, whatever it was going to become, who knows, but that was the beginning of it.

Ron: There was other groups, too, that were sort of there at the beginning, like the University of Kansas. Like Neighborhood Housing Services were there and there were others, sort of organizing, helping us. Their ideas were around a site or a building. And we knew we couldn’t do a building at that time. So, they consulted with us on the building of the stage. Was that our first project?

Helen: The bulletin boards was the first project. That was Kansas’ way of bringing an offering with them when they came to that first public meeting at the church. And the students were putting them together on the sidewalk, in front of the church, and then in front of my house. And, the idea was whatever we did next, we felt we would be able to use the bulletin boards. The idea of responding to the New Orleans Diaspora and everybody being dispersed.[3]

Willie: Well, we need to say that that meeting was held at the Church on Elysian Fields. The Reverend allowed us to use her church, and it was incredible, because you had all those students from Kansas, young, bright architecture students, and you had the two master professors there [Nils Gore and Rob Corser], and I remember the thing that we talked about was the African way of building. And they were very impressed with that idea of using the African way of building in whatever they built. That was very, very important, I think. So, the bulletin boards were built with that concept. Eventually, the stuff in the garden was built with that concept, and then we did the stage, which was very different.[4]

The meeting at the House of Faith Non-Denominational Ministry at 1320 Elysian Fields Avenue was hosted by Pastor Christiana Ford on Friday, February 10, 2008. The flyer listed the names of the organizing committee: Willie Birch, Helen Regis, Carrie Burks, Edward Buckner, Nat Williams, Jerry Parker, Wilhemenia Brown, Dan Etheridge, Chief Buck, Rachel Breunlin, Ashley Nelson and others. It included a “working mission: To build a cultural organization to benefit the 7th Ward/St. Claude area; to promote and sustain the cultures of the neighborhood, city, and region and to foster exchange between cultural groups. A place where all can come to do and to share their culture; and to take care of each other and our communities.” This statement later became the foundation of the Porch’s organizational mission.

Helen: I think that that first public meeting was really critical. We put it together, basically, by working through the networks of Ed Buckner, Carrie Burks and all the rest of us, in terms of neighbors and knocking on doors and saying, “We’re having a meeting.”

Neighborhood Housing Services of New Orleans later became the Porch’s primary supporter and our organization’s fiscal agent. NHS Director Lauren Anderson had been a participant in the Reinhabiting NOLA symposium in November of 2005 and was an early supporter of the idea of neighborhood centers at that meeting. Willie recalled how they spoke at the conference about what her organization could contribute in terms of resources. NHS purchased the building at 1941-43 Pauger, which now serves as the primary organizational space for the Porch and the site of the 7th Ward Neighborhood Center, where many public programs are held. NHS staff provided critical training, infrastructure and support for Porch volunteers and NHS staff member Shana Sassoon served as the facilitator for the Porch’s first organizational retreat in March of 2006.

Helen: Okay, getting back to the church and the meeting that was at the church. It was a very interesting meeting, because it was about half students, half community residents — primarily residents from the immediate area. And some of us from the greater Seventh Ward. The creators of “the Porch” and about a half students from Kansas, and it’s real interesting to think about how that was our first public meeting. ‘Cause before that, it was a lot more planning and organizing and we didn’t really try to reach out to the public.

Willie: You know, I don’t know if I agree with you and this is okay. I thought the meetings in my studio were very public. ‘Cause I can remember having — certain nights — 30 people in my studio who came from all over. By the time we got to the church, folks knew that we were serious, and we can go back and look at the records ‘cause everybody signed in, cause that’s the beauty of all that.

Willie: But no, we were rolling. I mean, people were excited. We had already established a presence in that community.

Ron: The thing I can remember, too, is that [a lot of work had gone into preparing for that meeting] we were talking about our values and starting to understand what we were coming together for. I think that was before the public meeting—cause we had our mission statement and our values statement, or did we?

Helen: The meeting was very loosely structured. And we began with introduction to how we came to be there and to call the meeting, and then we did a story circle [using the method developed by John O’Neil, founder of Junebug Productions].

Willie: Well, what I remember is that we did not want to be a “Community Center,” because that [implied] that we going to be dealing with possibly drug rehabilitation, you know, we were not about that. But I can remember us coming up with the idea that this was a “Cultural Center,” that were going to take what was being lost — given Nagin selling off the City. And we were coming to grips with the police already harassing second-liners at Sunday parades — so, we realized that the culture of New Orleans was under siege. Anyway, that’s what I remember. So, the idea of defining our mission in terms of culture became a critical part, and the idea of community.

