Making Art As A Community

In 2016, the City of New Orleans received $141 million from the Department of Housing & Urban Development’s National Disaster Resilience Competition Grant for the Gentilly Resilience District – a combination of investments and infrastructure projects in the Gentilly neighborhood designed to reduce flood risk, slow land subsidence, improve energy reliability, and encourage economic development.

As part of this project, local nonprofits Arts New Orleans and the Water Leaders Institute partnered to design a cohort-based professional development program to equip local artists and neighborhood residents with knowledge about critical civic issues to prepare them to co-create public art projects. The program was founded on two core beliefs: (1) public art can be a powerful medium to engage neighbors, build awareness, and motivate action in response to critical civic issues and (2) Multiple skill sets and ways of knowing are necessary to confront collective challenges: residents’ lived experiences, artists’ creative practices, and experts’ technical knowledge are needed and valued.

Join us for a panel discussion with organizers and participants in the Civic Arts Fellowship: Gentilly Resilience District to learn more about this innovative and integrative approach to building neighborhood resilience.