Photo by L.A. Reno
Sweet Home serves approximately 4,500 musicians, Mardi Gras Indians, and Social Aid & Pleasure Club members who are active in the New Orleans Greater Area. Building on the success of our initial disaster response, Sweet Home has built an array of programs to promote sustainable lives for the tradition bearers of New Orleans. We believe the city’s culture is the key to its sustainability, and the future of the culture depends on the well-being of these men and women.
Sweet Home was originally created to respond to the specific post-Katrina needs of New Orleans’ music and cultural communities. Our approach to serving these artists is unique because we use data-driven analysis of their needs to design accessible programs that deliver measurable outcomes. Sweet Home programming has evolved with our clients’ circumstances and will continue to adapt as those circumstances change. We are advocates for the men and women who perpetuate the city’s indigenous traditions and built our organization with and around them.
For six years, Sweet Home has served as a vital link between the men and women who make New Orleans’ culture and the systems that can help them to sustain creative lives in the city. Often, these artists and systems function in different ways. Sweet Home seeks to bridge that gap, helping the business world and public sector understand how to relate most productively to New Orleans’ musical community. At the same time, our programming helps local artists develop new strategies and tools for participating in these systems in ways that respect the dignity and cultural traditions of each individual.
Sweet Home’s programming is divided into three areas: Social Services, Legal Assistance and Advocacy, and Music Business Education. Each area is specifically designed to meet targeted needs of our clients, providing a holistic approach to address the socially entrenched inequities faced by the community.
Social Services
Sweet Home New Orleans is a free and accessible social service clearinghouse of resources for New Orleans’ music and cultural community. The heart of our organization is our case management system, through which culturally sensitive social workers and case managers assess the needs of the city’s musicians and culture bearers through an extensive intake process. With information gathered through the intake, SHNO is able to determine the needs of the city’s historically under-served music community and provide direct financial assistance for immediate needs, referrals to our network of partner non-profit service providers around the city, and advocacy to numerous local and national organizations for additional resources ranging from health care to housing assistance.
SHNO disburses funding for clients’ immediate needs on an emergency basis. Financial needs due to unforeseeable or uncontrollable life events such as medical emergencies or job loss are prioritized. Requests from elderly clients, those living on fixed incomes and clients with dependents will also be given preference. We are able to respond to time-sensitive needs such as car repairs or funeral expenses within a matter of days. To help our clients progress towards long-term sustainability, SHNO case managers also provide numerous in-kind services such as identifying affordable housing and conducting one-on-one financial management sessions with their clients.
Our client follow up survey data for 2010 indicated a high level of community need for mental health services. In response, our Social Services department has added individual and group counseling sessions, conducted by our Director of Social Services, Bethney Whittington, a Licensed Master of Social Work. In addition, we are now offering an aftercare support group in partnership with MusiCares specifically designed for musicians who are in recovery. Members of the music community of New Orleans face a direct challenge to their sobriety every time they perform. This support group will focus on the unique challenges faced by musicians who are in recovery while working in the entertainment industry, which is heavily located in or near restaurants and bars. Topics addressed will include individual recovery plans, relapse prevention, relationships, and other topics related to maintaining sobriety while also earning a living in the entertainment industry. This program is designed to provide long term, culturally sensitive, support to those who have been through rehabilitation for substance abuse.
