Prior to Hurricane Katrina Louisiana was making news as the “New LA,” drawing film productions away from Hollywood to the Bayou State thanks to generous tax credits. The Louisiana Office of Film and Television Development is a branch of the state’s Department of Economic Development and their goals make it clear that Louisiana wants to attract filmmakers for economic reasons, not cultural or artistic ones.[3] In assisting the rebuilding of New Orleans, and particularly the creation of a thriving arts scene, a hybrid of the Dublin model and that of the Louisiana Department of Economic Development could be employed to ensure that the city which inspired Faulkner, Percy, Warren, Rice, and others, not to mention the plethora of musicians, can continue to be a center of literature and art. It must be admitted that writing and creating visual art may not provide the kind of economic development that film and television, with their enormous budgets and requirements of large numbers of skilled workers, do. However, there is the possibility of attracting tourists to “Literary New Orleans” or to galleries and museums. Perhaps as a way of easing its guilt over losing its writers to Britain and the Continent, Dublin has embraced its literary heritage, and visitors now flock to the city not only to visit statues and memorials but to drink in Davy Byrne’s Pub, and follow the footsteps of Joyce’s Leopold Bloom.  

In order to avoid the problem which beset Ireland’s tax exemption program subsidies for artists and writers may also be considered in the promotion of art and culture in New Orleans. While habitable dwellings are currently in short supply housing specifically set aside for artists and writers could be used to create a flourishing arts district, one that would draw not just artists, but galleries, museums, bookstores, coffee houses and other music venues, and of course, tourists. Housing designated for artists could be subsidized by the government in the Dublin model or through wealthy individuals or corporations in exchange for tax credits. Ideally, reduced rents and expenses would allow writers to write, painters to paint, sculptors to sculpt, and not wait tables, work retail, or bartend. A board similar to Ireland’s Arts Council would be necessary to determine the criteria for eligibility, and to act as a liaison between the artists, and landlords, corporate and individual sponsors, and local and state government.

New Orleans may also look west to Pomona, California, where a downtown property owner and urban sociologist named Ed Tessier created an artist-friendly enclave that has revitalized the city’s downtown area. Tessier questioned candidates for local elections and campaigned on behalf of those who advocated for his Arts Colony. He enlisted support from Latino and feminist groups, and as his political clout grew, so did the Arts Colony. As properties became available, Tessier purchased them and used the upper lofts to house artists and the storefronts as galleries and music venues. The project was so successful that Tessier now plans a similar Arts Colony for neighboring Ontario, California.[4] As artists and writers are priced out of the cities that have traditionally drawn them—New York, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, and Los Angeles—New Orleans could find itself at the center of a new cultural renaissance.

Prior to Hurricane Katrina Louisiana was making news as the “New LA,” drawing film productions away from Hollywood to the Bayou State thanks to generous tax credits. The Louisiana Office of Film and Television Development is a branch of the state’s Department of Economic Development and their goals make it clear that Louisiana wants to attract filmmakers for economic reasons, not cultural or artistic ones.[3] In assisting the rebuilding of New Orleans, and particularly the creation of a thriving arts scene, a hybrid of the Dublin model and that of the Louisiana Department of Economic Development could be employed to ensure that the city which inspired Faulkner, Percy, Warren, Rice, and others, not to mention the plethora of musicians, can continue to be a center of literature and art. It must be admitted that writing and creating visual art may not provide the kind of economic development that film and television, with their enormous budgets and requirements of large numbers of skilled workers, do. However, there is the possibility of attracting tourists to “Literary New Orleans” or to galleries and museums. Perhaps as a way of easing its guilt over losing its writers to Britain and the Continent, Dublin has embraced its literary heritage, and visitors now flock to the city not only to visit statues and memorials but to drink in Davy Byrne’s Pub, and follow the footsteps of Joyce’s Leopold Bloom.  

