An early jazz pianist’s shotgun home has become a post-Katrina edifice of hope as the Freret Neighborhood Center, which has helped neighbors rebuild, reconnect and develop their talents and resources. For the past year, the center has served as ground zero for community redevelopment, offering volunteer programs and services built on the can-do, Lincolnian philosophy – “of the people, by the people, for the people.” The center’s success has helped spark the development of a sister 7th Ward Neighborhood Center.
“Everything that happens at the centers is almost magical,” said Lauren Anderson, CEO for Neighborhood Housing Services of New Orleans. The community development corporation founded and developed the Freret Street and 7th Ward centers after the flood to offer area residents programs, services, and community activities as well as to serve as a clearing house for information and education.
“It is what happens when you give people a place and say, ‘Help fill it with ideas and energy,’” Anderson said .
What was once Thomas C. Zimmermann’s house bopping with ragtime riffs of hot ivories, will fill with the music of laughter, joy and festivities when the center celebrates its first year anniversary on Saturday, including a community potluck as well as art work and performances by neighborhood children participating in the center’s Youth Summer Enrichment program.
“After the storm, people needed a safe place to gather and reconnect,” Anderson said.
“What we have seen is that for all the horrible things that happened as a result of a storm, a positive thing is that residents are really banding together and working together.”
Beginning as a little more than a blank slate for neighborhood redevelopment, the center has created a vibrant neighborhood space defined and shaped by community input, discourse and decisions. Through outreach efforts, organizing activities and community collaboration, Kimberly VanWagner, center director, and Katherine Peak, community organizer, were able to help build a community center from the ground up. They received $100,000 in operational funding through NeighborWorks America to rehab the building. Since opening, the center has implemented or is planning nearly 40 programs, events and collaborative projects. More than 1,100 neighbors and residents have attended and participated in these programs staffed by between 60 and 70 neighborhood volunteers working on a regular or special projects’ basis.
Whether working on the Freret Street Festival, Our Lady of Lourdes Redevelopment, Neighbors United Neighborhood Watch Program and the Annual Night Out Against Crime, free family tennis, free community Yoga, basic skills computer classes, or one-on-one tutoring, volunteers have been at the heart of the center’s success. Volunteers created and staffed the community computer lab and developed the Craft Arts Studio for neighborhood youth. The resource center also acts as a clearing house for referrals to information and service organizations, again fueled by volunteer effort, dedication and talent.
“We use an asset-based model of community organizing,” VanWagner said. “We put a lot of effort going around door to door to meet with neighbors to try to figure out what is really going on in the neighborhood. All of the programs are designed by neighbors. The possibilities are really endless through neighbors’ connections.”
A showcase program is the Entrepreneur Art Club initiated by the center’s Resident Advisory Committee, responding to community desires to involve children in arts and crafts in the Freret Market. Sheril Miller, an artist and the center’s craft chairwoman, volunteered to help develop the program, using the medium of polymer clay. Through her course, she taught the techniques for working that medium as well as the marketing and sales skills necessary to sell the art produced. By vending their wares at such venues as the Freret Street Festival, the children have learned valuable life skills they can use in other areas of their lives. “Our streets are filled with great entrepreneurs,” Miller said. “The question is, How can we harness that entrepreneurial spirit? My thing was to show how art can be fun and, using the proper marketing skills, you can sell it and make money. The Entrepreneur Art Club has the ability to teach children that.”
“I volunteered because I felt it was a good place to make contact with children,” Miller said . “I find I am aligned a lot with the direction of the center. One of my neighborhood logos is ‘up, not out.’ I saw that the center’s goal was to incorporate and include people in upward directions.”
The center plans to continue offering area residents a smorgasbord of multifaceted programs, activities, events and services. That Freret Street shot-gun house promises to continue it’s legacy as a cultural center, not through the ragtime riffs of Zimmermann’s long-gone piano, but through the very alive, grass-roots instruments of neighborhood achievement and hope as embodied by the center’s young entrepreneurial artists.
“You can have fun and keep yourself out of trouble and make money,” said 11-year-old Murphy Catchings. “It gives you something to do if you’re bored. I drew some art and sold it at the Freret Street Festival. We made $600. We divided it up and made a party and donated it to the Freret Center.” |
