Lucy NOCCA

If you’ve got a high school kid in public school in New Orleans and your kid is interested in pursuing anything in the arts – like music, dance, theater, film, even creative writing – you find out pretty quickly, the school doesn’t have a budget for that.

To put on a play, publish a newspaper, learn dance, or most other musical and artistic pursuits, the funds required generally come from fundraisers, or parents’ pockets.

Now, when you get to a public high school like NOCCA – the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts – where education and excellence in the arts is the very reason for its existence – it would be impossible to expect bake sales or parents to foot the bill for those expenses.

So where does that money come from?

It comes from an organization dedicated to raising the funds that help power NOCCA, called the NOCCA Foundation.

Adonis Rose is a NOCCA graduate who has gone on to a successful career as a jazz musician. Adonis has won a Grammy, he’s played on every stage that matters - including Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center - he’s accompanied legends like Dianne Reeves and Wynton Marsalis, and since 2024 he’s been Executive Director of the NOCCA Foundation.

One of the arts your high school kid might like to study is film. If they do, maybe they’ll graduate and go to film school. And then, if they want to be in the film business they’ll have to move to someplace else where they make movies. Because everybody here seems to agree that apart from a few brief and wonderful years when we were known as “Hollywood South,” there’s no way to have a career in the film business in New Orleans.

Don’t tell that to Kenny Morrison.

Kenny has been making a nationwide career for himself as a New Orleans-based film-maker since 2001. He principally makes high-end and big-budget commercials – many of which you have certainly  seen - for the likes of banks, shoes, hospitals and insurance companies.

Kenny is what’s known in the film business as a triple threat – director, cinematographer, and an entrepreneurial film technologist, pioneering cutting-edge visual effects through his virtual-production company, Lucy XR.

It used to be generally accepted that there were real jobs – like lawyers, doctors and plumbers – and then there were b.s. jobs like actors, musicians, and film makers.

We don’t think so much like that anymore. Maybe it changed because an actor, Ronald Reagan, became one of the most popular Republican presidents of the 20th Century.

Jay Z had a successful career as a musician before creating a music business empire. Artists have made millions of dollars selling works of art in the crypto space as NFT’s. Online content creators clean up collaborating with fashion houses and sneaker manufacturers. The demarcation line between art and business has gotten blurred. Locally, Adonis Rose and Kenny Morrison continue to demonstrate that creativity and commerce can happily co-exist. And that’s a lesson we need to take to heart here in New Orleans, perhaps more than any city in the country.

Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans.

Andrew Ward sits in hosting for Peter Ricchiuti. You can find photos from this show at itsneworleans.com.

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