On Sunday, January 15, a coalition of African American Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs held an All Star Second Line Parade that drew thousands of people into the city from exile to parade through the streets — reclaiming the city and demanding affordable housing. The parade ended and, shortly thereafter, gunshots disrupted the gathering. The New Orleans Police Department responded by announcing on January 19th at a coalition meeting at the Ashe Cultural Center that they would be tripling the parade permit fees that clubs pay for access to the streets. This only added to the sense that New Orleans African American culture was at risk — not only from forced displacement but also from city policy. Some of this context of a social organization’s response to a culture in crisis is discussed in Breunlin and Regis. This atmosphere certainly contributed to the early formation of the organization that became the Porch.

Ron: I do remember that coming up with the idea of the transformation of the community through the arts — through culture — was something that we came up with early on. That for me was the most significant thing, the most beautiful thing, considering what we were doing at Xavier with community arts. That seemed like the perfect fit in terms of having resources and the programs and our experience from years before about organizing in that fashion, using community arts as a way of doing it.

Willie: Well, you know that was so important, as far as I’m concerned, because if we were going to utilize our talents, here’s an anthropologist whose been documenting second lines from the first time I met him, who’s important for a person living in the community. Here you were, a professor at Xavier, having run a community summer program in terms of the murals you were doing. Here I was — an artist, who had committed myself to documenting through another aesthetic form that community. And there was Ed Buckner, who was always being the pie man, who was always interested in all of the kids’ lives. And there was Carrie Burks, a community resident who worked at the neighborhood school before Katrina. I used to watch Carrie walk to work every morning — and she had this tremendous rapport with some of the kids in the neighborhood that were being thrown away. So, that was an important nucleus in terms of using what we had, using the culture, because that means that what we brought to the table was really, really important and we weren’t giving up what we love to do for the sake of building a cultural center.

Helen: Yeah, and I guess something that I’ve been thinking a lot about is the different networks that make up a community, and the family networks and the blocks, you know, the networks within the blocks, the two blocks, or the three blocks, of people who barbeque together. I think what was really interesting was the amazingly different people who came to that meeting at the church on Elysian Fields in January. Because do you remember there was Louis, who talked about losing his brother in the Flood, you know, and he came, his face was covered in white paint because he had been painting. And um, there were all these really intense stories that people told, the things that people brought — the grief and the hope that people brought into that room was really powerful. That was really powerful, and even though, you know, some of those folks are busy with other things at this point. I think that everybody that stayed with the organization is still affected by that. You know, even the guy who wanted to redesign everything and who had a Jesus complex, you know, he was part of the mix. He didn’t stick around. But the idea of a cultural center brought out so many people.

Helen: The idea at that point in the history of New Orleans, of giving folks a thing to hope for, you know, beyond all the negativity and — you could almost say despair that people were experiencing, the death of the city and of public culture.

Ron: We have the context of everybody going to all these meetings in the city. The neighborhood meetings that everybody was having to go to. The Mayor’s committees, the “Bring Back New Orleans” committees, and the alternative committees to the Mayor’s committees. I mean, there was so many meetings going on and that people were still coming to this one, was amazing to me.

Helen: Yeah and I think that affected how we thought about our work, or the work we might do. We wanted some concrete stuff to happen pretty soon even if we didn’t have a building, cause we were all so exhausted with “planning.”

Willie: I think that was so powerful cause we weren’t just talking about talking. We had gone to so many meetings and some of the ones I had gone to, to me, it was bullshit. And I think, one of the most important meetings that I went to was where — I brought Ed to the meeting — I think it was with Scott Hutchinson, and Ed had his skull cap on and his short pants, and everybody was like, what is this? I said, “Scott, we need money for a second line. This is the guy that’s gonna do it. And I want you and him to think about this very, very carefully.” And “Y'all gonna work it out.” And Ed looked at me and I said “I’m leaving,” but I had worked with Scott before and I felt that he was receptive. And that’s where we got our first bunch of money to do the second line. And I knew this was the first time ever that the Arts Council had given money [to a social club] specifically for a second line as an art form. And I remember talking with Don Marshal about it and him saying, “This is huge.” Because that had never existed before.

Ron: As a matter of fact, it [the Arts Council] was very narrow in terms of what art was.

Ron: And I think too, we’re talking about the second line, but our first project was the tree planting. And that was an idea, too, of getting some renewal for the community out of the idea of planting trees. And the garden came after that. And we had the controversy with the two gardens for awhile.

Willie: Well, that’s part of our growing pains. That was huge. ‘Cause the brother wanted to claim the garden for himself. He had no idea of sharing.

