Civic Engagement in the Wake of Katrina

Cultural Policy and Living Culture in New Orleans after Katrina

Carole Rosenstein

THE FIRST TIME I VISITED NEW ORLEANS, it rained. And rained and rained. I spent that visit feeling ratty, damp from inside out and outside in, sweaty and drenched. But for five soggy hours at the Funky Butt I listened, rapt, to Jason Marsalis (I think it was) play xylophone, sparkly little gumdrops of sound tossed out onto the dirty, puddled sidewalk. On departure day, the clouds cleared. Like a tease. Or maybe more like a hint that things sordid and exquisite intersect somewhere around there, near the corner of Decatur and Iberville, where blue sky broke over the river. Last visit, it was fog—dense and whitish gray, drawn in wispy, shin-high streaks. It was comic book spooky, spooky in a good way, but only when I could manage to push aside the images of bloat and horror. For me, the city always seems to have a dreamy, watery aspect. Out of focus. And it's raucous, too (where I stay). And seedy. And pervasively, now maybe unrelentingly, sad.

If you've been there, I'm not telling you anything you don't know. New Orleans is a place where the fact of dying—not so much of death, but of unremitting decay, degeneration, that particular deterioration that comes with neglect (what comes to my mind is nasty toenails, nursing home feet)—tussles with the counterpoised fact of being alive. Dancing and fucking and eating and falling down drunk, decked out in spangles and carrying a little parasol while you're at it. You can feel the two angels fighting it out in the ether all around, and when they rest there's nowhere more eerily quiet. It's pretty quiet now.

It's not a place, you notice, that makes me think of answering e-mails, paying bills, changing diapers. I'm a visitor to New Orleans, and my visits there are time out of time. I want to fess up to this dewy-eyed lens because this is an essay on policy. And I didn't really want to write a policy essay about New Orleans. I wanted to write something beautiful about New Orleans. Maybe the best I can do, here at the beginning, is to toss a bauble to its dark romance and then go on to say let's resist being seduced by its beauty and sadness. Let's be careful not to let a metaphorical frame of mind—the brown-edged magnolias, the flustered Blanches, the rusting facades of intricate ironwork—keep getting in the way of figuring out what to do and doing it soon. New Orleans holds mysteries. No doubt about it. But New Orleans also challenges us with problems that have real solutions.

Cultural Policy and Community-Based Culture

I was asked to go to New Orleans in the fall of 2006 as part of an Urban Institute team helping to organize a conference on the nonprofit sector's response to rebuilding the city. The conference was to focus on policies affecting housing, children and families, disaster relief, and community health. But a few advocates in New Orleans (including an editor of this volume) demanded that the arts and culture be addressed in that forum, and so, with some trepidation, I went. I was nervous about participating for two reasons. First, the cultural policy issues I was asked to address do not typically carry the same weight and force as those surrounding problems of poverty, housing, education, and health. In just about every forum where I have presented cultural policy analysis on New Orleans, questions—and sometimes impassioned critiques—have been raised about why we should care about the arts and culture when residents are still displaced, children not only don't have schools to go to but are being shot in the street, and hospitals remain closed.

But I also had a second concern. And that had to do with the reaction of my audience that day, an audience made up of museum professionals, arts administrators, and artists. Because what I had to say was that the cultural sector has done a poor job of understanding, prioritizing, and addressing the needs of the community and it is these needs that should form the basis on which cultural policy—like any other type of policy—is created and its effectiveness measured. Why be nervous about saying that? Of course, policies should be created and measured according to the degree to which they serve the public good. Well, the difficulty is that in the cultural sector the public good often seems to have become rather distant from the public. The public and nonprofit sector's relative neglect of the immediate cultural needs of communities can be found in many, many places around the country, but it could be seen starkly in New Orleans after Katrina. So I was going to stand up in front of a gathering of exhausted culture workers who were frantically trying to save their institutions, organizations, and collections and say that that was not the kind of disaster recovery their community needed most.

