LakeviewS
The Lakeview core team of HOME, New Orleans? consisted of Lakeview born and/or based artists: visual artist Jan Gilbert of The VESTIGES Project as project director ; theater artists Kathy Randels of ArtSpot Productions; Andrew Larimer of The NOLA Project; and writer Jan Villarrubia. They have partnered with many individuals and organizations from the area and surrounding areas: Reverend and Mrs Dick Randels and Lakeview Baptist Church Congregation; the Contemporary Arts Center; Tulane students Marikit Bankston, Jessica Seedyke, Melissa Stein, and Xavier students Danisha McCall, Takako Uemura; dancer Maritza Mercado-Narcisse; and AARP group meeting in Lakeview; composers William Gilbert and Christopher Trapani, Beacons of Hope Graffeo Recovery Center, and more. The Lakeview group focused its efforts on preserving the oral history; energizing and fortifying existing neighborhood efforts; and taking steps to enliven the neighborhood and honor representatives of the area.
LakeviewS: A Sunset Bus Tour – The Lakeview team engaged in various activities with its neighborhood partners, including attending their meetings/services/events and conducting oral history/portrait sessions and story circles. This work culminated in a collaboratively created bus tour, which was sold out before it began. Buses stopped at five locations and commemorated Lakeview life—citizens, stories, and sites—through performance and installation pieces and concluded in a community meal on the scarred slab of a 200-year-old lakefront restaurant.
Here is a link to: TDR Lakeviews: A Bus Tour As a Vehicle for Regrowth in New Orleans
See HOME, New Orleans? BOOKLET which has full description of the multi-year activities and participants of LakeviewS and TDR Lakeviews: A Bus Tour As a Vehicle for Regrowth in New Orleans for a detailed discussion of that bus tour project.
“LakeviewS brought me into lost areas of my own neighborhood that I had not even wanted to face and it allowed me to make that step toward recovery in an environment that was celebratory. The aesthetic view LakeviewS gave me of my former neighborhood gave me a break from the overwhelming emotional depression that I was suffering. It allowed me a glimpse of a vision of personal recovery that up to that point I felt was completely out of my grasp. I was simply HOME again.” – Anne Liese Juge Fox