Behind The Lines of Second Lining

What are second lines? Many people from all over the globe visit New Orleans, and ask the same question. Some would say that a second line is the product of a dying art, while others might call it preservation of a thriving tradition. While, some may see these high stepping parades as the celebration of life, others might see them as a symbol of death and communal mourning. For each community, every second line plays a different yet very important role.

From the back roads of neighborhoods to the bustling bridges of New Orleans second lines march their way into the hearts of natives and tourist alike. A man who watched the Furious Five parade says, “To see them brothers come out there with all the energy made me join them. It was so electrifying — you had to parade with them. You could just see the fun in em” (Coming Out of The Door 100). From the paraders point of view:

The day of the parade, it’s up to you what you want to do. It’s like a relief for me after the whole year of being a responsible parent and paying all the bills and taking care of everything. You know that day is coming for you. That one day when you feel like l the king

(COTD 142)

There is some level of liberation in these large processional gatherings, and everyone wants to get in on it.

Behind the wild abandon created blasting brass bands, expressive dancers, flashy sequins, suits, sashes, and feathers there is an amazing dynamic being created by second lines. As Rapheal Parker Jr. from the Furious Five notes, “It develops brotherhood” (COTD 96). He says there’s nothing like stopping at the highest point of a bridge and seeing that you’ve brought all of New Orleans with you (143). Helen Regis, a professor from LSU, agrees that second lines can be catalysts for building community (Blackness and the Politics of Memory 756). Parker describes the overwhelming sense of comradery it creates:

There have been plenty of time[s] we were in the back of that room at Magee’s and everybody was in tears. They say that after the first time you get used to it, but not for us. Every year is just like a brand new year for us. Just to see all of us together, all of us in that one room. We look at each other and look what we got.

(COTD 142)

Through out all the planning, the sewing and the gluing, band booking, the kicking, the sweat, and the tears, the calls from the crowd, a neighborhood experiences unity and power.

Communities in New Orleans tend to celebrate a couple different types of second lines. Anniversary parades celebrate the life of neighborhood-based organizations. The season for anniversary second lining starts in November, but the organizations that lead them begin preparing for them months ahead of time. This type of second line strives to promote the ideals of perseverance, tradition, and brotherhood within the community. Memorial second lines on the other hand, seem to be the very manifestation of these values. Helen Regis writes in her article, about how memorial second lines unite the community of the deceased in mourning, and celebration of an individual life and death. Where memorial second lines may not be as well funded, or organized as the anniversary parades, they tend to carry much more meaning. Jean Nelson explains how her mother’s death was what first made second lining meaningful to her(COTD 120). She also later recalls Tenida Pierre dancing with a purpose at her brother’s funeral:

Even though I had seen Tenida second line, that was the first time I really seen my cousin Tenida bring it down. She shook her brother down. If Tenida don’t dance no more today, God as my witness, she brought her brother down.

(COTD 136)

Even those with no connection to the deceased can recognize the depth of a memorial second line. Regis talks about how attending two different second lines held in honor of Alfred Lazard, and Darnell Andrews allow her to grasp a clearer picture of the communities’ triumphs and struggles. While both types play their role within the community it is clear that one bears a greater weight than the other.

In the Ninth Ward, when Ms.Coochie’s son Louis was murdered she lead a second line in his honor. It was the first second line in Desire; a jazz funeral with a horse drawn glass dirge. Jean says,“I think because of Louis the [Nine Times Social Aid and Pleasure] Club is still here today, because a lot of people wouldn’t have a parade down there, if he hadn’t started it” (COTD 136). This necessity of legacy and continuity is essential if not central to the purpose of second lining. Ella Ward of the Lady Nine Times says in an interview:

I’ve been dealing with second lines since I was eight… I liked it. My mom was out there shaking her rump, and I was out there shaking whatever I had… When I got to be about fourteen, I learned my dad, Roy Tapp, was second lining, too. I found out he was an Original Buck Jumper. I would follow him, and I’ve been doing it ever since

(COTD 127)

As Jean Nelson boldly suggests, “Don’t matter how hard you try to teach a person, if it’s not in your blood or in you family you can’t dance” (COTD 131). It seems the thread of tradition is what holds the fabric of second lines together.