In order to avoid the problem which beset Ireland’s tax exemption program subsidies for artists and writers may also be considered in the promotion of art and culture in New Orleans. While habitable dwellings are currently in short supply housing specifically set aside for artists and writers could be used to create a flourishing arts district, one that would draw not just artists, but galleries, museums, bookstores, coffee houses and other music venues, and of course, tourists. Housing designated for artists could be subsidized by the government in the Dublin model or through wealthy individuals or corporations in exchange for tax credits. Ideally, reduced rents and expenses would allow writers to write, painters to paint, sculptors to sculpt, and not wait tables, work retail, or bartend. A board similar to Ireland’s Arts Council would be necessary to determine the criteria for eligibility, and to act as a liaison between the artists, and landlords, corporate and individual sponsors, and local and state government.

New Orleans may also look west to Pomona, California, where a downtown property owner and urban sociologist named Ed Tessier created an artist-friendly enclave that has revitalized the city’s downtown area. Tessier questioned candidates for local elections and campaigned on behalf of those who advocated for his Arts Colony. He enlisted support from Latino and feminist groups, and as his political clout grew, so did the Arts Colony. As properties became available, Tessier purchased them and used the upper lofts to house artists and the storefronts as galleries and music venues. The project was so successful that Tessier now plans a similar Arts Colony for neighboring Ontario, California.[4] As artists and writers are priced out of the cities that have traditionally drawn them—New York, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, and Los Angeles—New Orleans could find itself at the center of a new cultural renaissance.

Rebuilding Project: The creation of a conservatory in New Orleans that would provide opportunities for young musicians to learn and master their art, with the long-range goal of preserving New Orleans’ musical heritage while simultaneously opening the city’s musicians to outside influences.

Assumptions:

• The participation of New Orleans musicians, who have a long history of informal training, as both students and faculty.
• The cooperation of owners and managers of venues.
• The ability to raise the funds needed to make this venture possible, including both the cost of the conservatory and the scholarships and other financial assistance needed to make the school affordable for even the most economically challenged demographic in the city.

Constraints:

• Many New Orleans musicians lost their homes, instruments, and other gear and equipment after Katrina. Before committing to the projected conservatory as students or teachers, the most basic needs of the musicians must be met.
• With many of the city’s music venues closed or damaged places for students and faculty to meet are necessary. At least initially the conservatory will not be housed in permanent facilities but will meet at different local venues.

Feasible Alternatives:

• The Silverlake Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles presents a potential financial model that does not rely on government or corporate funding. A single wealthy individual or small group of wealthy individuals may be persuaded to offset initial start-up cost or endow scholarships.

• To avoid overhead expenses, the conservatory could begin by meeting in existing music venues, studios, churches, and even homes.
• An existing conservatory may be persuaded to subsidize the New Orleans conservatory.

Cost Analysis:

Non-recurring Costs:

• Assisting potential faculty in relocating to New Orleans
• Repair and replacement of instruments for instructors

Recurring Costs:

• Compensation of faculty
• Scholarships and support for students in need
• Compensation of owners of facilities where classes are held
• Travel and lodging expenses for visiting faculty
• Advertising and Recruitment

Tangible Benefits:

• Increased regular professional (paid teaching) jobs for musicians in New Orleans, which will allow them to return to the city and live there
• Expanded market of music students who will choose New Orleans as the place to study
• Replacement of musicians who have permanently relocated by younger musicians
• Increased tourism by helping refill New Orleans’ streets, bars, and restaurants with music
• Increased employment and revenue for New Orleans residents through ancillary services for the conservatory: administration, facilities management, housing, food, instrument purchase and repair.  Although modest at first, revenue will grow to keep pace with the expanding conservatory

Intangible Benefits:

• Preservation of cultural heritage
• Creation of a musical renaissance by cross-fertilization of styles
• Return of musicians who have left the city to work in places such as Chicago and New York

Comparison of Costs and Benefits:

• If a benefactor(s) is found to cover start-up costs, the conservatory should be financially feasible in its early years as a “virtual” conservatory using existing venues. Once a reputation is earned, the school will be expected to support itself through student tuition and traditional fundraising.
• Tangible benefits, including the return of tourist dollars to the city and work for musicians, are overshadowed by the intangible benefits of returning to New Orleans a culture and reputation as a city of musical progress and cross-fertilization of styles and genres.
• Low start-up costs and the intangible benefits are primary factors in our belief that a music conservatory is a feasible proposition for New Orleans.

