Cultural Continuity in Post-Katrina New Orleans: A Roundtable Breakfast Update

May 1, 2007 - Chateau Sonesta Hotel

Welcome from Jim Livingston, the Executive Director at City Works – an organization put together post-Katrina to develop long term sustainable rebuilding for New Orleans. This is a collaborative presentation with Horizon Initiative, represented today by Pamela Senatore and Sarah Wise, and Creative Industries, of which Jeanne Nathan is President.

Jeanne Nathan (moderator)

Spiritual Opening

Wayne Baquet (owner, chef of Lil’Dizzy’s Café)

Lil’ Dizzy’s was flooded and looted twice. Wayne’s home was also destroyed. He was welcomed to stay in Atlanta, and an offer was made to bankroll a new restaurant there. However, there is no place like home. He returned at Lil’ Dizzy’s opened at an accelerated pace.

Donald Links (restaurant owner)

His house in Lakeview was under 12 feet of water. He snuck into the city to see his restaurant on St. Charles Avenue, downtown, just after the flood. The restaurant itself was in good shape and he wanted to be here. He re-opened just 5 weeks after Katrina. Being open had a higher purpose – it gave hope and it also started a part of the economy working. Food is a basis for a working economy, and it brought people back. Actually, the restaurant is having record sales since Katrina.

Jeanne

Ray Manning (Principal, Manning Architects)

All of the information on implementing plans and raising money is available in the Times Picayune. Manning chooses to talk about architecture’s ‘visceral connection with the city’. A major impediment is construction costs, which go up 1% per month. Manning is working with modular construction, finessing the product to suit our place. However, because of the slow pace of the Road Home money, modular companies are leaving New Orleans. The Hyatt Project has also encountered an obstacle, the acquisition of real estate.

Prisca Weems (Principal, FutureProof)

Weems’ experience is different from Manning’s because she was working on opening a firm on September 1st, and after Katrina, the two projects that she was opening with cancelled. Weems became part of the grassroots program.

Due to slowness and lack of leadership, decisions were made from the bottom up. People were thinking about their own housing, materials and adaptation to the environment. The projects were designed to facilitate talent and to foster positive rebuilding. We ask the question, “What does a ‘modern city’ mean to us?” We are working with exceptional people from around the country and around the world.

Pamela Senatore (Vice President, Horizon Initiative)\

Horizon Initiative is fostering hope through positive action. New Orleans is not a supplicant city. We are “The City of Yes” because of the influx of power and energy that comes from people like the people in the room. Horizon Initiative is creating long-range plans for future economic development. You are also all invited to our May 3rd JamFest.

Jim Thorn (Photographer and Real Estate Apraiser)

Thorn was in Belize when the storm struck, yet he managed to get back by September 8th. He got into a boat and took photographs of the devastation. He spent time at Harrah’s, which had become the authorities’ head quarters. He got pneumonia and was hospitalized in Baton Rouge. He returned in November. He has watched the evolution of New Orleans. At first everything was contaminated and had turned brown. He captured the essence of that in his photography. He has watched the city heal. The folks that stayed away still feel sad. Those people still living in Dallas and Huston are still outsiders.

He is also a Real Estate appraiser. He believes that we are way behind where we should be. He asks, “Where is the ‘beef,’ the money? There is no flow.” The major problems are 1) insurance, 2) labor costs, 3) material costs. Even though the city is moving forward, there is a sense of needing to overcome. The question is ask yourself is, “What can I do to help rebuild?”

Arthur Roger (Arthur Roger Gallery)

Roger was able to keep every one of his staff. He made one mistake initially – waiting for leadership. He said it was cathartic to realize that this was not happening. He invited people to an opening in November, He sent out invitations, which was a joke because the mail system was not working. Artists responded with new work, and people came in droves and purchased art. It was beyond imagination.

People changed after Katrina. They recognized that art represents an emotional connection. At first the gallery was office busy, selling, but not to walk-in customers. They sold art on Katrina. They created an exhibition that is in Colorado now. It will be at NOMA soon. Dan Cameron, a curator from New York, came with an outside perspective. They have planned an event with a budget originally planned at $750,000, which has now reached $3million.

Kirsha Kaechele (Director of Kirsha Kaechelen Projects

Kaechele lives in the St. Roch neighborhood and has an art space there. Everything had been lost, and cleaned. The art space was meant to be a one-time event. It interacted with an overwhelming sense of beauty that actually existed in the abandoned neighborhood. It has a vital artistic force in the middle of emptiness. The art space developed on its own course. The space shows installation art in a 100 year old bakery and a barely standing Creole cottage.