Second lines while providing a means for expressing the creativity of a community cannot be considered merely products of the combined artistic mind, but should be seen as living breathing cultural entities. They represent the convergence of the old and the young, of beauty and truth, life and death, physical and spiritual, of voice and heart. As a gift from the community to the community second lines search the horizons and penetrate the hearts of a people united providing unity, strength, history and meaning to all who take part.

Works Cited

Nine Times Social and Pleasure Club, and Nieghborhood Story Project. Coming Out of the Door For The Ninth Ward. New Orleans: Neighborhood Story Project, 2006.

Regis, Helen A. “Blackness and the Politics of Memory in the New Orleans Second Line.” American Ethnologist 28 (2001): 752-77. JSTOR. Nov. 2001. 27 Apr. 2009 <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3094934&gt;.

New Orleans Folk Performance: The Key to Rebuilding Our City?

Folk performance revolves around embracing make-believe while simultaneously honoring ancestors and tradition. While New Orleans has been home to many such demonstrations in the past decades, now is the time for the city to emphasize the importance of these events, especially the three main spectacles: the Mardi Gras Indians, the Zulu Parade, and the second-lines. Through tactics of memory, the creation of locality, and the possibility of strengthening tourism, all three hold the potential to help preserve and rediscover the cultural vitality that New Orleans desperately needs to regain post-Katrina.

Traditional events first and foremost serve to commemorate and communicate the ideas, experiences, and customs of a particular culture. Remembering our roots relies upon honoring the people and places from which we have evolved. The Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, for example, has an annual parade where they publicly dress up in grass skirts and blackface. By doing so, they recreate the activities of their ancestors, who wished to parade as the white people did but lacked the funds to buy proper masks and resultantly poked fun at themselves and society instead. In 2006, in the wake of Katrina, they added the tradition of running a float without passengers in an effective effort to represent deceased/missing members. Zulu was formed specifically for Mardi Gras, and the club’s dedication to this original celebration time allows them the advantage of sharing their tradition with large crowds, many of whom formerly did not know about or understand the history of their krewe.

Similarly, the Mardi Gras Indians make an appearance on Mardi Gras. However, they differ from Zulu in that they do not follow a set route and can also be seen parading at other times during the year, including on “Super Sunday”, when all the different tribes come together to dance. Wandering around in their intricately hand-beaded and feathered costumes, the Mardi Gras Indians pay their respects to the ancestral strength of hard work and the persistent pride of the Native Americans and Africans who worked together to free slaves as early as the 1700s. Their ritualistic costumes show reverence to ancestor spirits as well as respect for one’s hosts (who were historically the Native American people in the greater New Orleans area).

Those participating in the weekly second-line events on Sundays sometimes also honor the dead through the use of costume, donning memorial t-shirts with inspirational messages while they dance/sing/chant their way through miles and miles of the black New Orleans funeral procession. However, moreso than Zulu and the Mardi Gras Indians, second lining focuses on place memory. The band leads the way, stopping at designated houses/stores/street corners that are nostalgically significant to the particular march. In boldly “occupying public space in a crime ridden-neighborhood” where such an act is “subject to police interrogation” (Regis 758), second liners make a plethora of important statements to society. The streets they walk are redefined through united events such as second lines, where everybody comes together with a common cause – to rejoice. The corner of the shooting that killed Devon Brown transforms from a place of raw pain to be avoided. Instead, a second line can make it a landmark that reminds the community of their united march for future peace.

In keeping traditional events, costumes, and places alive, the people engage in community art. Together, members of an area celebrate, mourn, dance, scream, sing, chant, stomp, etc. Shared catharsis brings about true neighborhoods. Moreover, even competitive rituals that began as warfare activities, such as the facing off of the different Mardi Gras Indian tribe chiefs, have eventually established mutual respect and bonding. As such, community stretches across neighborhoods, creating a general sense of locality, where everybody is invited to observe or participate. The more people who witness/engage in these demonstrations, the more people who reach a new level of understanding and want to contribute to preserving unique culture.