Ethical Considerations:

            It is our belief that the reputation of New Orleans as a center for good music is more than a tourist magnet.  From the Mardi Gras Indians to jazz funerals, Louis Armstrong to Terence Blanchard, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage festival to street corner saxophonists and the emerging hip-hop scene, music is an intrinsic and fundamental element of the city’s cultural and ethnic identity.  To allow that identity to be lost or transformed beyond recognition through an unwillingness to protect it would be unconscionable.  The city’s current and future musicians should be given the tools and knowledge they need to continue and expand what is not only a primary facet of their own heritage but an internationally recognized American contribution to art.

            The New Orleans musicians who left the city after Katrina include players from across the spectrum of reputation and experience.  In developing mechanisms for musician support, employment, and input into the rebuilding process, it is important to seek diverse response and not limit the interaction to well-established, successful musicians.  This diversity will be key to meeting the goals of economic rebuilding through increased tourism, as well as preservation of New Orleans’ unique culture, without sacrificing one for the other.  Without careful consideration, the drive towards economic re-growth will outweigh the less tangible benefits of authentic cultural preservation and musical renaissance.

            New Orleans’ success as a tourist destination has been built, at least partly, on the skill and heart of the city’s musicians.  Even a successful musician typically works freelance, from gig to gig, making it difficult for them to access a system that often uses permanent employment as a prerequisite for benefits, such as loans, housing, and subsidy.  In order to serve the stated beneficiaries of support programs for New Orleans’ musicians, it will be necessary to reengineer the bureaucratic framework of the programs so they don’t preclude the people they are intended to help, or require them to change who they are and what they do in order to fit guidelines for support.

Rebuilding Project: The creation of a conservatory in New Orleans that would provide opportunities for young musicians to learn and master their art, with the long-range goal of preserving New Orleans’ musical heritage while simultaneously opening the city’s musicians to outside influences.

Assumptions:

• The participation of New Orleans musicians, who have a long history of informal training, as both students and faculty.
• The cooperation of owners and managers of venues.
• The ability to raise the funds needed to make this venture possible, including both the cost of the conservatory and the scholarships and other financial assistance needed to make the school affordable for even the most economically challenged demographic in the city.

Constraints:

• Many New Orleans musicians lost their homes, instruments, and other gear and equipment after Katrina. Before committing to the projected conservatory as students or teachers, the most basic needs of the musicians must be met.
• With many of the city’s music venues closed or damaged places for students and faculty to meet are necessary. At least initially the conservatory will not be housed in permanent facilities but will meet at different local venues.

Feasible Alternatives:

• The Silverlake Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles presents a potential financial model that does not rely on government or corporate funding. A single wealthy individual or small group of wealthy individuals may be persuaded to offset initial start-up cost or endow scholarships.

• To avoid overhead expenses, the conservatory could begin by meeting in existing music venues, studios, churches, and even homes.
• An existing conservatory may be persuaded to subsidize the New Orleans conservatory.

Cost Analysis:

Non-recurring Costs:

• Assisting potential faculty in relocating to New Orleans
• Repair and replacement of instruments for instructors

Recurring Costs:

• Compensation of faculty
• Scholarships and support for students in need
• Compensation of owners of facilities where classes are held
• Travel and lodging expenses for visiting faculty
• Advertising and Recruitment

Tangible Benefits:

• Increased regular professional (paid teaching) jobs for musicians in New Orleans, which will allow them to return to the city and live there
• Expanded market of music students who will choose New Orleans as the place to study
• Replacement of musicians who have permanently relocated by younger musicians
• Increased tourism by helping refill New Orleans’ streets, bars, and restaurants with music
• Increased employment and revenue for New Orleans residents through ancillary services for the conservatory: administration, facilities management, housing, food, instrument purchase and repair.  Although modest at first, revenue will grow to keep pace with the expanding conservatory

