On Wednesday evening, we were in conversation with Lauren Turner Hines at an event hosted by the Gulf South Open School, generously moderated by Professor Amy Lesen. Bringing people together around a table and over food to think collectively about art, theatre, everyday performance, and resilience was an extraordinary treat. In part, this event allowed reflection on Performing New Orleans: Rethinking Resilience in Art and Everyday Life, but it also enabled conversations on the next steps for our research in and beyond the city.
The conversation ranged across artistic, cultural, everyday, and theatrical practices, and the ways these might help surface terms and models of resilience. We spent time reflecting on how stories operate — how they can include or exclude, shape perspectives, and differ from instructive ‘messages’. Rather than aiming for neat conclusions, we were interested in how the arts invite us to spend productive time with complexity: sitting with difficult experiences, questions, contradictions, and uncertainties in order to discover and imagine (im)possibilities for a changed and more equitable world. We also reflected on the potential of terms such as transformation and refamiliarisation to open up new discourses on resilience.
The conversation itself embodied these ideas. It was rich, generous, productively critical, and shaped by everybody around the table. We were grateful to hear from members of the Gulf South Open School and to be in dialogue with people whose thinking is grounded so deeply in this city. It was also a pleasure to connect with colleagues from Civic Studio, an organisation whose work demonstrates what thoughtful civic leadership looks like in New Orleans.
One small but powerful gesture captured the spirit of the evening: Civic Studio’s practice of bringing a box of pens, covering the community table with long sheets of paper, and inviting participants to write and draw as they thought through ideas from the event. These sheets of paper are collected and archived by Civic Studio, irrespective of their condition, where people have been eating throughout, as a record of the community table series.
It was amazing to be sat around a table in a discussion that ran much later than anticipated. Thank you to Gulf South Open School, Amy Lesen, Lauren and colleagues at André Cailloux, Brunel University of London and Southampton University for supporting the event, Civic Studio, and everyone who joined us for creating a space for good food and conversation.