X is Community
Nine years ago, with the encouragement of a few friends, I launched the non-profit that would become The Common Acre. Our original charter was much more humanities-based (rather than ecology-based), with inquiries such as “What is Community?” Our first production was “Bilocal,” in which Seattle invited New Orleans over for dinner.
Indeed… you’d enter Town Hall and while Les Chats Creoles played, you could sample bites from Tom Douglas, Matt Dillon, Renée Erickson, Where Ya At Matt Lewis, and more. Then after the pre-funk, head upstairs to a reading/ concert/ short film screening with luminaries from both cities. And we did this over two nights.
It was to be the first of a series of artist exchanges between cities, with a planned book (the title of this post) from Chin Music Press and all kinds of other fun stuff. For better or worse, the Great Recession kept receding, and unless you ran some kind of emergency service, funding evaporated. In short order, my board advised me to focus (good advice!), so we chose to run with our emerging “Art+Agriculture” series, rebranded the organization as The Common Acre, and launched other adventures.
At the time, however, the event seemed vital, and was a thrill to produce, not least because I got to work with my closest and amazingly talented friends. And last week, when I got to tour the brand-new Town Hall Seattle, Bilocal came to mind (as we produced it at Town Hall), and I got all the feels.
Here’s a little slide show I assembled as part of the event promo. The central question is still relevant, now more than ever eh?
The non-profit Essential Arts presents "Bilocal," an arts exchange between Seattle and New Orleans that asks "What is Community?" This video depicts images from both cities, while posing some critical questions.
Producer note, 2019: The excellent music bed here is “La Berçeuse Créole” by Zachary Richard (from Migration, 1978). In what would prove to be an omen for the project, Richard—who was to be our New Orleans headliner—had a medical emergency just a few weeks before the gig. Coco Robicheaux stepped in as an alternate, and proved to be a gas to hang out with, as well as a hoodoo presence who lent so much to the project. Richard healed up and continues to tour today, while Robicheaux passed away only one year after bilocal. He was celebrated throughout NOLA with second line marches some 20,000 strong.