Intangible Benefits:

• Preservation of cultural heritage
• Creation of a musical renaissance by cross-fertilization of styles
• Return of musicians who have left the city to work in places such as Chicago and New York

Comparison of Costs and Benefits:

• If a benefactor(s) is found to cover start-up costs, the conservatory should be financially feasible in its early years as a “virtual” conservatory using existing venues. Once a reputation is earned, the school will be expected to support itself through student tuition and traditional fundraising.
• Tangible benefits, including the return of tourist dollars to the city and work for musicians, are overshadowed by the intangible benefits of returning to New Orleans a culture and reputation as a city of musical progress and cross-fertilization of styles and genres.
• Low start-up costs and the intangible benefits are primary factors in our belief that a music conservatory is a feasible proposition for New Orleans.

Ethical Considerations:

            It is our belief that the reputation of New Orleans as a center for good music is more than a tourist magnet.  From the Mardi Gras Indians to jazz funerals, Louis Armstrong to Terence Blanchard, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage festival to street corner saxophonists and the emerging hip-hop scene, music is an intrinsic and fundamental element of the city’s cultural and ethnic identity.  To allow that identity to be lost or transformed beyond recognition through an unwillingness to protect it would be unconscionable.  The city’s current and future musicians should be given the tools and knowledge they need to continue and expand what is not only a primary facet of their own heritage but an internationally recognized American contribution to art.

            The New Orleans musicians who left the city after Katrina include players from across the spectrum of reputation and experience.  In developing mechanisms for musician support, employment, and input into the rebuilding process, it is important to seek diverse response and not limit the interaction to well-established, successful musicians.  This diversity will be key to meeting the goals of economic rebuilding through increased tourism, as well as preservation of New Orleans’ unique culture, without sacrificing one for the other.  Without careful consideration, the drive towards economic re-growth will outweigh the less tangible benefits of authentic cultural preservation and musical renaissance.

            New Orleans’ success as a tourist destination has been built, at least partly, on the skill and heart of the city’s musicians.  Even a successful musician typically works freelance, from gig to gig, making it difficult for them to access a system that often uses permanent employment as a prerequisite for benefits, such as loans, housing, and subsidy.  In order to serve the stated beneficiaries of support programs for New Orleans’ musicians, it will be necessary to reengineer the bureaucratic framework of the programs so they don’t preclude the people they are intended to help, or require them to change who they are and what they do in order to fit guidelines for support.

Brandon

A recent Time.com article on the future of New Orleans jazz began with a lament over the city’s current silence.[1] The people who filled the city’s bars, clubs, streets, and performance halls with jazz fared no better than the average citizen. Many lost everything; countless others fled the city and have still not returned. Music for Tomorrow, an organization committed to “putting Jazz back in New Orleans” estimated only ten percent of the music diaspora has returned.[2] Those who return need help finding places to live and places to play. After Katrina a number of organizations have been founded for the sole purpose of assisting musicians. The sad television footage of Fats Domino climbing into a boat from his flooded house reminds us that many lost their homes. Harry Connick Jr. and Branford Marsalis are already planning a Musician’s Village in the Upper Ninth Ward that will consist of homes for musician’s who lost theirs.[3] But many also lost instruments and equipment, the tools that will allow them to bring music back to the rebuilding city. Music Rising is one organization that seeks to get instruments back into the hands of New Orleans musicians. Since its beginning in early 2006, the organization has replaced instruments for 1100 professional musicians and now plans to expand its program to help schools, churches and community groups replace destroyed gear and equipment.[4]

Providing accurate coverage of the New Orleans rebuilding process is a daunting task for even the most talented and principled media professionals. Competing issues and storylines run the gamut from racial and political representation to economic and social justice to urban and environmental sustainability issues. Untangling that web of agendas and concerns, which have ensnared so many New Orleans rebuilding efforts thus far, is, indeed, essential to ensuring that the Crescent City is rebuilt in the most equitable and thoughtful fashion possible. And that’s where the Fourth Estate—a new 21^st century breed of multimedia professionals—is morally obligated to give voices to the voiceless while fishing Red Herrings and obvious conflicts of interest out of the diverse gumbo of powerful stakeholders and powerless citizens seeking to retool and restore their New Orleans.