New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz, often considered the United States' greatest indigenous art form. It also is home to a distinctive architecture and a Creole culture, cuisine, and music found nowhere else. African American cultural traditions born and sustained in New Orleans—second-line dancing, Mardi Gras Indian pageantry, jazz funerals—are respected and beloved around the world. Unlike the cultural assets of some other places, those in New Orleans are rooted firmly in its communities. Rather than its museums and symphony halls, it is the people, neighborhoods, local organizations, and small businesses of New Orleans that make it culturally distinct. Many people who make up these communities are still displaced from their homes. And some may remain in the diaspora for the near term, some close to New Orleans and some farther away. The most pressing cultural policy challenge in New Orleans today is how to preserve the community-based culture and expressions of communities that are tattered and scattered. The hurricanes and their aftermath wrought irreversible change on New Orleans communities. How can some lines of cultural continuity be sustained and conversations about the new cultural look, feel, sounds, and tastes of New Orleans be promoted?

Entrenched attitudes and practices will make it difficult for the cultural sector to meet these challenges. Foremost among these attitudes is a steadfast insistence on seeing large arts institutions as providing the bedrock of cultural life. A growing body of research demonstrates that small, community-based organizations and public-sector cultural venues provide significant and inclusive arts and culture services. A focus on rebuilding and resourcing large arts institutions perpetuates both the marginalization of this vital cohort of small, community-based cultural organizations and the isolation of arts and culture from connections to other arenas of public life. Together these factors create a less equitable, weaker cultural sector, one that can neither meet the needs of the whole community nor effectively advocate for public support. Although a clear understanding of why and how to sustain community-based culture is essential to addressing these gaps, the cultural sector remains remarkably weak on this subject.

Why: Culture and Performative Power

A fundamental of cultural policy in New Orleans post-Katrina must be to articulate the public value of community-based culture. But nowhere are the hazards of New Orleans' dark romance more, well, hazardous than in talking about the city's indigenous artistic and cultural expressions. Poor people create and maintain New Orleans' indigenous forms of jazz and performance: jazz funerals, second lines, Indian gangs. One of the things that makes these expressions so aesthetically, socially, and culturally rich is their multivalence, but an important part of what they are are responses to the sadness and rage that poverty and racism breed. And one of the reasons why these forms are so powerful is that they are created and performed in spite of poverty and racism. These forms assert the power of living in the face of dying, abundance in the face of scarcity, control in the face of disempowerment, pride in the face of disrespect. Of course, the making of such brave assertions is a fundamental ritual trope; asserting human efficacy through ritual action is part of what makes ritual a potent social and cultural form.

To take away the context of deprivation in which indigenous jazz and street performance in New Orleans unfolds is to undermine some of its performative power. We are, sadly, in very little danger that deprivation will disappear any time soon. However, in New Orleans the particular context of deprivation in which indigenous jazz and performance have lived is now displaced along with the people and communities that practice these forms. And this raises a peculiar problem. New Orleans' indigenous jazz and performance genres are performances and traditions not texts, images, or objects; they are aesthetic forms carried in and by people and communities. These people and communities are poor and (mostly) black. You can't have the forms without the people. You can't have the people without their blackness. And thus far we have no systemic programs on the table for getting the people and communities back without getting the poverty, too.

There is intense romance in the image of poor, oppressed folk creating beautiful, communal expressions as a form of resistance. In every other policy area—education, health, housing, public safety—the need and desire to alleviate poverty are clear. But, unfortunately, this is not always the case in cultural policy and practice, where culture and poverty are conceptually bound in several ways. Cultural “authenticity” is associated with images of poor folk: simple, rural, backward, uneducated, marginal, etcetera, etcetera. Also there is a powerful imperative to uncritically respect and cherish the aesthetic and humanistic qualities of poor and marginalized peoples' artistic and cultural expressions. This is ground well covered in some critical anthropology and folklore and even in some emerging development discourse. What is less often recognized is that the romance in the image of poor, oppressed folk creating beautiful, communal expressions as a form of resistance reflects longing not only for authentic, communal, human expression but longing also for a belief in the efficacy of such expressions. The longing for cultural efficacy and the inadequate conceptualization of how cultural efficacy might relate to social and economic justice demand some careful thought.