Earlier that year, two members of the Porch became involved in helping a neighbor address the race/class divide on his street corner.

Willie: That was interesting, ‘cause he came to my studio. The community was really breaking out his windows and all that. And, I remember one day, I told Ed, “We’re gonna go and just stand on the dude’s steps.” And, I got down there and I brought him outside and we talked, and then Ed came in the truck, and we stood there. And then, all of a sudden, Junior came over and a whole bunch of people came over, and this dude said, “Wow, man, they never talked to me before!” I said, “Yeah, ‘cause you expected these people to come to you, but you are the foreigner in our community!” And, I said, “That’s your attitude, but that’s the attitude of most white people. Like we gotta come to you? And you’re in my neighborhood!” But that was a real opening in terms of the community.

Helen: Yeah. And, I think it was a significant moment in our organization, although a lot of those conversations were outside of Porch meetings, but it became a part of the history of the Porch. You know, that here was a white neighbor who was really struggling with issues around race and class, whether he knew it or not, and who asked for help, who wanted to join the Porch, partly as way of dealing with those issues. And um, who ended up breaking his ties with the Porch.

Helen: I feel like, as an organization, it was our first open conversation about how race and class plays into an interpersonal conflict.

Willie: I saw us saying, “This is not who we are, and hopefully you can adjust, and if you can’t, so it be.”

Willie: Right, he’s saying, “I can’t function under these circumstances,” and for me that’s fine.

Helen: I think it was significant in us bonding as a group, actually. Because, I think at that time it seemed to me like we were saying, “As an organization, we stand for something,” and that’s different from a group where, you know, it’s like no matter how you behave, you’re going to be welcomed.

Ron: I thought it was significant too that, as a group, we chose to stand up for our values. We had started meeting at one garden, and now we had to find another spot. It was a beautiful moment, I think in the organization, actually. That folk were able to come together around those issues, and it was also an understanding that there were certain things that are worth fighting for, and certain things that we’re gonna leave alone. And we chose to fight for our values rather than the garden.

Willie: But, I think that’s where Ed is so important. Because, Ed had already created those alliances by being the pie man. And so, he knew that there was this garden on North Robertson that we could begin planting in and hopefully take over. That was very, very critical in terms of us getting that space, you see. So, I think it’s always the little bitty things that add up, you know. And, Dan having the vision to realize that if we’re going to deal with the University of Kansas, [in a Design/Build partnership], this is a wonderful opportunity, because it’s hard for the community to turn down something that’s new and something that’s positive. So, I think between Dan and Ed, that’s the reason why the garden has gotten to the point it has and I think that needs to be said.

Ed Buckner now works as a community organizer with the Porch and Community Mediation Services. Dan’s work with Tulane City Center, the CITYbuild consortium of universities, and the design/build partnerships it has fostered throughout New Orleans, including the Porch/Kansas designs, are documented in Groundwork (CITYbuild).

Willie: And now we got young art majors from the university and design majors, who are working directly in our community, and so that means that they have, in my way of thinking, they have connected to this area. ‘Cause you just don’t leave a community once you’ve had that kind of connection, having worked in these kinds of programs. So, I thought it was wonderful, you know, and that’s what makes the Porch work, is that there are so many ways that we can connect to that community beyond sometime what that community even understands we are connecting.

Helen: Right, I think, getting back to our origin story, I think it was really critical, that relationship with Kansas. At first, we didn’t know how significant it was going to be. But we have these outsiders who were interested in working with us … who would ask us questions that we then had to answer, like “Well, what is this neighborhood about?” or whatever, and that allowed us to define ourselves. And, we weren’t talking to a neighbor, where we use the shorthand, they already know everything. If we were talking to people in Kansas, we would have had to really lay it out. You know, well, what is this neighborhood about? What are our goals? What do we think is going on in New Orleans?

Ron: Right. And what’s important to us as a young organization. Like, that big beautiful structure they built in the middle of the garden --

Ron: Which was the second big structure that they built for us after the bulletin boards. A fabulous structure. And then the tool shed, and then the stage.

Helen: It was a total of four semesters. And one semester, there were two design/build classes going on simultaneously.