 The Un-representational Rub 

There is widespread agreement that New Orleans should be rebuilt in a manner that honors its cultural roots, which drive deep into the American pantheon of art and ideas. And who should be responsible for making the many decisions to direct such a process? The answer may, at first blush, seem obvious. An individual unfamiliar with the well documented political and social upheavals occurring in the wake of Hurricane Katrina could likely opine that the city’s reconstruction should adhere to a process that addresses the needs of its diverse citizenry—approximately 460,000 residents before the levees failed. But such an assertion belies the reality that one year after Katrina, only half of New Orleans’ residents have returned.[1] Moreover, some of the city’s below-sea-level communities may never be rebuilt due to possible safety concerns and inadequate funding and government assistance, which some press reports and civil liberties groups claim to be racially motivated.

Further compounding matters is that many of New Orleans’ approximately 230,000 displaced residents—a sizeable amount of them African Americans who have called the Big Easy home for generations—can’t go home. Members of this black Diaspora scattered throughout the country face the grim prospect of losing all representation over decisions related to the mending of their beloved bayou city. Roughly one year after Katrina, the New Orleans population is, by almost all accounts, whiter than it was prior to the storm. (Given the city’s new demographics, some would go so far as to call the Big Easy an emerging republican stronghold.) African American neighborhoods like Gentilly and the Lower Ninth Ward are unpopulated apparitions of their pre-hurricane occupancy levels, making those communities prime targets for demolition via eminent domain to redevelop into park space.[2] The Urban Land Institute, in concert with other urban planners and developers, contends low-lying sections of New Orleans, such as the Lower Ninth Ward, are unfit for redevelopment given their likelihood for future flooding. Such views, however, fail to address the cultural and racial drain on the New Orleans legacy through bulldozing communities that have anchored the city’s African American backbone for decades. Just ask Fats Domino. He’s proudly called the Lower Ninth Ward home for years.

Racial concerns are, without question, confusing and complicating the already monolithic challenge of rebuilding New Orleans. If urban planners, engineers and scientists were assigned the challenge of rebuilding the city without concern for its rich racial and cultural legacies, they would simply embark on a process of building and fortifying levees (capable of withstanding category five or greater storms) and then redesigning the bayou metropolis according to an environmental logic that would only permit new construction and restoration of existing structures on sites that would not be susceptible to chronic flooding in the event of a future hurricane. But any attempts to extract the cultural and racial elements from the rebuilding process are at best Pollyannaish and at worst racist. Simply put, New Orleans without its rich multicultural fabric would no longer resemble the city people round the world have loved for centuries.

 Connecting the Disparate Dots Through Katrina’s Lessons 

Faced with the dire conditions created by Hurricane Katrina, media professionals were forced to innovate and adapt in unforeseen ways. The Times-Picayune, a local daily newspaper published since 1837, redefined itself when it transmitted online news coverage as a proxy for its print coverage that was impossible to produce in the days following Katrina’s destruction.[3] The Times-Picayune website www.nola.com contained forums where people who were dispersed to different parts of the country could post messages in hopes of communicating with family, neighbors, and friends. The website also provided forums for missing persons, an “I’m OK” forum, pet rescue and other online tools related to the hurricane recovery. The website was undoubtedly very helpful to individuals recovering from the storm—providing a point of reference in a time when most forms of communication were unavailable. It’s important to note that pages on NOLA.com that averaged 80,000 page hits a day before the storm, averaged 30 million hits a day after Katrina. It became the local newspaper for the world as people round the world felt themselves drawn into a community through images of extraordinary suffering. 

Indeed, out of the chaos of the storm surfaced two essential journalistic and communications tools that could now serve as vital elements in the New Orleans rebuilding process: local media and the Internet. Old and new knitted together a web of information to link people even as the storm severed families and communities. That same web of technology, filtered through local and national connections, also holds the potential of providing the infrastructure needed to ensure that all constituent groups—who call New Orleans home regardless of where they live now—can weigh in on how their city is rebuilt.