In a time when New Orleans strives to rebuild cultural vitality, it seems most logical to begin with root culture and living tradition. Although New Orleans relies on tourism to boost its economy, the rich celebrations of the live culture has remained largely hidden from the public eye. For example, I have lived a mere two hours from New Orleans for the entirety of my life, and I am just now becoming aware that second lines, Zulu, and the Mardi Gras Indians still exist! No wonder some of these performances are dying out. Having been exposed to their cultures, I am now inspired to help preserve the unique customs in any way possible. If these customs were promoted to the world in a manner that does them the justice they deserve, I believe that others would travel here to participate and resultantly contribute resources that the local arts scene and the city of New Orleans desperately need. However, if this plan of action were to be taken, the government would need to be wary of attempting to package these events as entertainment/gimmick shows. Instead, there would need to be an agreement between the community and the government to respect the traditions’ need for improvisation and re-appropriation as members see fit. Under such circumstances, New Orleans could do the unthinkable – preserve root culture while simultaneously boosting tourism.

Works Cited

Regis, Helen A. “blackness and the politics of memory in the New Orleans second line.” american ethnologist. 2001. 752-777.

Two Examples In Favor of Community Art: A Closer Look at Liz Lerman’s Dance Exchange and the Urban Bush Women

In the larger art world, community-based art struggles to break out of a subordinate category. Many artists believe that creating art through/with the community diminishes true artistic vision and strength. Fortunately, Liz Lerman’s Dance Exchange and the Urban Bush Women both challenge this concept, asserting that such community art benefits both the professionals and the laypeople, mainly by giving the public a chance to explore their bodies and express untold stories. The interactions also provides artists with endless inspiration to develop untapped methods of communication. In working to convey a community’s sentiments, one usually starts with nothing but raw emotion. To do so, one must almost necessarily depart from traditional uses of the arts, and this deviation from tradition embodies both Lerman and Urban’s overall concept. Although they both have an emphasis on and background in dance, they realize that emotional, social, psychological, and historical messages cannot be fully expressed within the restraints of long-standing dance customs. They instead embrace increased exploration of different types of communication and dance techniques. Resultantly, their companies are unaware of limitations. Through fearless experimentation with form and content, both dance companies validate the importance of community art while also changing the overall landscape of the world of dance.

Simply defined, form connotes “shape”. Lerman and Urban revolutionize multiple aspects of form, most importantly changing views on the accepted shape of the dancer’s body and the shape of traditional teaching methodologies. Historically, a dancer’s body was expected to look a certain way. As Lerman describes in her article “Feeding the Artist, Feeding the Art”, she became fed up with the fact that dance classes followed a set pattern: “warm up, impart information on how bodies could achieve more physical range, and teach certain stylistic dance patterns” while standing in lines “facing the mirrors and never touching” (Lerman 54). The focus on competition instead of self-discovery and improvement made for a negative learning atmosphere. In direct opposition to this former model, both Lerman’s and Urban’s dance companies include people of different shapes and sizes. While Urban’s team focuses on African American Women, Lerman’s embraces every walk of life and encourages involvement across generations and ethnicities. Since both companies are highly successful and renowned, they are a testament to the fact that size does not dictate what is beautiful in dance – it only enables people to experience different forms of beauty.

Such open-mindedness facilitates the companies’ ability to work within a community of non-dancers. They make it a priority to establish a safe environment so that participants feel free to experiment and challenge their personal expressive limitations. As I experienced during a class with the Urban Bush Women, the safe environment is created through introductions, activities geared towards acknowledging and communicating personal emotions, and positive group feedback. In sharing such a level of vulnerability, people almost immediately form connections. Once relaxed, the participants are more likely to be receptive to the suggestions of the dance company, allowing Lerman and Urban the power to expand each participant’s mind/body relationship and physical range. Observing each person’s progress also allows the artist to gain new insight. For example, in her article, Lerman recounts a time when she had college dancers work with elderly people. Not only did the elderly regain and rediscover their physicality, but the college dancers’ ranges increased, as well! Lerman concluded that the positive affirmations of the elderly gave the dancers confidence and that the exaggerated gestures needed to communicate with the hearing/vision impaired participants aided the dancers in their development of stage personality. Overall, the students danced better than ever. She also recognized that through shadowing the elderly to prevent any falls, dancers learned about problem-solving and the alternating roles of leading/following in a partnership. Thus, the companies ensure that the participants and dancers interact with each other, rendering straight lines and self-isolation a trend of the past (Lerman 57-59).