Willie: I think that NHS [Neighborhood Housing Services] is important in this dialogue, too. I mean, we've had our battles with them, but I think that they are very, very important in this whole dialogue, because the idea of taking our meetings out of my studio and having meetings at your [Helen's] house, and having meetings at Ed's house. We were beginning to move around each other's houses, that would become problematic based on how many people we could fit into a space. And so, I think NHS becomes very critical in terms of us going around the neighborhood and finding a building that now defines us. That somehow brings everything full-force, there’s a physical structure that people could relate to in terms of a cultural organization in a community. And, the beauty is that it’s not on the fringe of the community, it’s right in the center of the community, and I thought that was so important, because that meant, anybody that came in there they had to want to come in there. Because, you know, most of these places are right there on the fringe, so you don’t even have to touch the people in the community. But, our stuff is very, very different.

Helen: Yeah, and I guess one of the critical moments was the first organizational retreat that we had in March of 2006 where we really for the first time — Shana [Sassoon of NHS] was facilitating and she had those flip charts.

Helen: And, we made the concentric circles, you know, who our stakeholders were, who our allies were, who we were about. I don’t think we used the word audience, but who were our main —

Helen: Yeah, who we primarily were engaging. And looking at those concentric circles, who we might work with, even though we had not worked with them yet. What were our assets in the community in terms of the structure. And, that’s when we wrote this, basically [the Porch mission statement, governance structure, values: the content of our brochure].

Many other meetings, planning meetings, training sessions, workshops and retreats took place in the summer of 2006 and in the fall of 2006. Troi Bechet, a member of NHS staff, became involved in assisting the Porch with its organizational development. The group began serious consideration of how best to grow the organization: through a negotiation of a close partnership with NHS or to immediately seek greater organizational autonomy through a separate 501(c)(3). Organizational meetings rotated between Willie’s studio and the living rooms of other Porch members. While the first summer camp was held in a neighborhood church on North Robertson Street, the organization became more serious about seeking its own space for meetings, workshops, classes and public programs.

Ron: I was thinking, too. We had the conversation about what kind of organization we were gonna be. We had the first summer camp, with KID smART, and Xavier. And we primarily wanted to get it done, because there was nothing for kids around the city. So, we were really pushing on getting through that.

Helen: Yeah, and that summer camp — maybe it’s worth talking a little about how that came to be. You both were directly involved in that, it seems pretty amazing that two major institutions and one emerging organization were able to work together to make that happen so quickly.

Ron: Yeah, basically, Willie and I talked about we need to do something to get ready for all the kids who we expected to be back in the city the first summer after Katrina. We talked to Echo [Olander, director of KID smART] and Xavier, because Echo is one of our partners, KID smART was one of our partners [at Xavier] before the storm, and we got Echo in, and Echo brought in DreamYard and I thought it was a great idea.

Willie: Well, Echo came to our first meeting from the jump, from our first meeting in the studio.

Willie: And, when you and I realized that the summer kid program was really needed, and Echo needed us, and of course you and I always talking, we always strategizing. So, KID smART was a perfect fit, because they knew where the resources were, they knew where the money was to get the grants, they were already connected like we weren’t …

Helen: Well, they already had legitimacy [and management experience!] as an educational and arts organization

Ron: And, they also had the connection to the group from New York, DreamYard.

Willie: Right, right. They had everything we needed to make a viable summer camp, and again, it's one of those things that you find out. Like later on, I found out that that's really the way you build cultural organizations, is that you do these reach-outs to all of these different organizations that give you resources that you don't have. And they need to have a nice summer program, they really don't have that. We got the space, we got the kids, so, you find these perfect marriages.

Helen: Yeh, and I think a critical part of that space is that … you know … here we’re an organization that was based in a section of the Seventh Ward, that’s in terms of income and the long list of urban issues that working class communities are dealing with — we had ‘em all.

Helen: And I mean, I’m sure KID smART was interested in engaging in a community where perhaps they had not worked before.

Helen: Because that’s really significant in terms of the ecology of organizations in New Orleans, or in American cities, right? That the Porch had — we had it in our mission that we wanted to engage the young people in our community, as well as people of all ages, but focusing on the kids. They wanted that.

Willie: And, I think that’s an important statement, Helen. Just for the stand point that the [neighborhood] school, A.P. Tureaud, is the lowest in the state [in all the numerical rankings]. More than 90% of kids were being bused into that school. And we couldn’t get access to the school. We were having problems with the administration of the school, of even getting them to understand of how we can be a valuable ally. So, KID smART filled a lot of that, and Hubert was important with that in terms of the church. Because when all else failed, Hubert's church was the one that we were able to use for the summer program. And, then the DreamYard workshop with the kids, I think is the thing that allowed us to go develop our theater program.

