Community Spotlight: MACCNO
This summer, we awarded a series of Community Engagement Grants to 20 outstanding New Orleans leaders, creatives, activists, musicians and non-profit organizations. Stay tuned on Salon726.com as we tell their stories with the help of local writers and photographers.
Spotlight by Tyree C. Worthy
The Music and Culture Coalition of New Orleans, or MaCCNO, is a non-profit organization that has worked at the intersection of culture, social justice and policy since 2012. They work with and for New Orleans musicians and culture bearers in ways that create and maintain space for nurturing the arts.
“We sit where culture intersects with policy,” said MaCCNO’s Research and Programs Coordinator Hannah Kreiger-Benson. “We deal with all the different ways and all the different facets of culture [that] can bump up against or intersect with law enforcement or policy or city government structures.”
The average person doesn’t fathom how much law and policy impacts the music and culture New Orleans is known for. Whether it be sound ordinances, offering resources amid the housing crisis, or advocating for street performers’ rights, MaCCNO’s work is anchored in bridging the gap between the people making the laws and the people making the magic.
“Everybody says ‘Oh yeah, we love our culture,’ but a lot of times, the laws on the books are deeply unfriendly to culture,” Hannah added. “We do a lot of work trying to make that landscape more reflective of the lip service that everybody gives…We want all of the legal promises of the city to reflect the fact that we love our culture.”
This cultural coalition strives to keep the city’s spirit alive the same way it was founded—by making sure its incubation remains possible. Places like Congo Square, Prime Example, and neighborhood clubs are where creativity and community thrive, where brass bands, funk, jazz, and bounce are rooted.
“When you look at the history of New Orleans culture, a lot of it is different populations, different histories, and forms of culture coming together to make something new,” said MaCCNO’s Executive Director Ethan Ellestad. “It’s really about making sure we’re protecting spaces where culture can happen and grow.”
“You have a space like Pres Hall that really has this commitment to making that traditional jazz,” he explained, “but also has embraced that same idea of how we bring people together to keep that preserved, but create something new and exciting that is still very much New Orleans.”
Throughout the current pandemic, the coalition has stayed true to its purpose. They put together low-barrier relief micro-grants for musicians, artists, and other cultural practitioners who were struggling to access the resources they needed.
MaCCNO knew that those most in need of aid would be least likely to be able to access it through typical means, so these grants were given by referrals instead of overwhelming people with paperwork. They made sure to find and share resources for food, housing, and financial assistance available for the cultural community.
The key to cultural capital is to give tradition the space to grow, Ethan said. MaCCNO finds it necessary to allow people to do and maintain what the tradition is while making sure there's adequate and equitable space for those traditions to be sustained and flourish.