WtW: Background

Rather than creating something new, Weaving the Web sought to create a new context for leveraging existing community assets and efforts on behalf of the collaborators. The request that was submitted to the National Endowment for the Arts in September 2001 sought to create new synergies between these New Orleans organizations:

JUNEBUG PRODUCTIONS
(www.gnofn.org/~junebug/)
An African American theater company that produces and presents theater, dance, music and storytelling. The organization's goal is to represent, support and encourage African Americans to improve the quality of life available to themselves and other oppressed people. The Artistic Director is John O'Neal, a national touring theater artist for more than 30 years. From 1994 to 1998, the organization sponsored the Environmental Justice Project that brought together New Orleans artists with social justice groups. Many of the Weaving the Web ideas and relationships were built upon the work of this project.

DOG & PONY THEATRE
(www.dogandponytheatre.org)
A theatre company that is committed to the creation and presentation of theatre and video projects with support for music, dance and the visual arts. Their various programs, workshops and classes reflect a dynamic vision of the community's creative human potential. The contact people from Dog & Pony were Karl Lengel and John Grimsley.

ASHE CULTURAL ARTS CENTER
(www.ashecac.org)
Ashe Cultural Arts Center is an effort to combine the intentions of community development, economic development with the awesome creative forces of community, culture and art to revive and reclaim a historically significant corridor of New Orleans' Central City community. Ashe is a gathering place for emerging and established artists to present, create and collaborate in giving life to their art. The primary contact was Carol Bebelle.

CONTEMPORARY ARTS CENTER
(www.cacno.org)
A multi-disciplinary arts center, financially stable and professionally managed, which is dedicated to the presentation, production and promotion of the art of our time. It accomplishes these goals by organizing curated exhibitions, performances and programs; enlarging audiences; and encouraging collaboration among diverse artists, institutions, communities and supporters. Contact people included Jay Weigel, Larisa Gray and Marie Lamb.

NATIONAL PERFORMANCE NETWORK
(www.npnweb.org)
An alliance of performing arts organizations in 40 communities across the U.S. headquartered in New Orleans. The National Performance Network subsidizes three types of artistic activities: 1 and 2-week residencies by touring performing artists; co-commissioning of new touring works in dance, theater and music; and grassroots cultural projects that engage touring artists as teachers, creative collaborators and problem-solvers in the communities they travel to. As part of its activities, the National Performance Network also develops local pilot projects in New Orleans that can be adapted by member organizations in other communities.

As stated, the original intentions of the project were simple: "A group of cultural organizations will create, implement and evaluate a plan to collaboratively mobilize their shared constituencies with local civil rights groups. Project activities will provide cultural opportunities for underserved residents. Lessons and techniques learned from the project will be published on the NPN Website."

As implemented, the project's intentions were considerably more complicated, more difficult and more ambitious.

It is important to understand that the participating groups not only had their own histories of combining art, education and activism; they had extensive histories of collaboration, exchange and dialogue between them:

These relationships, along with others described throughout the report, are the threads from which the patterns of the "Weaving the Web" project were spun.