Willie: Yeah, DreamYard was a group of young people, who were basically from the Bronx, I believe. And it was Echo who spotted them and realized that they would be a natural asset to our community in particular. ‘Cause these kids, although they were very bright, they were very street, and there was toughness about them, so they weren’t intimidated by our neighborhood And so, it was a perfect match. And, what they did was they were in theater. So, they were encouraging our kids to write plays about the community, and I can remember when that production took place, which was halfway through the [2006] summer camp, we had 100 people to show up. We took a count, and there were 100 people who showed-up, and it was raining outside like you would have never seen before! And, you’re going “Oh, God! Why is this?” “This got to be a disaster!” And, yet you had 100 people show up in that church, the church is packed. The police is there. Everybody’s there! You know, you’re looking around. Grandmothers — they came. And the play was so incredible, because the children talked about the drugs in the neighborhood, all the ills of the community, and I can remember one of the Quality of Life Officers saying, “Wow, man! I’ve never seen nothing like this!” Colin [NOPD First District Commander Captain Louis Colin] became more excited, everybody became excited. My thing was that “Man, we need a children’s theater group!” And that’s where Jan Cohen-Cruz came in.

In June of 2006, Xavier University had hosted the Community Arts meeting and Willie and Ron had met Jan Cohen-Cruz, an active participant in those meetings. Jan has been active in and wrote several books on performance and the Boal Concept.

Ron: Jan was at that conference that we did at Xavier that was sponsored by Nathan Cummings. June 1st [2006] was the date. And so we had our friends from across the country that we’d been working with, at that time, for the last nine years, different universities that were in the Community Arts Partnership since its inception. We came together. And we had been convening at least once a year for the last nine years. And they were asking, “How can we help New Orleans using our concept?” And I kind of saw it as, Here’s an opportunity to put all this rhetoric into practice.

Helen: Now, when you say “all this rhetoric” — how long have you been involved in thinking about this stuff?

Ron: I started when I went to Xavier in ‘97. So, it’s been nine years at that point, where I’d been thinking about how arts, using them through the community, can affect change.

Ron: And we had been force-fed — I always thought about the European model — you make art, you put it in a gallery, you sell it. But understanding, because I came from New Orleans, and I understood the power of the vernacular, understanding that this stuff can be used in a special way that is very, very important and understanding how to teach it and use it to teach was something that I found extremely engaging when I came to Xavier. Come to find out there were some people who had been doing it at Xavier for years. It was John Scott’s teacher, Sister Lurana Neely, who had been doing it, and had taught it to John and had taught it to John’s students. And John himself had been doing something of a community-based arts efforts with groups in the community.

Willie: I think you’re being modest. I think you took it to another level, brother.

Willie: You had some other things that you could bring to that. And, that mural program that you did, I mean, you really got Gert Town [the neighborhood around Xavier] excited. So, I’m not going to let you just sit here like, “I just lucked into this,” ‘cause that’s bull.

Xavier’s Community Arts Project and the path-breaking work of Sister Lurana and John Scott are documented in Bechet, et al.

Willie: That’s what this man brought to Xavier. And, since I was watching him and come out of all these programs in New York around that … we were a perfect match. And, he was perfect for what Xavier and the Porch could do.

Ron: When it came down to brass tacks, we were prepared for each other … in that sense and I think in a larger sense … I think, you know, we just beginning the possibilities that we have. Not just for the Porch, but as a greater model for other communities. I think that meeting, too, brought together some bright minds — there was Columbia College.

Willie: Amalia Bains. I mean, you had some powerful people there. A lady from Oakland, Dr. Sonia Mañjon. I remember Ron saying, “Well, you got to come, you got to come.” And, I’m sitting there going, “Another one of them meetings!” I said, “Yeah, my man! Now, here I’ve got to put up with some more bullshit!” And, so, that evening when I presented, you know, what the Porch was, I mean everybody was like, shooooh! This is perfect as far as a demonstration of the possibility and also something that people could write papers on.

Willie: Yeah, because it’s perfect, you know, we’ve done several things on the model cities in the ’60s, the late ’60s and ’70s, but this is new to a lot of people in terms of a cultural, a community being documented from the inception, so the archival thing becomes more important for the Porch. So, I find when I tell people that we’ve created archives, more people get excited about that, then they get excited about the programs that we have created. They’re going, “Wow, man!” I said, “Yes, I’ve got this stuff in these files just waiting for someone to come in and organize it.”

Helen: And here we are making a tape that can go into the archives … [laughs]

Willie: Yeah, right, when we old and gray. I’d probably be dead before you two, but when I look at what we’ve been able to do, that’s incredible. And that’s why right now, I don’t think we’ve completed where we’re trying to go. You know how churches are always trying to expand? You can expand too quick and you loose the energy because you can’t compensate for all that negative space.

