Rivers Institute partners with other organizations to evolve and circulate artists’ research, publications, and exhibitions. It also recently took on its own space, dubbed the Rivers Residence, where artists stay when visiting New Orleans for research and project development. The beginning of the yearlong relationship with Rute involved conversations about the challenges and opportunities of working in a place like New Orleans. Resilience emerged quickly as a key theme. “We approached receiving this knowledge about sustainable practices potentially not just for ourselves, but for many,” says Rivers founder Andrea Andersson. Rivers borrows its methodology from the mutual aid practices that shape the local community. That local inflection enriches conversations about resilience: as Andersson explains, Rivers seeks “to bring artists from other communities into exchange with artists in this region. Whether the work lives here or not, it’s made from all these conditions.”

Conversations with Rute quickly focused on two subjects: evolving how Rivers works with presenting partners and making its local operations more sustainable and neighborly. A long-term goal is to turn Rivers into a community hub and model of resiliency during and after extreme climate events, which are frequent in New Orleans, but also of sustainability in a region with scarce resources. “Most of the infrastructural norms that people take for granted in other places—most of the systems people depend on—are not in place in New Orleans,” says Andersson. “This indirectly encourages thinking at the community level. How can we do things to lighten the load?”

Research by Rute and the Rivers team revealed what waste infrastructure and renewable energy options are (or are not) available in New Orleans, particularly the kinds of solar panels and batteries that could work with Rivers’s building and the best vendors for supplying and installing them. At the same time, Rivers’s successful application to the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative means that if the organization chooses to switch to solar power, it will be able to do so almost entirely with philanthropic support.

With regard to its exhibitions, “we wanted to help create a new set of protocols,” Andersson says, “even if our partners couldn’t immediately implement them.” So Rute worked with Rivers to adapt a template created for working with artists into one that serves presenting partners. And for artists visiting New Orleans for research and planning, everyone worked on an orientation document that outlines key aspects of the city’s history, culture, and infrastructure to ground artists’ and partners’ work in sensitivity to the environment. Working with Rute, Rivers was able to move the needle on ideas they were already pondering and to accelerate the nonprofit’s ability to underscore its values and its sense of rootedness, wherever they show up.

This story comes from interviews with Alexa Steiner, founder of Rute Collaborative, and Andrea Andersson, Founder and Executive Director of The Rivers Institute.

The Contemporary Austin, Austin, TX