Arjun Appadurai provides a powerful framework for thinking about the multiple and powerful efficacies of cultural forms in his discussion of the ways in which poor people can use a repertoire of stories, values, and performance genres to create compelling claims in the public sphere. He calls this the “capacity to aspire,” by which he means, I think, the capacity to present situated claims in culturally potent terms. Appadurai notes that while culture has “been viewed as a matter of one or another kind of pastness—the keywords here are habit, custom, heritage, tradition,” culture also frames orientations toward the future. The capacity to aspire is a facility to connect individual wants and needs to cultural norms about what constitutes “the good life, health, and happiness” and more broadly to belief systems about “life and death, the nature of worldly possessions, the significance of material assets over social relations, the value of peace or warfare.” This facility is one he describes in terms of narrative and performance. For example, he writes, “Gandhi's life, his fasting, his abstinence, his bodily comportment, his ascetical style, his crypto-Hindu use of nonviolence and of peaceful resistance were all tremendously successful because they mobilized a local palette of performances and precursors.”¹ Individuals and groups institute change by creating powerful stories that explain, persuade, and address their needs and wants in terms of norms and belief systems. This capacity to aspire, and the hope and confidence it generates, thus are directly related to economic growth, poverty reduction, and public action.

It is imperative that the living cultural forms of New Orleans communities be understood in ways informed by this framework. The power of New Orleans' indigenous performance genres lies in their ability to both express and actively reproduce the will and presence of the people who create and embody them. Because I am not an expert on the cultures of New Orleans, I'll not attempt to interpret the particular and complex meanings and values embodied in those forms. Certainly they have to do with living with the reality of dying, celebrating the fact of life, and putting community at the center of that life, a community created through the process of instantiating these forms with year after year of beading circles, band practice, and crawfish boils. This is the living culture of New Orleans, and every one of the educational, social, political, and economic functions that might be built on it depends on it being vital and robust.

How: Action Steps in Support of Living Culture

There are ways for cultural policy to promote and sustain the living culture of New Orleans, and thus to ensure that the cultural sector post-Katrina can be rebuilt both equitably and to maximize public benefit. Arts and culture can be expansively incorporated into a wide range of public programs from education to health care to human services. Venues that have been shown to be highly inclusive in their arts and culture programming can serve as a focus for rebuilding efforts and resources. And New Orleans' cultural economy can be developed with equitably distributed resources and opportunities for voice from underrepresented members of the cultural community such as community-based organizations and individual artists.

Foster connections between the arts and culture and a broad range of public policy areas such as education, health, social services, and community improvement.

The arts and culture typically are not considered to be very important to core public concerns such as education, community development, health, transportation, and safety. However, research shows that strong connections exist between the arts and culture and the government agencies and nonprofit organizations whose work addresses these issues. Local government agencies outside the arts and culture are essential for the delivery of arts and culture to populations such as youth and seniors through programs sponsored by courts, social service agencies, and police departments.² Schools, social service agencies, and community development organizations recognize the power of arts and culture programming to foster community engagement and organizing.³ Strong connections exist between cultural heritage activities and nonprofit organizations working in education, human services, community improvement and capacity building, and food, nutrition, and agriculture.⁴ By recognizing and fostering these connections, rebuilding plans that focus on delivering resources to agencies and organizations not involved in the arts still can provide support for the development of a strong arts and culture community.

Some effective ways to foster strong, well-resourced connections between artistic and non-arts activities and organizations include the following.

• Creating a concise, coherent, realistic cultural plan that identifies key strengths of the arts and culture and advertises their capacities and benefits to the broader policy community.

• Incorporating specific, targeted cultural policy items into large-scale, cross-sector plans such as the Unified New Orleans Plan.

• Developing a strong, cross-sector advocacy network for the arts and culture that represents all facets of the cultural community.

