CREATIVITY AND ACTIVISM IN THE SEVENTH WARD: COLLABORATIVE POSTER AND BOOK-MAKING PROJECT

BACKGROUND

 The Seventh Ward Speaks oral history project began as a joint venture of the Neighborhood Story Project and the Porch Seventh Ward Cultural Organization.  
The project began as a series of posters to engage our neighbors in a dialogue about cultural creativity and community activism. Since the storm, the national media attention around the experiences of New Orleanians has mostly ignored the Seventh Ward. We are proud of the accomplishments of our community and want to highlight them. We also want to talk about race, class, and culture within the Seventh Ward, to develop relationships between people from different backgrounds, and help to create a diverse social and cultural space.

OUR METHOD

 People connected to the neighborhood participate in an interview, and then depending on their interest, conduct one of their own. The idea is to create a conversation within the neighborhood as well as showcase the neighborhood to people outside the community who may not know much about our area.  

OUR GOALS

As we turn the interviews into a book for popular distribution, we are working to create a space for different voices and stories to speak to each other showing the diversity of perspectives. We hope to continue to have these conversations over the next year as we build on the work others have done on the culture and history of New Orleans.