Moreover, through their unique and interactive ways of creating and compiling movement into dance pieces, Lerman and Urban also challenge traditional content. While Urban is more centered around political/social responsibility and civic engagement, Lerman remains pretty open-minded about her themes, requiring only that they stem from the community’s personal sentiments. For example, at the Urban class I attended, their guided activity began with a set scenario and then transformed people’s reactions to that scenario into gestures. In contrast, my experience with Jeffrey Gunshol, using Lerman’s technique, started with memories prompted by certain words, group storytelling, selective text from each story, and a series of gestures and variations on those gestures.

Despite the differences in the method used to acquire a piece’s theme and choreography, Urban and Lerman are similar in the use of multiple mediums when presenting a piece. With the exception of absurdist/futuristic movements that long ago dwindled into oblivion, media is usually kept relatively separate, especially in dance companies. However, Urban and Lerman recognize that emotional movements help define form. Experimentation with different senses also heightens emotional memory. Thus, depending on the specific community, a piece may or may not include any or all of the following: singing, text, movement, images, live music, etc. Lerman also emphasizes the location of a performance, preferring to present and even brainstorm in a community setting of importance and meaning. This change of place not only forces the performances to be highly improvisational (and adaptable to different space constraints) but also makes the movements and the message of historical importance, causing the choreograph to become real instead of solely symbolic. The location allows a fuller understanding of the topic and the place, providing performers with a new level of passion. As such, dancers find a way to merge excessive technique with true emotion.

As a result of their works, both Lerman and Urban have changed the perceptions about body types, the approaches to performance in both form and content, and the views on community-based art. While each performance piece may not contain an entirely global message, the work with the community does enable a trend of healing, a means of problem-solving, and the progression of artistic exploration.

Although I personally met Urban, I am partial to Lerman, as I find her methods to be more comprehensive and universally inclusive. While Urban’s official stage concerts do inspire the audience to dance from their chairs, it seems that the company keeps community performance separate from the formal stage. Granted, I could be mistaken. However, based upon Lerman’s bold visions and her determination to forever push the limits, I can confidently predict that we can expect to see radical community involvement in her formal concerts in the near future.

Works Cited

Lerman, Liz. “Feeding the Artist, Feeding the Art.” Community, Culture, and Globalization. Ed. Don Adams and Arlene Goldbard. N.p.: The Rockefeller Foundation, 2002. 51-69.

Entering A New Community: A Delicate Task

“Stranger with a Camera” effectively demonstrates that entering a new community, despite the best of intentions, must be executed in a certain way. As evidenced in the afore-mentioned film, infringing upon people’s personal space without permission will inevitably lead to hostile (if not dangerous) conditions. However, acquiring permission is only one of a plethora of measures that need to be taken in order to ensure a successful entry into a community, especially when the goal entails art-based community building. The artist must introduce oneself, explaining his/her vision for a better community and his/her plan to offer the tools necessary to foster such an environment according to the wishes of the community members. If members seem open to the concept, the artist needs to begin building relationships with them in order to establish a basis of trust. In order to do so, the artist must focus mainly on perfecting the art of listening, while keeping a few other principles in the forefront of the mind: respect, reciprocity, and adaptation.

Since the artist is entering a space that is not his/her own, he/she must be respectful of the unique nature of the space, taking its particular context and environment into consideration. A key element of showing respect to the community involves a strong knowledge of its history, values, and struggles. Such a knowledge can be acquired through prior research, as well as conversations with members of the community. It is incredibly important for the artist to have a grasp of the core issues of the community in order to effectively assist the members in creating a strong, positive result. Additionally, in taking the time to learn about the community’s past and be sensitive to it’s issues, the artist appears to genuinely care about the cause/people and therefore seems less threatening to members. For example, in “Looking In/Looking Out”, university students experienced difficulty in gaining the trust of their middle-school partners. The youth initially felt incredibly self-conscious and hesitant to participate. However, after the university students made a consistent, supportive effort to listen, the youth began to feel safe and blossom.

Much like the aforementioned story, trust will take a while to develop. However, respect is undoubtedly the first step, as it fosters an atmosphere of reciprocity. This is key to creating a creative atmosphere in which ideas can be bounced around without hesitation. Once members know that they are respected, they will feel assured that their feelings/thoughts/ideas will be respected, as well, and will resultantly begin to express the community’s concerns and needs. Essentially, the artist must create a non-hierarchal relationship, in which everybody’s ideas are equally considered in the planning and implementing of a project. Each person involved in the project exists as both a teacher and a student. In the case of the artist, he/she holds responsibility for stimulating creativity, encouraging the expression of both individual and collective voices in the community. However, he/she cannot dictate a set project or concept because he/she must also listen and observe, learning from the members involved in order to truly understand and be responsive to the needs of the particular community in question.