How to Become a Sweet Home Client
Sweet Home New Orleans currently serves the musicians, Mardi Gras Indians, and Social Aid & Pleasure Club members of the Greater New Orleans area. To receive assistance from SHNO you must be able to meet the following eligibility requirements:
- For individuals over the age of 50: Must have been active for at least 5 years, prior to the time of initial intake meeting with SHNO, as a masking Mardi Gras Indian, Musician, or parading Social Aid & Pleasure member and continues to be active in the cultural community
- For individuals between the ages of 30 and 50: Must have been active for at least 4 years, prior to the time of initial intake meeting with SHNO, as a masking Mardi Gras Indian, Musician, or parading Social Aid & Pleasure member and continues to be active in the cultural community
- For individuals under the age of 30: Must have been active as a masking Mardi Gras Indian, professional Musician, and/or a parading Social Aid and Pleasure Club member for at least 2 years prior to the time of intake and remains active as such
Pro-Bono Legal Assistance
Our approach to Legal Assistance parallels our case management system, with Ashlye Keaton, an entertainment attorney respected by community members, serving as an internal referral for case managers. Keaton’s work extends beyond this role, serving cultural community members on an individual basis and representing Mardi Gras Indian and Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs as collectives. Keaton provides access to representation and education on entertainment industry standards that few of our clients could ever afford on their own. Through her work, artists are signing better contracts, receiving royalties that had been withheld for decades, and learning the appropriate strategies to earn money from their intellectual property.
Photo of Patrina Peters meeting with attorney Ashlye Keaton. Photo by Jay Martin (r) Jay A. Martin. All rights reserved.
Keaton also leads our Advocacy efforts, working in collaboration with several community organizations on a variety of policy, permit, and policing issues that disproportionately affect performance and intellectual property rights and through these, their economic potential. Thanks to Keaton’s diligent work, as of April 13, 2010, Mardi Gras Indians are recognized as authors of original artwork subject to copyright protection according to the United States Copyright Office. This is a huge victory for Mardi Gras Indians, who now have the option to legally protect their hand-sewn suits that cost up to $10,000 to create.
While conventional legal representation has historically been out of reach financially for this community, Sweet Home is opening access to professional counsel and providing clients with concrete steps to progress as entrepreneurs. Access to these channels for income promotes the sustainability of New Orleans musicians. While live performance has historically been the dominant source of our clients’ earnings, learning the appropriate strategies to earn money from intellectual property allows local artists to diversify their revenue, expanding opportunities to sustain themselves financially.
Through our Legal Assistance Program artists can receive assistance on issues ranging from recovering royalties to insurance claims and contractor disputes. Our goal is for clients to earn more from their intellectual property, build stronger negotiating power, and develop necessary business skills through one-on-one counseling.
Studies show revenue generated by the music industry, in particular record sales, has rapidly declined over the past decade. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) reports that, despite rising sales of digital music, the music industry overall has fallen from a $14 billion industry to a $6 billion industry over the last ten years. The global decline of the recorded music industry is an additional challenge to growing what is already a modest market for the majority of local musicians. While diversifying revenue beyond live performances is a key step towards financial sustainability, musicians cannot rely on the old model of record sales to make up the difference. Artists must be educated in new ways of doing business and enforcing their intellectual property rights to broaden their earning potential.
While New Orleans’ music culture is unparalleled, its music industry is underdeveloped. Historically, New Orleans music has performed a social function for the community that created it. Record labels and publishers sold New Orleans music from outside of the city without building much infrastructure in it. As a result, New Orleans offers few professional services to its tradition bearers. Earnings from royalties, sales of recorded songs, and studio work represent 5% or less of the total income from music for most New Orleans musicians. Our surveys show that 78% of New Orleans musicians do not have managers, and an overwhelming majority do not work with booking agencies or promoters. In fact, 46.5% of New Orleans musicians do business entirely on their own, without any business support services.
Our Professional Development Seminars are designed to impart strategies our clients can use to take advantage of entertainment industry opportunities. Led by subject matter experts and respected members of the local music scene these free seminars build upon one another to offer practical information and strategies for implementing standard business practices. Topics include registration of intellectual property, digital distribution of recorded work, tax preparation, and self-promotion and marketing. In addition, we are working with the Tipitina’s Co-op, a non-profit organization that offers computer based and studio recording services as well as music business support, to design introductory technology courses that will allow our clients to access, and make better use of, the services they offer.
We have also taken note of the strong desire for non-musical job seeking skills and financial management expressed in our client data and we have redesigned our business seminar series to include appropriate courses on those subjects. In addition, we have added courses to support our many clients who are entrepreneurs in various ventures, primarily in crafts and services. We are also actively seeking a partnering agency to provide financial fitness training to those clients facing money management issues, helping to prevent financial emergencies before they happen.
