For Immediate Release January 20, 2009
Contact: Sally Stevens
Sally@CulturePAC.com
(504) 473-0709
(New Orleans, LA) Announcing CulturePAC, a Public Action Coalition for inclusive effective citizen-driven economic development in New Orleans.
As the City of New Orleans and the Horizon Initiative begin the formation of a new public private economic development agency that will determine the strategies, policies and spending of many millions of dollars over the coming years it has opened an opportunity for economic development processes in New Orleans to become a truly inclusive and effective process in our city. However, in order for this to be the case, wide citizen involvement is necessary. CulturePAC has been organized to this end. The City of New Orleans has committed $6 million over the next three years toward formation of this new agency and it is our responsibility to ensure these public funds are used wisely and to the benefit of the wider community.
Among the issues CulturePAC will address within economic development in New Orleans, and the formation of this new agency, are the use of public funds, poverty, falling wages, underemployment, rising joblessness, erosion of worker rights and other pressing concerns, needs and issues that previous economic development efforts have also failed to acknowledge and address. Within these issues CulturePAC will also work for the sustainability and growth of the region’s cultural economy and the entry and participation of New Orleans creative cultural workers into the new markets of the national and international cultural economy; and to ensure that the new economic development agency being formed by the City and the Horizon Initiative recognizes the vitality of the creative cultural sector, accept recommended strategies developed by the cultural sector, as well as funding.
CulturePAC views working for growth of the creative cultural sector as a poverty reduction strategy for New Orleans, since the vast majority of the creative cultural products and services the city and its tourism industry trades upon come from our most neglected and marginalized neighborhoods that remain unacknowledged by the old-guard economic elite that rules economic development.
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