In fact, oftentimes, the artist will find that his/her initial idea fails to serve the community – hence the importance of adaptability. While it may be difficult at times as an artist to fight the desire to push forward with his/her vision, one must realize that art-based community building ultimately exists to benefit those in the community. For example, in “You Can Only Hear if You Really Listen”, the university students heading the project encountered reduced attendance/participation after trying to force tedious/confusing/irrelevant activities upon their participants. As the leaders soon discovered, it is not the artist’s interests and needs but instead the community’s that must be engaged and addressed in order for a successful collaboration. Thus, the artist must first and foremost truly listen to the community voices and then re-direct the project in the most beneficial way. Such improvisation also reinforces the egalitarian atmosphere, steering members of the community away from the idea of being passive viewers and instead encouraging them to be active participants in their future. The improvisation guarantees that no plan of action is set in stone, and with each new direction of the project, the artist is reminded to constantly reassess the principles and activities to ensure that they are in keeping with the real situation at hand. With so many creative forces in play, there is ample potential for endless changes to the original plan, and the artist must always remember to approach each new idea and its ensuing problems with patience and positivism.

By employing these main qualities (while also avoiding inconsistency and the imposition of one’s own viewpoint), the artist should gradually make his/her way into the community’s inner circle. Although the artist and the community oftentimes begin as strangers from completely different walks of life, they oftentimes discover that the collaboration of their different values and practices enables them to achieve common goals that were otherwise unattainable.

My involvement with the “Building Community Through the Arts” class has already exhibited this truth. Only three classes ago, I made an apprehensive trek to Xavier University. I did not know any of the students in my Tulane section, much less any of the students from Xavier, and while I was more than happy to get to know them, I was unsure if they would feel the same way towards me. After all, I was intruding upon their campus and their teachers. Luckily, the artist-teachers involved have ample experience in community-entering. They incorporated all of the above-mentioned techniques into class discourse and icebreaker games, fostering a respectful, reciprocal, and adaptable environment from the very first day. Resultantly, I had absolutely no problems with submerging myself in this new mini-community and almost immediately felt safe (as evidenced when I cried during one of the games). Although I was privileged enough to partake in a positive community-building experience, I can imagine how terribly traumatic a negative experience could be (such as the one in “Stranger with a Camera”). Consequently, I understand the importance of the above-mentioned tools and look forward to actively utilizing them in my work with “The Porch Project” in the 7th Ward in the upcoming months.

CANO – A brief overview

Just a quick video to give you an overview of the Creative Alliance of New Orleans, and what’s going on at the Colton School. The Colton School suffered heavy damage during Hurricane Katrina. CANO has taken over and utilized the empty space to give back to the community.