• Developing and implementing a robust, innovative Percent for Art program for all public building and public works projects.

• Developing opportunities, registries, and employment rosters for local artists who could be employed in programs at non-arts venues.

• Developing opportunities for arts and culture organizations, especially small and mid-sized organizations, to connect with non-arts agencies and organizations.

• Providing funds specifically targeted at establishing and sustaining artistic and non-arts partnerships.

Redevelop well-resourced, inclusive cultural venues such as libraries, parks, schools, public media, and safe street corners.

Urban Institute research has shown that people are much more likely to attend arts and culture events in community venues such as parks, streets, schools, and places of worship than in conventional arts venues such as concert halls and museums. Moreover, community cultural venues tend to include people who are unlikely to participate in conventional arts and culture activities. Twenty-six percent of respondents to an Urban Institute survey said that they attend arts and culture events only in community venues.⁵ Other research suggests that this kind of community-grounded participation is prevalent among those typically hardest to reach with arts and culture programs and services: immigrants, African Americans, Hispanics, and people with low levels of education and income.⁶ Initiatives seeking to grow vibrant, inclusive arts and culture programs must explicitly and actively engage community venues such as streets, parks, libraries, and schools.

Some effective ways to redevelop strong, well-resourced venues for inclusive, living culture include the following.

• Ensuring that artists and culture bearers have access to public space through open and fair permitting, licensing, and zoning processes and enforcement.

• Establishing an autonomous city commission (such as San Francisco's Entertainment Commission) responsible for decision making about the use of public space for arts and entertainment.

• Building community cultural resource centers for public arts, festivals, cultural heritage, and jazz education (along the lines of San Francisco's city-owned, community-based cultural centers).

• Developing opportunities, registries, and employment rosters for local artists who could be employed in public culture programs.

• Developing opportunities for local culture bearers to participate in public culture through programs in schools, libraries, parks, and public media.

• Developing networks and alliances of professionals in public culture such as park officials, festival producers, programmers in public libraries and schools, and public radio and television producers.

• Rebuilding strong public libraries with comprehensive public arts and culture programming in every neighborhood.

• Reestablishing arts programs in every school, particularly programs with strong connections to community-based traditions such as marching bands in New Orleans.

• Rebuilding public parks and establishing comprehensive, coordinated public arts and culture programming in city and neighborhood parks.

Maintain a balance in cultural economic development between branding and vitality, investment and equity.

Advocates for arts and culture have moved beyond economic impact studies and, through regional and state initiatives such as the New England Creative Economy and Louisiana: Where Culture Means Business, have begun to fully document arts and culture as an industry through indicators such as audience numbers, workforce size, revenues, and expenditures. They also map powerful connections with other industries such as education, high-tech fields, and tourism. But this emerging perspective has not focused on finding ways to help ensure that the benefits of the cultural economy and the responsibilities for preserving and safeguarding artistic and historic quality are equitably distributed. This undermines the long-term ability of the cultural sector to maintain the authenticity and quality of its cultural products. Not only can stronger ties between communities and economic developers, tourism professionals, and convention planners help ensure that cultural products will retain their value, but research suggests that these ties actually can aid the further integration of underserved communities into market participation and community development.⁷

Some effective ways to ensure that cultural economic development is equitable and contributes to sustaining a vital cultural community include the following.

• Undertaking a comprehensive cultural asset mapping process that can account for the cultural assets of every community, particularly focusing attention on assets that communities identify as most appropriate for inclusion in cultural economy marketing materials and programming.

• Funding and aggressively marketing community-directed, neighbor-hood-based cultural heritage tourism projects.

• Gathering neighborhood-level data on the economic and community development impacts of cultural economic development.

• Developing and providing neighborhood-based business training and technical assistance opportunities for small cultural enterprises.

• Developing business support and career development services for individual artists.

• Developing community-directed mechanisms for assessing, maintaining, and documenting artistic quality.

• Establishing cooperative studio space for artists in the visual, performing, and literary arts.

• Establishing neighborhood-based incubators for cultural enterprise.