Hearse Harrison (Guardian’s Institute)

The late Don Harrison, husband to Hearse, conceived the Guardian’s Institute in 1988. It is dedicated to bringing the culture in a positive way to young people. It was doing this by visiting schools, and she is now trying to build a facility. The Institute strives to perpetuate, promote and conserve our original culture.

Earl Barthe (Building Craftsman)

Barthe advocated for the preservation of historic plastering. Houses made of stucco and plaster last. Architects and builders are killing the plastering industry, a method that is passed to younger people. Barthe trains young people in historic plastering. He saw at the Jazz Festival that the people were asking New Orleanians to come back. He responds, “We are going to preserve this city. That is my job.”

Peter Rigney (Graphic Designer)

Graphic design is the intersection of technology and creativity. He lived in New Orleans for many years, where people ask, “What do you do?” Here they ask, “Who are you?” In 2005 he decided to return to his native New Orleans to put down roots and raise a family. Since the storm, there has been a vibrancy and vitality fostered by need, which has woken up the city. There is a need for collaboration.

Working here is gratifying. He is meeting talented, committed and passionate people. Everyone is an entrepreneur. He Joined Trumpet Advertising, which is dedicated to cultural economy through the promotion of tourism, the promotion of New Orleans. New Orleans owns the word ‘unique’.

Joanna Garza (Fashion Designer)

Garza owned a fashion/costume store called ‘Seam’ in Tribecca, NYC. 9/11 destroyed her business. She was given support and helped by the government. She moved to New Orleans. Then Katrina hit, and no government help materialized.

She lost everything twice. After Katrina, the overseas companies she worked with excused all bills. She evacuated to Lake Charles and she continues to live there because she cannot find affordable housing, day care for her children, or a place for them in school. She has been doing business spread thin all over the country. The progress for her is slow.

Suan Kierr Dyer (Dance Therapist and Co-Chair of Horizon Initiative Cultural Continuity Task Force)

Our culture is rich in dance traditions – festivals, schools, bars, in the dance hall of the mind – we are all dancers. It is a healing art. There are Jazz funerals, with a rhythm that connects an isolated person back into community. There was One River Mississippi one year ago on June 23rd. The performance took place simultaneously in seven cities down the Mississippi. Grown men cried as tugboats streamed water into the air and dropped a daisy to commemorate each life lost.

Dance processes grief. It helps us to process our emotions. It creates neurotransmitters. We are under stress. The road home is uphill. We need to garnish our muscles; we need the muscles of everyone in this room.

Barbara Motley (Owner of Le Chat Noir)

Motley comes from a business background, and she learned about theatre over the last 8 years, while owning the cabaret theatre on St. Charles Avenue. People move to New Orleans to live in New Orleans, not to work. Artists live here because it is fun to live here. The people moving here now are people involved in the industries of the mind, the laptop communities, people who can work from anywhere via the internet. People who can live anywhere, live here. Artists are here and creating and they need a stage. We also have customers, and so economy and art are working together. There is a theatre festival to come, and the artists are here to stay.

M.K. Wegman (National Performance Network)

Wegman was displaced for six months. She came back to create relationships between artists in New Orleans and the rest of the country. She works to share information and build a local network. She participated in UNOP in the culture and arts sector. Facilities are always the issue. There is a need for artists to have more spaces so that they can self-represent. Artists organize displaced people through employment, strength in infrastructure and through arts in education.

David Freedman (General Manager, WWOZ)

WWOZ came back. It is committed. We maybe should be committed. We are supported. We reflect the strength of the people here. We are at the dawning of a new media environment – a web environment. Pretty soon people are going to be able to choose from a million different stations streaming on the web while driving in their cars. We need to call our representatives in Congress to roll back the policy that will raise the streaming fees on May 15th.

Our cultural economy is coming back strong. Our cultural continuity is fragmentary. The renewal of our cultural system is vital. There is no survey of our missing musicians. How are we to help if we don’t know? There is no overview of what is going on in schools. There are maybe 5 marching bands left. The individuals who taught the young people – Where are they? How do we get them back?

Wilbur Rawlins, Jr. evacuated to Beaumont, Texas, and was given a dream job there. He returned just the same and is teaching at Perry Walker. With him a patch of our cultural DNA has returned. Men like him are the cultural incubators of our city. The exterior wards are our wetlands.

We work from fragmentary reports. The director of education tells us that few families are cooking from traditional recipes. The food is becoming homogenized. There are no red beans and rice being served on Mondays. Our future is in our Cultural Continuity.

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