Warning: Trespassers will be persecuted

We are artists. We are teachers and students. We are mothers, daughters, fathers, and sons. We are thinkers and we are doers. We are movers and we are peacemakers; but we are not whole. We, as a New Orleans community, share a love of second lines, plentiful drinks, sweltering humidity, and individual expression– no matter how outrageous it appears to an outsider. Yet at the end of the day we go home to separate parts of town, and they are hardly equal. The socio-economic rift in this city seems inviolable. We couldn’t say we knew it to be a different way, a better way. Now we are faced with a problem that has no precedent of solution. However, we come armed with a fervent love of our home, a zeal for creativity and innovation, and if our mere being here wasn’t proof enough, unbreakable spirits. The question that inevitably arises is how one might approach the community with a creative endeavor that is nonexclusive and accessible. Project coordinators wonder how to breach the wall that stands between the art market and art for art’s sake. While the coordinators may start out believing they are the ones giving the art, a greater reward from the community will end up theirs for the taking.
The PBS film Stranger with a Camera depicts an ignominious outcome of this artists’ dilemma. In 1967 when the murder of Canadian filmmaker Hugh O’Connor made international headlines, the nation found itself divided between those who saw Hobart Ison as a depraved murderer and those who saw his act as a justified struggle for dignity. Undoubtedly O’Connor’s intent was far from malevolent; to his film crew, family, and friends, the murder was a horrific shock. However, the residents of Kentucky’s Appalachia inferred implications of O’Connor’s work that he had evidently not taken into account, and thus his death heralded an unwelcome wake-up call to an already exhausted nation.
New York producer Francis Thompson hired O’Connor to assist in directing a film aptly entitled US (ITVS). The film had lofty ambitions for the portrayal of American life; the scope of American experience was to be captured in snapshots and reproduced for mass consumption. However, an extensive project such as this could hardly begin to encapsulate the feelings behind the picture and much less a comprehensive rendering of each community. O’Connor had embarked on a whirlwind tour of the United States with expectations of a newfound familiarity. Instead he found out there was much more that he didn’t know, and his ignorance would cost him. O’Connor and his film crew were more than outsiders; they were outsiders with a mission to transform a community without their permission. Lesson one of building community through the arts: Engage the community to best determine the needs the project should meet. Artists that attempt to include a community in their work or as their work must cultivate a willingness to change direction on a whim, even if the change compromises the artist’s original plan. A fundamental problem of the US project was that American citizens were largely uninvolved and uninformed about the making of the film. Despite the indubitably noble aspirations of the filmmakers, they obviously forgot their purpose of serving the community amid their rather myopic means of reaching it.
A similar parallel can be drawn to a number of case studies in the Art/Vision/Voice text. The piece “You Can Only Hear if You Really Listen: A Youth-Centered Community Arts Project Emerges in Urban Baltimore” epitomizes the trials an artist faces when undertaking such a communal venture. When Maryland Institute College of Art students began an art program for inner city children in Baltimore, the student leaders clearly had their own agenda. One leader insisted on a difficult contour drawing exercise that the youth did not appreciate, understand, and most importantly, enjoy. As attendance dropped and negative feedback rose, two other student leaders decided it was high time to put their own ideas aside for a moment and listen to what the kids wanted to do. Listen they did, and their efforts were rewarded. Once the art program catered to the youth, attendance grew steadily and an exciting burst of creativity was realized in their artwork. As one program director remarked at the semester’s conclusion, “When these kids say, ‘Can you feel me?’ They don’t just mean ‘Do you hear what I say?’ They mean: ‘Did you take in what you heard me just say and can you try it on for size, can you walk a mile in my shoes? Can you attempt to understand what I’m experiencing?’ And in a very profound way that’s what happened over the course of the semester” (Krafchek, et. al 29).
Additionally, artists working in a community often confront sensitive situations that require their utmost delicacy and attention. Hugh O’Connor walked into a hotbed of economic, political, and social issues without a proper introduction and thus was made to bear the brunt of their release. While his murder is not defendable in a court of law or most other American communities, the citizens of Letcher County, Kentucky found themselves disgraced by O’Connor’s presence and vindicated by his erasure. O’Connor went to Kentucky to reveal a blighted community to the world. To the Kentuckians, O’Connor’s camera posed a threat to the civility of their lifestyle and traditions without being acquainted.
This cultural confrontation occurred in another case study in Art/Vision/Voice entitled “Looking In/ Looking Out: Learning About Real Partnership in Watsonville, California.” In this example the student leaders of the community project met “a leased space in an old church. Inside, the main building is run-down with long, dark, windowless hallways, worn linoleum floors, bathrooms in need of renovation, and small classrooms jam-packed with desks, chairs, and students”(Mesa-Bains, Weiner 84). However, instead of photographing the dismal aspects of the school, the university students worked with the high school students to beautify their halls in a way that combined student expression and constructive social commentary. The final digital media product is palpable evidence of the bonds formed between the students and a new discourse of hope in Watsonville.
I am reminded now of my own experience with community building and art. I came to New Orleans with an idea, no matter how vague or inaccurate, of the culture, people, and places I would find here. I came as a writer, a voyeur no less, yet I sought my Muse along the balmy banks of the Mississippi, without the aid of locals, storytellers, or musicians. Ironically, I sought inspiration in places far removed from my ideas of New Orleans and not surprisingly my efforts failed. I couldn’t write here, couldn’t wrap my head around the teeming vibrancy of every street corner. I wasn’t listening because I thought I had already heard.
Hugh O’Connor tried to capture Appalachia but in the end it captured him. He lost because he wasn’t on the right side, or perhaps because there were no sides to join at all. As artists we are given an opportunity to break down the norms, the social and political barriers and just share our experience of life with each other. Each one in each community has some story to tell; the question now is will we listen?