Helen: Yeah, I’m sure we can spent three more hours talking about the history, but should we talk about our challenges? Current challenges and opportunities? Where are we now? How do we understand where we are now?

Ron: I think now we’re at a crossroads, looking at the administration. We have all these things that we’re doing , but, we have all done it on a shoe string, and we’ve done it by whatever means necessary without an administrative process that’s held in place, and without a staff to really hold us in order. It has really been trying and taxing on us, personally, because we don’t really have someone else who is —

Ron: And paid to take that kind of abuse — which is, I think extremely necessary to do this process. To have that person who is a director, or someone who can organize all of the programmatic issues that come up around the situation, whether it be to monitor the money, or to make sure that things get done, to monitor. And then when we found we were relating like a family …Well, any family, you know — I’m not gonna say a dysfunctional family [laughs].

Ron: But it’s gonna be a family, where here we have a figure, or a group of figures, a group of people who act as a figure which is more the intellectual part of the organization, and then a group of people who become more of the practical part of the organization. So, people who are guiding it in terms of the things that are the possibilities, the dreams, the ambition, and then there are people who are saying, “Well, wait a minute! Who’s going to do this?” And “Who’s going to make this happen?” And then, the crossover between those two things becomes a problematic. And, what we need is a buffer zone between those two — a hired staff person [laughs]

Helen: I’m not sure if that’s the solution. I’m not sure that person can be a buffer zone. I don’t know if anyone can withstand that kind of pressure.

Willie: I don’t think they can be a buffer zone, but what they can [do] is at least hopefully articulate what we all are doing. And I think that’s part of the problem that’s happening within the group is that we all are working our butt off, but sometimes we don’t know how we’re working. And so, it’s a real, real issue, because at times, I’m sure most of us feel like “I’m out here by myself, and I ain’t getting no help.” And the help is there, but you can’t see it because all you see is yourself. And so, it’s a real issue. It’s a critical issue, because nobody gets paid. We do this out of love or respect for community and respect for what — . Coming out of New Orleans, the idea for me has to do with what I have to give back, given that part of what I’ve been taught as a child, that I had to give something back, so in the back of my head I don’t care how much art I make and how much I get received as an individual, there’s that other part of me, through guilt or whatever, that says that you cannot go down this road by yourself, you can never be successful until you bring, or attempt to bring, other people with you.

Helen: Yeah, I think one of the things that attracted me to the Porch was the idea that I could use my skills and my training as an anthropologist in analyzing social structure and social process, cultural process to a hands-on project– with this goal of making a difference within our neighborhood and within our city at a time when we didn’t know what the future would be, but we were worried that it might be really bad if we didn’t act. I don’t know if I thought about it in terms of “giving something back,” in the same way that Willie first put it. But anthropology is a discipline that came out of colonialism, like geography. And my field has gone through a lot of self-reflection in the last 30 years, about — what is it that we do when we research in communities and we take information out and we build our careers on that -- basically other people’s intellectual labor? So, the idea for me that I could use my skills, my hard-won skills, to build something – that is something that is very appealing to me. That it could help to create an organization that worked in a community.[5]

[A long discussion of the complimentary skills of artists and anthropologists and how they can be employed in problem solving is omitted here due to space limitations]

Helen: I think there is an identity issue with the Porch that I personally see emerging: What kind of an organization, what kind of a space is the Porch? Who is an insider and who is not one? You know, and who — as we imagine the beginnings of the organization, the present, or how it might change — who does the organization belong to? Who is a visitor, a guest, a core member? Who’s allowed to enter, but they have to pay a tax? Who’s a full member that doesn’t have to pay tax? Are we a black organization where some white folks work, or with whites who are allies? Or, are we an organization that’s multiracial? And, I think that’s — in terms of who our core members are, who the “we” of the Porch is, and also who do we engage? You know, I think in terms of our core values at the beginning, that we wanted to work, we wanted to focus our work of transformation in this majority black, working-class neighborhood that’s been overlooked by the city in so many ways, for more than 50 years or more. But we also talked about the Porch as a space for cultural exchange, and I think a lot of our mission statement is very antiracist, explicitly, and very anti-essentialist and antisexist and anti- — you know we could go down the list, of all those other things, but we talked about sexuality, addressing issues of power. And I think it’s a critical question in terms of who we are and who our allies are, and who we are engaging.

Ron: I think it is one of our challenges. How do we get more of the people in the geographical area that we service involved not only in the coming, but also in the planning?

