April, 2018- A Month in Review
by: Brandon Curran: NOHC Marketing and Events Manager
It’s all happening, Y ’all! The New Orleans Healing Center is officially a 501c3 nonprofit! After an extensive amount of work and support of our staff, Board Members and founders, The New Orleans Healing Center has officially been approved nonprofit status. We are excited to utilize this new status to grow to new heights and serve the community like never before! Check out some of our main highlights for the month of April below.
Public and Community Health
The New Orleans Healing Center was buzzing with excitement during New Orleans Navy Week. We collaborated with Groundworks New Orleans and Network Volunteers to coordinate 100 Navy and Marine volunteers to complete various projects in and around The New Orleans Healing Center. With their support, we repainted and revamped various community classrooms within The New Orleans Healing Center to allow us to continue to offer affordable, safe and well-upkept community meeting spaces to the public. Additionally, we repainted areas of The Second Story Gallery space to keep costs for our Art Co-operative members low to lessen the financial barriers of joining an art gallery. GroundWorks New Orleans utilized to volunteers to create rain barrels that their local ‘Green Team’ can set up in the community to teach them marketable employment skills and lessen rain runoff in the local community. Finally, we extended our volunteer efforts outside of The Healing Center by coordinating a St. Roch Community Cleanup to unclog storm drains to prevent possible flooding. We were extremely grateful for this opportunity and to the continued service of the Navy and Marines.
We additionally were delighted to continue to support The New Orleans Food Co-operative in their efforts to “go back to their roots” and increase their partnerships with local farmers. These efforts included creating ‘Local Produce Boxes’ to affordably and conveniently sell local produce to the surrounding community for an affordable price. Check out New Orleans Food Co-operative General Manager John Calhoun’s honest and open dialog about the status of the store and its plans moving forward HERE.
Finally, we were thrilled to watch AHA! The Affordable Healing Arts continue to grow to new heights by welcoming two new healing arts practitioners to their space. These practitioners include:
- Autumn Kenny | Massage Therapist
- Style of massage has been described as subtle, yet profound, seamlessly blending a variety of eastern and western techniques to provide “deep tissue” results, without the discomfort some clients associate with deep tissue massage.
- Samantha Smith | Massage Therapist
- Massage technique is specifically designed to help create the awareness to alleviate and neurologically re-educate postural distortions in the body that can ultimately cause pain.
Local Arts and Culture
The New Orleans Healing Center was thrilled to welcome back The New Orleans Poetry Festival to our spaces. The festival offered three days of celebrating poetry, music, writing, performance, small press, bookmaking and community in New Orleans. The mission of the New Orleans Poetry Festival and Small Press Fair is to create a space for an inclusive and diverse group of writers to collaborate, share and influence each other while also being immersed in the distinct literary culture of New Orleans. Activities included: poetry readings, workshops and a free Small Press Fair in NOHC Grand Hall.
Additionally, The New Orleans Healing Center was proud to support Café Istanbul and some of their most culturally important and inclusive shows during the month of April. They coordinated with Jazzfest to showcase satellite shows that included performers such as Axial Tilt, Joan Osborne and The Dirty Dozen Brass Band. Additionally, they worked with Moe Joe (from The Moe Joe Gallery) to host ‘Farewell to the Flesh’ by Ayanna Bassiouni that brought together live music, dance, poetry and visual arts together to inspire the community to experience a live performance like the community has never seen before. We are proud to continue to see the diverse and culturally-important acts and performers that Café Istanbul brings into our space.
Diversity and Inclusion
As part of our ongoing Daring Discussion Potluck and Conversation series, we brought community members out to discuss a climate change and science denial in our current political state. Being situated in New Orleans, these topics especially hit close to home. We additionally connected this topic to see how it intersects with other identities discussed in past conversations including sexism, race and class.
Additionally, The Healing Center is proud to continue to support NOAGE- New Orleans Advocates for GLBT Elders by offering an affordable and safe meeting space for their monthly coffee talk series to build community and address concerns specific to New Orleans’ LGBT community over the age of forty. Specifically, their ‘Coffee Talk’ in April focused on mindfulness and selfcare.
Finally, The New Orleans Healing Center was thrilled to finalize an agreement for a biweekly community radio show with A Community Voice. Entitled, ‘The St. Claude Connection’, this radio program will allow local voices, groups and businesses a chance to showcase their work in the St. Roch/St. Claude communities on a biweekly basis. We are excited to broaden our voice outside of our walls and become the hub for all things happening on St. Claude and its surrounding communities.