The Original Little 7 on Vimeo

Check out the work in progress of the 7th Ward Culture Center’s Theater Project. Click here to the project’s Vimeo page to see a few videos!

Entering Community: The Intentions of a Community Artist

When you enter a community with the intentions of making art, you must understand that the artwork and the art making process itself no longer belongs to the artist. After accepting this, there is much more that a community artist must consider in order to be successful in their endeavors. To truly capture an earnest rendering of a community an artist must first become a part of that community. As a part of the community an artist no longer creates by their own initiatives, but as a reflection of the needs of the community. When an artist is planted within the community and makes herself available to take part in the movements of it’s people, only then can she begin to facilitate real growth and success within the community arts.

Stranger With a Camera did a great job at exposing the folly of community art in which artist is severed from the community. This tragic tale of an artist with good intentions and a citizen with just as noble sentiments could have been one of success. As artists we must always be sensitive to the social structures we encounter in the art making process. It’s one thing to misrepresent a person, but to insult an entire community causes much more damage then good, and as we have seen can cost lives. The best way to avoid such miscommunication is to become a part of the community ourselves. After we have walked in their shoes then we might be able to use our gifts of expression to draw certain aspects of a community’s livelihood to the surface, pushing pulling the collective consciousness of the people and the society at large.

From our look at various case studies we have found that it is not artists who design the best projects but the community itself. As artists we must place our allegiance first to the good of the people and secondly to our own creative minds. In You Can Only hear if You Really Listen the students from Baltimore began to lose participation as they pushed their own agenda. Losing participation is losing people; losing people means losing impact; losing impact is losing the purpose of art altogether. After getting inside the heads of children they worked with, they designed several successful projects including a coat of arms sketchbook and super hero sculptures. In the end it was these things that really made a difference in the way that the kids experienced their world. That alteration in perspective rippled through the community touching parents and neighbors who hadn’t even been involved in the art making process.

A perfect example of hard-hitting community art can be found in the hands of the Transforma Project. Look at HOME, New Orleans? a project designed specifically to challenge the way we feel about New Orleans. There’s a pretty common saying that goes, “Home is where the heart is”, and is not art the quickest way to reach the heart? Could we ask for a better way to install New Orleans into the heart of its people? Jan Cohen-Cruz writes that, “Our goal is not only to create art on site but also to create and expand relationships among the diverse individuals, organizations, institutions and neighborhoods participating” and in reference to the neighborhood cultural center in the 7^th Ward called the Porch, “By providing local kids with opportunities, we strengthen their families’ ties to the neighborhood as well”. Transforma, after fortifying an ever-growing network of local artists, dug deep into the hearts of various communities like the 7^th ward in order to plant the seeds of sustainable cultural development, the very thing that will and has held New Orleans together decades.

Monday, I took part in one of the many community art programs at The Porch. From that brief encounter with just a small, and young, cross section of the community I can already begin to see how art can play a major role in transforming the neighborhood. Even though there were a just a few young students present, I could tell that these few wanted to be there. I can also see how the programming is designed, not only to be fun for the kids but also to expose them to skills in the arts. I was somewhat surprised to see such a variety of maturity levels among the kids; this tells me that even within one neighborhood there are dozens of different cultural norms. I was also was surprised to see how, despite the differences between these kids, they all readily claimed each other as friends. That in itself is an amazing blessing, and is the evidence of community growth. I’m very excited to see where else the arts have moved the 7^th ward. While things weren’t as organized as I had hoped, I can certainly see how the community artists at work in this program have stepped into the community, placed the needs of the community first, dedicated their time and efforts to it’s growth, and the seeds of transformation they have planted are growing.

Before visiting the Porch I thought about all the things we need to remember as an artist in the community. We are not here to accomplish our own agenda; on the contrary we are here to serve, to connect the dots between dreams of growth and reality. We place ourselves within the community, allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, to be moved. After being transformed ourselves we can be used as catalysts for the transformation of our community. It’s by no means a simple or easy thing to do. In fact it takes time, thought, and even emotion, but the result is a community mobilized, the greatest showing we could ever hope to have.

Building Community through the Arts

We had our first big gathering of students and community members a few weeks ago.  Here’s a clip from the women from Ashe and the EOC explaining how students will be involved in their projects.