Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2000

• Read Sally Stevens's Preserve Maxwell Street letter to the Keep of the National Register.
• Learn about the BLUES HIGHWAY Community Millennium Trail project, a partnership between the White House Millennium Council, the U.S. Dept. of Transportation, the National Park Service, The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy and the National Endowment of the Arts and other public and private partnerships.

Ms. Shull ~

As director of the New Orleans Blues Project, the managing organization for the BLUES HIGHWAY Community Millennium Trail, I urge you to place the Maxwell Street Historic District on the National Register for Historic Places. This is a preservation emergency! Every second you delay gives UIC another opportunity to wipe out this precious piece of our American heritage.

The Maxwell Street Historic District is an integral and very important part of the recently designated BLUES HIGHWAY Community Millennium Trail that extends from New Orleans to Chicago.

The community of the Maxwell Street Historic District, and the many other rural and inner city neighborhoods the BLUES HIGHWAY represents - has, for the last century, been a 'disenfranchised' constituency - there are already too many past examples to cite, where this constituency has lost, had stolen, appropriated and coopted by large commercial interests ( even by those so-called preservers of culture - our universities) intrinsically valuable elements of our history and culture. Granted, we're talking about the culture of the poor and working-class within our society - but I would hope the National Register would deem this important aspect of America's history and culture as important as any other aspect.

Thank you for your consideration.

Many musical regards,

The NEW ORLEANS BLUES PROJECT recently received notice from the White House Millennium Council that their application for a Millennium Trail designation for the "Blues Highway" was granted. The Blues Highway has received the designation of a Community Millennium Trail .... " In recognition of efforts to bring the community together to 'Honor the Past Imagine the Future,' by developing a trail that connects people to their land, their history and their culture." Millennium Trails is a partnership between the White House Millennium Council, the U.S. Dept. of Transportation, the National Park Service, The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy and the National Endowment of the Arts and other public and private partnerships.

The New Orleans Blues Project is the managing organization for the "BLUES HIGHWAY" Millennium Trail.

The "BLUES HIGHWAY" is a physical and conceptual heritage trail that links America's communities sharing a common blues heritage. The BLUES HIGHWAY traverses The Mississippi River and the old Highways 61 & 49 from New Orleans to the Mississippi Delta to Memphis, St. Louis and Kansas City to Chicago....and points east to Detroit, Philadelphia and the Piedmont region of the Carolinas; points west to Houston and the Deep Ellum section of Dallas/Fort Worth - the routes traveled by blues men and women from the turn of-the-century, to modern day touring blues acts, linking the communities and cities where blues was born, nurtured and still thrives today.

The New Orleans Blues Project is a music economic development project, employing a comprehensive pro-active approach to community development by employing music and culture to positively impact employment and business development, and community redevelopment. The Blues Project seeks to act as a catalyst to foster and attract public and private resources to these activities and to involve, encourage and assist other organizations and businesses in the public and private sectors to participate in the implementation of community-focused economic development efforts toward the fostering and facilitation of the development of a regional music business infrastructure that will enhance and expand economic, business and entrepreneurial opportunities in the region.

The New Orleans Blues Project employs a two-pronged grass roots approach by providing Louisiana's 'unrepresented' artists with much needed artist support services ranging from clerical and graphic support, contact support, artist development, audience development, publicity and promotion, tour management, and a variety of other services to further their careers and enhance earning power. Through the recently formed Dillard University New Orleans Blues Project Collaboration, plans are in the works to implement a program to train college interns, community interns, and high school interns to provide artist support services.

The Blues Project also works on issues of relevance to the music community as the region moves toward a more culturally-based economy and seeks to ensure that the music community has a voice in future local and regional planning efforts. Toward that goal, the Blues Project is seeking stakeholder status in the development of four interrelated elements of the New Orleans Master Plan - Economic Development, Historic Preservation, Arts & Cultural Management, and Tourism.

We are also seeking involvement in the development of the Regional Comprehensive Plan and the Local 5 Year Workforce Investment Plan. At the same time, The New Orleans Blues Project is developing partnerships and alliances with other arts, music and cultural organizations, as well as other economic and community development organizations, such as the Lower Mississippi Delta Development Center in Memphis, the managing organization for the Mississippi River Millennium Trail.

The Blues Project is currently in the initial planning stages for the Millennium Trail BLUES HIGHWAY launch event, to take place during the Cutting Edge Music Conference and Roots Music Gathering and the International Festival and Event Organizers conference in September, 2000.

---------------------------------------------------

As a music and community economic development project, The New Orleans Blues Project seeks to employ the BLUES HIGHWAY Millennium Trail designation to generate attention, recognition and investment into America's blues and roots music scene - with a specific emphasis in terms of investment into community and economic development throughout the Lower Mississippi Delta states of AR, TN, MS & LA - and more specifically, toward the building of a regional music business infrastructure that will provide more employment and entreprenaurial opportunity and business development. The timing is especially right, as the region moves toward a more culturally-based economy.

An effort has already begun to link events throughout 2001. We envision linked events such as the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, to the Blues Foundation's W.C. Handy Awards, the Chicago Blues Festival, the Sunflower, Kansas City and King Biscuit Blues Festivals, and many other music festivals throughout the nation, all linked as part of the BLUES HIGHWAY. BLUES HIGHWAY tours throughout the nation, to linked musical and other events, are also in the initial planning stages.

The Blues Project seeks to generate significant corporate sponsorship of these tours. Tours will include already well-known blues and roots artists, along with participating artists in need of audience development - those much-talked about 'undiscovered' artists that world is anxiously awaiting...

****

web page provided by OPENAIR-MARKET NET

return to the top of the page

return to Preserve Maxwell Street