LSU Research | Spring 2004

BUILDING BRIDGES
Program seeks to create culture of racial and artistic diversity

History has shown how difficult it can be to create an environment that celebrates racial and artistic diversity. From Europe's Renaissance in the 15th century to America's own civil rights movement in the 1960s, many in our world and local communities have strived to establish a society of understanding, creativity, and harmony. A new program is seeking to do just that in southern Louisiana.

The Southern Crossroads program series celebrates cultural diversity in the arts and humanities by bringing together talented artists not only from Louisiana but from around the world to share with audiences their knowledge and experiences. The inaugural presentation, titled "Music, Literature, the Visual Arts, and All That Jazz," which was held in April, included jazz great Ellis Marsalis, Emmy award winning actress and Baton Rouge native Lynn Whitfield, world-renowned jazz photographer Herman Leonard, and acclaimed sculptor John Scott. By combining education, entertainment, and public dialogue, the series is seeking to stimulate a better understanding of and appreciation of the arts in contemporary America.

More than 1,000 people from the LSU, Southern University, and greater Baton Rouge communities attended the 2-day, first-time event, which included individual workshops by Marsalis, Whitfield, Leonard, and Scott, and a final presentation and performance by all four.

"It's building bridges that need to be built," says Michelle Zerba, associate professor of English and director of Southern Crossroads "–bridges between the University and the community, between artists and their publics, and between racial and ethnic groups."

In order to enhance a culture of artistic and racial diversity in Baton Rouge, Zerba emphasizes the importance for LSU and Southern University to collaborate with businesses outside of the universities. This is exactly what Southern Crossroads has done in partnering with Louisiana Public Broadcasting, which produced television spots free-of-charge for the inaugural event, and with Cox Communi- cations, which gave free air time to run the spots on stations in its network.

"If we want progress and want to build an arts base in our city, we must be willing to work harder to create programs that support it. We have to work across disciplinary boundaries in order to bring the arts into dialogue with each other, and then extend this dialogue into the community," says Zerba. "We must work resolutely to move beyond the orbits of our familiar worlds because they can restrict us."

Additional presentations are in the works, one scheduled for each fall and spring semester over the next several years. Upcoming presentations will include a film-based program for which organizers are trying to attract the participation of Academy Award-winning director and former Baton Rouge resident Steven Soderbergh and partner film producer John Hardy, a Baton Rouge native. Soderbergh's father, Peter Soderbergh, was dean of LSU's College of Education from 1976 to 1981. Nobel Prize-winner Wole Soyinka has committed to coming in the fall of 2004 and will help organize a program combining music, dance, and literature. Soyinka, a Nigerian, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986 for his dramas, novels, and poetry.

ON THE WEB:
"Southern Crossroads"
LSU Department of English

from Spring 2004 Issue