State of the Music Community Report
In August 2008, we compiled all of the data gathered by our intake process, and disseminated our first Report on the State of New Orleans Music Community outlining trends in recovery, housing, and the needs of the cultural community. We continue to issue these Reports annually focusing each year on the issues that are highlighted in our data collection. Surveys of our clients, other members of New Orleans’ cultural community, music venues, and music audiences from the basis of our findings. The cultural tradition bearers of the city had entrusted us with data of unprecedented breadth and depth because of their trust in our integrity, dedication, and belief in our intentions and actions borne out by experience. We work to repay that trust by presenting this information respectfully and honestly. We are humbled and thankful for their participation.
Our unparalleled data and analysis have been covered nationally by the Wall Street Journal and Rolling Stone, and have established Sweet Home locally as an authoritative source for information about New Orleans’ artists.
Our goal for future Reports is to reach members at all levels of government, colleagues in the non-profit world, and entrepreneurs with our data so that decisions about how to best invest resources in the cultural community may be directed by an up-to-date assessment of its needs.
You can view the latest Report below, or click the following link to download it: 2010 State of the New Orleans Music Community Report. If you would like a hard copy of this Report, please email: info@sweethomeneworleans.org
Horn Doctor
New Orleans is a brass town. Brass instruments have played a significant role in New Orleans’ cultural community ranging from classical music to jazz funerals dating back t
o the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Brass instruments are the back bone of our unique musical traditions, from traditional and modern jazz to funk, rhythm and blues, hip hop and rock. Sweet Home partners with the Horn Doctor, Mike Corrigan, who is a Master Craftsman and Master Repairman, to sponsor his travel from his primary business location in Kansas to New Orleans to repair brass and woodwind instruments at no cost to our clients. Each visit averages 300 instruments repaired, and provides a value of more than $25,ooo, enabling student and professional musicians to practice and perform.
Not content on repair alone, Mike has also brought dozens of instruments to donate to children in community schools and is working with local musician, Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews, to distribute hundreds more.
Historic New Orleans Collection Photo Identification Project
In partnership with the Historic New Orleans Collection (HNOC), Sweet Home has an ongoing project to help identify thousands of pictures from the Michael P. Smith and Jules Cahn Collections. These photographs feature street life in New Orleans from the 1960s onward and primarily feature Mardi Gras Indians and Social Aid & Pleasure Club members. Through this project, we not only give names and histories to the images, but we also create a space for the community to collectively remember, tell stories and celebrate. Through the generosity of the HNOC, we are also helping to replace a photographic record of people’s lives. Each participant in our open sessions can receive free prints of themselves, their family members, and their Big Chiefs, helping to replace the photographs so many lost when the levees broke.
In August 2008, we compiled all of the data gathered by our intake process, and disseminated our first Report on the State of New Orleans Music Community outlining trends in recovery, housing, and the needs of the cultural community. We continue to issue these Reports annually focusing each year on the issues that are highlighted in our data collection. Surveys of our clients, other members of New Orleans’ cultural community, music venues, and music audiences from the basis of our findings. The cultural tradition bearers of the city had entrusted us with data of unprecedented breadth and depth because of their trust in our integrity, dedication, and belief in our intentions and actions borne out by experience. We work to repay that trust by presenting this information respectfully and honestly. We are humbled and thankful for their participation.
Our unparalleled data and analysis have been covered nationally by the Wall Street Journal and Rolling Stone, and have established Sweet Home locally as an authoritative source for information about New Orleans’ artists.
Our goal for future Reports is to reach members at all levels of government, colleagues in the non-profit world, and entrepreneurs with our data so that decisions about how to best invest resources in the cultural community may be directed by an up-to-date assessment of its needs.
You can view the latest Report below, or click the following link to download it: 2010 State of the New Orleans Music Community Report. If you would like a hard copy of this Report, please email: info@sweethomeneworleans.org