Posts with tag Culture

It looks like the line of dirt in a bathtub. At many of the buildings and facades of houses in New Orleans you can still, three years after the hurricane Katrina, see how high the water was under the flood. Sprayed messages from the rescue teams are still left. Cryptic short messages you need help to understand. ”NE” means ”No Entry”; the rescue team has not been in the building. ”2DB” means ”two dead bodies found”.

You don’t have to go far from the tourist areas to see the devastation. Whole areas of the city are empty. Only half of New Orleans inhabitants of half a million people have returned. Around two hundred thousands have not.

New Orleans is hosting the World Cultural Economic Forum. Participants from around seventy nations have notified their presence and cultural ministers crowd the podium together with ambassadors. The Region of Kalmar and the Hultsfred Festival is representing Sweden.

The event has strong political support both in New Orleans and the state of Louisiana. It’s well understood why. If there is any truth in all these reports of the economic impact of culture, the growth potential and its role as a force for development, then this should show in New Orleans. The city was known for its pulsating cultural life. Here, if anywhere, it should be possible to attract well-off tourists.

In the book “Why New Orleans Matters”, a declaration of love to New Orleans, a city he in despair saw being washed away, Tom Piazza underlines how neatly the New Orleans culture was knitted together. It was built on a weave of tight fabric of music and food, of people and meeting places. It was a cultural field of carnival qualities.

Now this fabric has been torn apart. Houses can be repaired. But people? One documentary film producer tells me what hit him the most when he interviewed survivors of Katrina. At the question of what she missed the most, an elderly woman replied: ”my neighbours”.

Here the rhetoric of the conference is put on an edge. The cultural field has a growth potential, absolutely. But if neighbours are not returning? New Orleans is famous all over the world for the creative energy that was catalysed just in the quarters and housing areas that now are empty. Can you build a city without inhabitants? Can a cultural life re-establish?

The text is written by David Karlsson, President of the Board of Nätverkstan, and was published in Dagens Nyheter on November 12 2008. World Cultural Economic Forum was in New Orleans on October 30 to November 1 2008. For the original Swedish text, download here: dnneworleans.pdf.