Willie: Well, they feel it’s important for their survival. And, that’s something that we can’t dictate. This is my belief, which I’m constantly telling Ed: You have to just keep doing what you feel is right. And, as somebody who’s paid a heavy price to be where he is, I become very myopic and say, “This is what I have to do.” And, my history says, “Somewhere along the line, the world opens up to me.”

Helen: Yeah, well I think that’s a very powerful position for an artist or for an individual to have, but I think for an organization, if we say we’re engaging community, I think we ought to be able to talk about how we’re engaging, what does that look like, and also to evaluate as we go. What is the thing that we do? Who are the communities we engage? First of all, because that C-word, you know, well — .

Helen: We use it a lot and we know what we mean by it but we don’t know what other people mean by it. I’ll never forget P. coming to one of our first film nights and saying — to a room full of people — “Where’s the community?” You know, and everybody knew what he meant. But at the same time, he was also saying, you know, in other words, where are the residents of the immediate neighborhood — beyond him? But, he was also saying that even though I live in the neighborhood, I’m not the community. And, you know, Dan and Rachel live in the neighborhood, they’re not the community, based on skin color.

Willie: Because he is. And since P. is my barber and a bigot and all of that, I expected him to come and do exactly what he did. So, and you’re the one who said, “Well, there’s room for all of us.” And so fine, so it be. We can tolerate P., you know. And, if that person makes a contribution, fine. If he doesn’t, so it be. But, at least he got us thinking.

Helen: Yeah, exactly! Well, that’s why I think it’s good to think about that question. And I didn’t raise it to pick on him individually, because I think a lot of people would have shared his sentiment that the community was not in that room. So, for me as an anthropologist, my question is, “Well, what do we all mean by community?” “And, who are the communities we’re engaging or is it just one community?” “And, how do we know if we’ve reached them or not?” And when KID smART wants to partner with us, what community do they want us to contact, in terms of validating their existence, you know?

Ron: That’s true. Looking at what is Xavier’s interest in this —. All of us have to continually evaluate why are we at the table. And is that table serving everybody? And certainly everybody is going to get something from it as long as they show up. I think it was brave of P. to show up.

The occasion was the screening of Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembene’s “Ceddo,” as part of the film series developed in partnership with the New Orleans Film Society, September 27, 2007.[6]

Ron: I think we do know. I think the idea of how do we grow the institution, how do we grow the Porch in a way that doesn’t push past our capacity, but also to know what gets us to the point where we cover our mission. You know, I think that’s our biggest challenge right now. And I know they’re looking at the organization, and we’re to a point now where we have some big decisions to make, and I think you know, one of the biggest ones is exactly what you brought up. How do we look at those very issues that we’re saying we need to attack through the arts in a way where we can evaluate saying that you know, we know that we met that goal? And, I’m not sure if we’re there yet.

Willie: No, cause it’s hit and miss. And, the summer festival was a clear indication was that we hit something. Okay, the education program, we hit something, and we’re going to have these successes and people are gonna respond to them in terms of where they are themselves. And so, I think if we start worrying about our neighbor not coming — one neighbor may never come, but then her li'l daughter one day will show up …

Willie: There’s going to come a time when that li'l son or grandbaby that I’m cultivating by giving books to and stuff, is going to walk around to the Porch, or make his momma take him to the Porch. And, that’s how I feel, personally, I attack the situation. You keep putting it in front of their face, and be consistent, cause they’re constantly watching us, you just be consistent. I would like everybody to stay at the Porch, but that’s not real in life. Some people have to go and do other things. And in the future, I will be one of those people. And, that’s fine.

Ron: I think if you can exit and say, “I’m comfortable with leaving,” and you can enter and say, “I’m welcome.” And that’s one of the things we’re working on now, is how do we welcome people? Anybody that walks through that door can feel that they can come in.

This essay is part of the Community Arts Convening & Research Project, 2008, funded by a Nathan Cummings Foundation grant to the Maryland Institute College of Art. The essay was reviewed and selected by the project's Editorial Board: Ron Bechet, Xavier University of Louisiana; Lori Hager, University of Oregon; Marina Gutierrez, Cooper Union; Ken Krafchek, Maryland Institute College of Art; Sonia Mañjon, California College of the Arts; Amalia Mesa-Bains, California State University Monterey Bay; Paul Teruel, Columbia College Chicago; and Stephani Woodson, Arizona State University.

Ron Bechet is an artist and a professor of art at Xavier University. He was the founding director of Xavier’s Community Arts Project and a founding member of the Porch. He has been teaching visual art in New Orleans for the past 20 years.

