Water and Community Resilience Walking Tour

On November 19 and November 23, 2019, WLI provided artists from around the city with an introduction to water management and community resilience. These workshops were in support of an Arts Council New Orleans process whereby artists develop proposals for public art installations for the St. Anthony neighborhood. The art must speak to the themes of “living with water” and resilience, and complement the infrastructural interventions that are now underway as part of the city’s Gentilly Resilience District.

 On January 18, 2020, WLI led a walking tour of the St. Anthony neighborhood alongside artists, neighborhood leaders, designers, and technical experts. The format of the walk lifted up the voices of community leaders alongside those of the artists and technical experts. We stopped at neighborhood parks, rain gardens, a drainage pump station, and the London Avenue Canal floodwall breach site. At each location, St. Anthony residents shared their stories, knowledge, and insights, helping the artists and technical experts see the neighborhood and its ecology in new ways - whether it was Peggy Rosefeldt pointing out the cypress tree that had survived the brackish floodwaters of 2005, or Pastor Lionel Davis and photographer CFreedom speaking to activities that had taken place in the neighborhood’s parks before Katrina displaced many longtime residents. 

The artists left, too, with a better sense of how each resident might play a role in addressing environmental issues. As one artist wrote, “Every constituent is on the continuum of awareness to stewardship. We are all potential stewards.”

Check out more photos and this video of the Water and Community Resilience Walking Tour.