• Establishing arts and cultural management training programs at local colleges and universities focused on key local cultural enterprises such as music, cuisine, and heritage tourism.

Finally: Cultural Longing

When my mother and father got married almost fifty years ago, they honeymooned in Europe for six weeks. Although he'd been in the army in France, this was a big deal for my dad, whose own father was a teamster in the Italian Market in South Philadelphia. The story of what happened when my dad went to tell his Bubby about the trip is famous in my family. I have an image of her standing in the kitchen with a spattered apron on and her bosom barely hidden behind a big bowl of mashed potatoes and schmaltz—because she's always described as vigorously demanding that everyone take more from a big bowl of mashed potatoes and schmaltz—looking askance at young versions of my mom and dad. She delivers her famous line: “What do you want to go there for? We just come from there.”

When I was in college and went off on trips to Europe, and when one of those trips was to Germany and Austria, my own grandmother, Theresa Marie Katherine Donato, with the passion of a convert, was appalled that I would even consider going to the place where such evil had been visited on our people, the Jews. Of course, it was impossible to visit there without going to a concentration camp and other memorials of the Holocaust. But what resonated with me about that trip was the food. I found pickles and pretzels, flaky pastries and fatty sausages, things to eat that told me not that this was where my people suffered and were humiliated and murdered but that this is the place where my people are from. And this is simply to say that there are many times to go home and many different ways.

Cultural longing is a powerful force and one that can be enormously productive. People in the diaspora learn to live with the pain and joy of it. I have an image of a future New Orleans where a grandmother will return to Treme or Central City or the Seventh Ward with her grandchildren from Houston or Los Angeles or New York City and the traces of her past will not be marked on the landscape, the ways of life that she knew will have disappeared from the public life in that place. Not that the “culture” will have died. That's not how culture works, of course. It will have been transformed. But will these transformations effectively develop, respect, and incorporate what came before? The work I have done in New Orleans over the past months tells me that a real danger exists that they will not do so. That is the kind of pain and waste that can and should be spared. Good cultural policy guided by sustained community engagement and advocacy can ensure that they are spared and that public resources are well used to aid New Orleans' citizens over the next years and decades in this process of rebuilding, reimaging, and reintegrating what was before with what comes after.

NOTES

1. Arjun Appadurai, “The Capacity to Aspire: Culture and the Terms of Recognition,” in Culture and Public Action, edited by V. Rao and M. Walton (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2004).

2. Randy Cohen and Margaret Wyszomirski, National and Local Profiles of Cultural Support (Washington, DC: Americans for the Arts, 2002).

3. Chris Walker, Arts and Non-arts Partnerships: Opportunities, Challenges, and Strategies (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2004).

4. Carole Rosenstein, Cultural Heritage Organizations: Nonprofits That Support Ethnic, Folk, Traditional, and Noncommercial Popular Culture (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2006).

5. Chris Walker with Kay Sherwood, Participation in Arts and Culture: The Importance of Community Venues (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2003).

6. Carole Rosenstein, Diversity and Participation in the Arts (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2005).

7. Chris Walker, Maria Jackson, and Carole Rosenstein, Culture and Commerce: Traditional Arts in Economic Development (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2003). Versions of this essay, or parts of it, have been presented at the State of Louisiana Cultural Economy Initiative Cultural Economy Summit III; the Urban Institute's First Tuesday Policy Convening: Rebuilding a Devastated Arts and Culture Community: How Can New Orleans Recover; the Louisiana Association of Nonprofit Organizations conference Translating Research into Action: Nonprofits and the Renaissance of New Orleans; the 2006 American Political Science Association short course Cultural Industries, Technologies, and Policies; and the 2006 Conference on Social Theory, Politics, and the Arts. Portions of this essay have been published in “New Orleans Arts and Culture,” Carol De Vita, ed., After Katrina: Shared Challenges for Rebuilding (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2007); and “Cultural Treasures of New Orleans,” Material Matters 55 (July–August 2007), 15–21.