Though he was referring to the Times-Picayune, for which he serves as editor, Jim Amoss offered up a comment that applies to all media: “[… it] now has unusual dual roles; to cover the news about the devastation and reconstruction, yes, but also to heal the cities soul and advocate on its behalf”[4].

The potential for small scale, local interaction through the largest communications tool ever available was foregrounded during Katrina. Rumors became stories and were challenged in the blogosphere, leading to speedy, public self-assessment and correction by writers in all media.[5]  There was no “fixed” truth of the situation; readers were forced to continually compare stories and evaluate their relative accuracy and the agendas that fueled them. Out of this dizzying cycle of reporting and revision it became clear that the Internet is the only tool capable of communicating the complexity of a city struggling to re-form on this scale. Mayor Nagin announced in November 2005 that his office would deliver city-wide free wi-fi to residents and city agencies within a year. Despite protests from the local broadband provider, that plan is still in effect. In contradiction of state law, the city was able to offer free wi-fi to some areas immediately after the storm, under the terms of the state of emergency in effect since Katrina, but will have to resolve the legal issues in order to continue to provide free Wi-Fi access to the city. Online continuation of classes, reconnection of lost family members and friends, public safety announcements, news reporting, information about access to public services, as well as emotional and spiritual comfort are among the uses of the internet as New Orleans moves towards recovery, not just to the level of August 28, 2005, but to tackle longer-term issues that surfaced into national consciousness after the hurricane.

Free wi-fi can create a digital infrastructure to help citizens, businesses, schools, hospitals, and community organizations rebuild; it can also address the city’s problems of education, poverty, housing, and inequality that existed long before Katrina tore away some of the cultural and marketing myths that covered those sores.  No one person or agency can or should be responsible for managing the digital infrastructure.  It must not be stagnated by bureaucracy or commodified out of the reach for some residents.  There is heated discussion of whether the city’s wi-fi should be run by either the mayor’s office or by the local broadband provider.  The answer lies between those polar positions; if New Orleans is to reinvent itself through a digital support system, all stakeholders in the city must be vested in the new infrastructure.  A coalition of leaders drawn from neighborhood organizations, business, local, state, and federal government, health, education, communications, and the media will need to form a multivalent structure to develop and administer the wi-fi network and address the attendant questions of hardware resources, education and training, and integration of local television and radio media into the system to reach demographic sectors cut off from the internet by factors such as preference, age or physical ability.

For many of the poorest citizens, a web-enabled computer is a luxury item they may not be able to afford. Others may have lost computers in the storm, and many, particularly elderly, residents may have no prior knowledge of computers or the internet. For these residents, free wi-fi offers little access to public debates on rebuilding. There are, however, many steps that can be taken to insure the widest possible access to information and debate.

Corporate sponsorship could be called upon to either provide individual citizens with PCs or web-enabled devices or to establish neighborhood computer banks in businesses, schools, churches, or other designated community centers. Such a move would not be unprecedented. In the days immediately after Katrina, AMD provided personal internet communicators to evacuees in Texas shelters.[6] Volunteers could be enlisted to educate anyone unfamiliar with computers and the web. The benefit may even extend well beyond the immediate rebuilding period if established computer banks, along with city’s free wi-fi, remained in communities to assist returning residents in finding jobs, filing insurance claims, locating former neighbors, and even in acquiring or extending an education.

Similar steps could be taken to form satellite communities in places with large concentrations of Katrina evacuees, such as Houston, Atlanta, and Los Angeles. The same technology that has allowed Iraqi and Mexican citizens living in the United States to participate in their national elections could give displaced Katrina victims a voice in decisions concerning the rebuilding of New Orleans. [7]

Katrina showed us a model, an understanding of the beginnings of a system with which New Orleanians can communicate with each other and with the outside world, to:

• Rebuild families and communities
• Spur economic recovery
• Allow a more inclusive, more complex history to be told
• Simplify and reduce the cost of government, and
• Help overcome the digital divide