In 2016, the City of New Orleans received $141 million from the Department of Housing & Urban Development’s National Disaster Resilience Competition Grant for the Gentilly Resilience District – a combination of investments and infrastructure projects in the Gentilly neighborhood designed to reduce flood risk, slow land subsidence, improve energy reliability, and encourage economic development.
As part of this project, local nonprofits Arts New Orleans and the Water Leaders Institute partnered to design a cohort-based professional development program to equip local artists and neighborhood residents with knowledge about critical civic issues to prepare them to co-create public art projects. The program was founded on two core beliefs: (1) public art can be a powerful medium to engage neighbors, build awareness, and motivate action in response to critical civic issues and (2) Multiple skill sets and ways of knowing are necessary to confront collective challenges: residents’ lived experiences, artists’ creative practices, and experts’ technical knowledge are needed and valued.
Join us for a panel discussion with organizers and participants in the Civic Arts Fellowship: Gentilly Resilience District to learn more about this innovative and integrative approach to building neighborhood resilience.
Urban Design/Education,
Civic Studio & Water Leaders Institute
Aron Chang is an urban designer and educator based in New Orleans / Bulbancha who focuses on community-based planning and design practices. He co-leads the Water Leaders Institute and is also a worker owner at Civic Studio, a cooperative focused on civic dialogue, placemaking, and multi-disciplinary projects. He is a co-founder and former board member of Ripple Effect, and a founding member of the Water Collaborative of Greater New Orleans. From 2011 to 2017, he worked as an urban designer, resilience planner, and project manager at Waggonner & Ball Architecture/Environment, where he was a design team lead and outreach coordinator for the Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan.
Deputy Director, Arts New Orleans
Dr. Sarah Woodward is a visual artist, researcher, educator, seasoned arts program manager, and mother of a spirited toddler. In her role as Deputy Director of Arts New Orleans, Dr. Woodward brings a passion for creative youth development and for the ways that arts and culture promote community wellbeing and resilience. Dr. Woodward earned her PhD in Urban Studies from Tulane University’s City, Culture and Community Program, where she focused on education policy and children’s arts programs. Through both her research and 15+ years of non-profit experience in New Orleans and the San Francisco Bay Area, she has enjoyed pursuing collaborative and interdisciplinary work that forges connections between the arts and education, justice, public health, entrepreneurial, and environmental sectors. As a native New Orleanian, she believes that creativity is our greatest resource.
President, New Orleans for
Lincoln Beach
Tricia “Blyss” Wallace is the president of New Orleans for Lincoln Beach, as well as a working musician. She is currently a Civic Arts Fellow with Arts New Orleans as part of a cohort of artists and community creating public art as part of the city’s $141 million Gentilly Resilience District, and she is also a graduate of the City of New Orleans’s Civic Leadership Academy. She advocates tirelessly for the inclusion of community voices in planning processes, and has brought together diverse stakeholders ranging from individuals to universities to environmental organizations to support community-led processes.
Artist
Ashley Teamer’s collages explore the relationships between the body, nature, space, and time. She uses painting, sculpture, photography, and sound to creatively intervene with indoor and outdoor architecture revealing the malleability of our built environment. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2014) and the Joan Mitchell Center (2018). Teamer received a BFA from Boston University in 2013 and an MFA from Yale University in 2022. Her work has been most recently exhibited as a series of billboards called Lady Bleu Devils in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Program Director, Planet Texas 2050
Dr. Heidi Schmalbach leads Planet Texas 2050, a research grand challenge at the University of Texas at Austin focused on fortifying Texas’ resilience in the face of climate change, population growth, and rapid urbanization. As program director, she supports research activities across PT2050’s network of interdisciplinary scholars while maintaining the strategic vision of the initiative and stewarding external relationships with partner organizations and collaborators. Previously, she worked in various roles at the intersection of arts and culture, community development, and urban planning, interests that are reflected in her own research and writing. Most recently she was the Executive Director of Arts New Orleans, a nonprofit that serves as the official arts agency for the City of New Orleans. Currently she serves as the Vice-Chair of the Austin Arts Commission. Heidi earned a PhD in the interdisciplinary City, Culture, and Community program at Tulane University and holds a master's degree in Community and Regional Planning from UT Austin.
