From June 21 to 23, 2023, the National Council on the Arts (NCA), the NEA’s advisory body, gathered in New Orleans, Louisiana, for its summer meeting, only the third time the NCA has convened outside of Washington, DC in the last 30 years. In 2018, the NCA visited Charleston, West Virginia, and in 2019 Detroit, Michigan. These are important joint learning opportunities for all involved to see and experience projects supported by the NEA and its partners and also showcase the deep culture of various regions and diverse arts practices at work across our nation that help us all reach our full potential.

With its rich and diverse cultural traditions, New Orleans offered the opportunity to explore many of the concepts NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson has been advancing at the NEA. “Without question, New Orleans and Louisiana have helped to shape American culture in so many ways,” said Chair Jackson at a public meeting on June 23 at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts. “It is a place that has had its share of adversity, and every time the arts have played an important role in its comeback.” 

On Wednesday, June 21, the NCA and NEA staff met with Chief Shaka Zulu, New Orleans Black Masking craftsman, stilt dancer, and musician who was honored by the NEA as a National Heritage Fellow in 2022. At Angela King Gallery, Zulu discussed the history of this cultural tradition as well as its current role in New Orleans neighborhoods and how he gets his inspiration for his suits, which take a year to create.
(Learn more about Shaka Zulu in this tribute video.)

The following day, the group visited Ashé Cultural Arts Center, meeting with staff and community health workers about their program entitled I Deserve It!, which centers trusted community members, including artists and culture bearers, as community health workers. Local musicians and artists shared how art is interwoven into their health-and-wellness-focused activities and how they deliver health messaging, resources, and education to residents of neighborhoods with poor health outcomes.

 

Next the NCA and NEA visited the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, which is the centerpiece of Musicians’ Village, a community in the upper 9th Ward created after Hurricane Katrina as a home for “both the artists who have defined the city's culture and the sounds that have helped to shape the musical vernacular of the world.” The center provides critical access and opportunity for youth ages 8 through 18 to develop musically, academically, and socially and also works to celebrate, employ, and assist adult musicians in the Ninth Ward and other communities in New Orleans. The group toured the center which was full of summer campers taking part in music and dance lessons and visited their recording studio, another training opportunity for students. Several of the summer campers gave performances. This was followed by a discussion with the center’s leadership and Michael Harris, musician and Musicians’ Village resident, to learn about the center’s work as a pillar organization, a gathering place for the community providing resources and connection.

 

Also on Thursday, NCA and NEA staff met with Arts New Orleans staff and artists who took part in the creation of youth-led murals and other public art planned in East New Orleans, supported through an NEA Our Town grant. Youth artist Aliyah Pflueger, mural artist Wendo Brunoir, and sculpture artist Martin Payton spoke about the meaning of their art work and process for creating it.

On Friday, council members took part in person and online in a public meeting that highlighted Louisiana artists and arts organizations. Susannah Johannsen, executive director of the Louisiana Division of the Arts, the NEA’s state partner, welcomed the council: 

“Your presence here highlights the importance arts and culture have on our everyday lives. Yesterday you saw a small snippet of what Louisiana has to offer in the way of amazing artists, students, and deep-rooted culture that is only found in Louisiana. This small sample can be expanded exponentially around the state and includes our French cultures found in the Acadiana area, our bayou cultures found in the really deep southern portions of Louisiana, and our northern portion of the state with its rich delta blues traditions…. In Louisiana arts culture and heritage is our way of life.”

In a video message, Congressman Troy A. Carter, Sr. said, “New Orleans is a jewel of art and culture, not just in the United States but in the world. Art is a part of Louisianan’s everyday lives. It's found in the jazz and blues and music floating through our streets. It's found in our ornate costumes and floats during Mardi Gras. Even in our architecture and our street titles tell a story about Louisiana history and culture. This is a special city, one that has served as an inspiration for some of the greatest artists of our time.”

To highlight the importance of the NEA’s collaborations with regional, state, and local arts agencies to reach more communities, Joycelyn Reynolds, president and CEO of Arts New Orleans spoke about their organization’s work to secure national and city dollars for the New Orleans arts community, as they did as the recipient of an NEA American Rescue Plan Grant to Local Arts Agencies for Subgranting, as well as their many programs that impact artists and the larger community. One of their grantees, Dancing Grounds (also an NEA grantee) shared a video highlighting their students’ work as part of their Dance for Social Change program, and Reynolds presented on the arts council’s LUNA Fête, an annual festival of art, light, and technology, that has also received NEA support. 

Chair Jackson has often shared her belief that, at their most powerful, the arts don’t exist in a bubble and, in fact, can even help strengthen work in other fields, such as education, health, community development, and the environment. On this theme, Monique Verdin (Houma) shared her work at the intersection of culture, environment, and climate in southeast Louisiana. Verdin presented on a number of projects, including the Land Memory Bank and Invisible Rivers, described as part performance, part exhibition, part educational experience with community using a Float Lab. In FY 2023, the NEA approved a grant to the Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans to support a series of multidisciplinary presentations exploring the intersection of art and environmental issues affecting the Gulf Coast region, including Float Lab, a 26-foot long floating laboratory and performance space created with Verdin's family of Indigenous Houma Nation boat builders, that will host arts activities for the community along the Gulf Coast.

The meeting concluded with a performance and discussion exploring the importance of jazz and Cajun music to Louisiana’s culture with two musicians honored by the NEA—2022 NEA Jazz Master Donald Harrison, Jr. and 2005 NEA National Heritage Fellow Michael Doucet. Moderating the conversation was Nick Spitzer, who is being honored this year by the NEA as the Bess Lomax Hawes National Heritage Fellowship recipient, presented in recognition of an individual who has made a significant contribution to the preservation and awareness of cultural heritage.

Harrison spoke about the importance of Congo Square in New Orleans to the development of jazz: 

“We have a great place here in New Orleans that I call a root contributor to the music of the Americas and that place is Congo Square…..This is a place where Africans were allowed to play and to participate in their homeland culture so that had a tremendous effect on them and the people who saw them and also the music that was produced here. I can hear the exact things that came from Africa that were placed in into early jazz music…. Some of the jazz musicians did enunciate upon that and the old-timers I was around in the culture, they enunciated that to me. So I think it's important that we put that in the universe because it's the balance of honoring everybody and the importance of everyone.”

Doucet spoke about the impact of music on him personally and communally and how the songs he learned growing up in southwest Louisiana remain in the music he creates today: “If I hear somebody play song and I can't remember the whole song, I’ll remember a riff and then that's the creative process right there. Because you still hold that little tie or that little thread of who you were and where you came from and what really means something.”

“Meeting the artists and arts organizations and arts administrators working here in New Orleans and all over the state, seeing some of the projects at work to preserve culture and help heal the community from various forces, shows how this place epitomizes the idea of artful lives,” said Chair Jackson. “We are grateful to all who welcomed us here, who were generous with their time and wisdom in sharing reflections on their arts practice, its role in community and their thoughts about the future of the arts sector. Thank you!”