Willie Birch is an artist and resident of the Seventh Ward. His work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art and is the focus of the recent traveling exhibit and book, “Celebrating Freedom: The Art of Willie Birch,” edited by David Rubin (Hudson Hills Press, 2006).

Helen A. Regis is a professor of anthropology at Louisiana State University, a resident of the Seventh Ward, and a founding member of the Porch. She is the author (with John Bartkowski) of “Charitable Choices: Race, Faith, and Poverty in the Post-Welfare Era” and editor of “Caribbean and Southern: Transnational Perspectives on the U.S. South.”

Bechet, R., K. Celestan and G. Charbonnet. “Passing on the Legacy: Views from Two Generations of New Orleans Community Leaders.” Art/Vision/Voice: Cultural Conversations in Community. A Book of Cases from Community Arts Partnerships. Eds. A. Mesa-Bains, R. Bechet, K. Krafchek and P. Teruel. Chicago and Baltimore: Columbia College Chicago and Maryland Institute College of Art, 2005. 47-60.

Breunlin, R. and H. A. Regis. “Putting the Ninth Ward on the Map: Race, Place, and Transformation in Desire, New Orleans.” American Anthropologist 108.4 (2006): 745-765.

CITYbuild Consortium of Schools. Groundwork. New Orleans: Tulane City Center, 2006.

Corser, R. and N. Gore. “Insurgent Architecture in the Seventh Ward.” Batture. Baton Rouge: LSU School of Architecture. Forthcoming.

Etheridge, D., A. Lewis, R. Breunlin and K. McCaffrey, eds. Reinhabiting NOLA. New Orleans: Tulane/Xavier Center for Bioenvironmental Research and e/Prime Publishers, 2006.

Rubin, D. Celebrating Freedom: The Art of Willie Birch. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 2006.

[1] New Orleanians have a love of conversation, which often unfolds in a meandering path and with at least three levels (or threads) running through simultaneously. The conversation between Ron, Willie and Helen has some of these qualities. With this in mind, this transcript was lightly edited for length and clarity, keeping the threads, the voices and the flow of conversation.

[2] Reinhabiting NOLA Symposium, November 29-30, 2005, at Loyola University was supported by Tulane University, Xavier University and the Tulane/Xavier Center for Bioenvironmental Research. Funded by the Fannie Mae Foundation, the symposium was organized by a multidisciplinary team led by Dan Etheridge and Alan Lewis.

[3] One of our responses to displacement was to develop a documentary project that would allow neighbors to call out their relation to place, culture and neighborhood. Seventh Ward Speaks is an oral-history/public-culture project initiated in the Spring of 2006 as a collaboration between the Porch and the Neighborhood Story Project and led by Rachel Breunlin and Helen Regis. Rachel and Helen began the interviews, which are edited collaboratively with the person being represented. That person then conducts another interview with the assistance of team leaders, and so on. The interviews are made into posters that are mounted at neighborhood events and will be edited into a book. The Neighborhood Story Project is a community book-making organization. In 2005, seniors at John McDonogh Senior High published five books of creative nonfiction, photography and ethnographic interviews in their neighborhoods. Since the storm, NSP has produced a collaborative ethnography written by members of Nine Times Social Club entitled “Coming out the Door for the Ninth Ward” (2006), “Seventh Ward Speaks” Oral History Project and the forthcoming museum catalogue for the House of Dance and Feathers, with Ronald W. Lewis, curator and director. http://www.neighborhoodstoryproject.org.

[5] Other Porch programs include: Annual Run/Walk; the Annual Seventh Ward Festival: Celebrating the Culture of Our Neighborhoods; “Seventh Ward Speaks” Oral History Project (with the Neighborhood Story Project); Arts Alive Summer Camp (with KID smART and Xavier University); Little Seven Players Youth Theater Repertory (initiated with Jan Cohen-Cruz and Home New Orleans); Community Garden; Film Nights at the Porch (with the New Orleans Film Society); Design/Build (with University of Kansas Architecture and CITYbuild); and the Heroes Project.

[6] The Porch is supported by Neighborhood Housing Services of New Orleans, Inc, a 501(c)(3) organization, our primary partner and our fiscal agent; Other partners include University of Kansas School of Architecture and Urban Design, Tulane City Center, Neighborhood Story Project, Xavier University, and KID smART. The Porch has received financial support from the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation’s Neighborhood Organizing and Planning Fund, New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and Foundation, Creative Time and Paul Chan’s Waiting for Godot Shadow Fund, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation.

Original CAN/API publication: July 2008

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The Porch — A Cultural Center in the Seventh Ward of New Orleans

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