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Good very late evening, everyone:

As you likely gathered from the images I shared last night— and the photos below – it’s a joy and privilege to be in New Orleans with our grantee partners and our Board, even if it is thirty months after our original plan. Although it is impossible to fully grasp the richness and complexity of this city and our partners’ work here in such a short time, I’ll try to use my notes over the next few days to capture some of what we are learning about how our work plays out on the ground, the developing opportunities in the city, and some of the challenges our partners and Board members are placing in front of us.

We opened our visit with a conversation with a truly extraordinary New Orleans native, the critically acclaimed composer and award-winning trumpeter, Terence Blanchard – at his, and his wife Robin’s, home overlooking a canal and immediately adjacent to City Park, no less. It’s just not possible to do justice to his accomplishments in a brief note like this – the musicians with whom he’s worked, including Wayne Shorter and Art Blakley, on top of a stellar solo career . . . his decades-long collaboration with filmmaker Spike Lee . . . his unshakeable commitment to his native city and his fellow musicians through Katrina and COVID . . . his place in a tradition of jazz as a voice of protest and social awareness.

In our conversation after dinner, he raised points that I think nicely ground our Board meeting:

First, Detroit and New Orleans share many common bonds (a point raised in the Board memo). As Terence put it, both can be called, “A city of moments,” in which one can “have experiences you never have in any other place. It’s all about the people you engage with.” This resonated – it is an ethos that undergirds our investments in Detroit and New Orleans alike, whether in neighborhoods, cultural institutions, or support for culture bearers.

Second, the two cities share a culture of collaboration in the music scene – a feeling that “we [in New Orleans] don’t try to put on. Neither do you Detroiters.” I’ll strike this chord again tomorrow – the themes of partnership, relationship, and collaboration were everywhere in evidence throughout our site visits this morning and afternoon.

And third, there is an enormous, often under-appreciated, depth of talent in New Orleans – not just in music, but across all of civic life. The key is to acknowledge and fortify the role of community in both nurturing that talent and creating ways to ensure that it can be informed by, and influence, the larger world. Noting that “The purpose of your talent is not for you,” Terrance underscored that the work of all our teams is grounded in making sure that the talents of people in all the places we work are recognized, supported, and amplified.

I can’t think of a better way to have begun our time here.

Rip

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