Trinity City Arts: Snapshots of 2025

With the release of TCArts' annual report, we're reflecting on last year's progress. Guest post written by Mason Harrison.

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“A year to remember” is how Lisa D’Amour (Trinity City Arts administrative team) described 2025 when asked to reflect on the past 12 months and their impact on the organization she and a group of activists founded around a backyard swimming pool in the fall of 2020. Lisa shared  five milestones of 2025 with me when we spoke in December.  

ARTIVIST CLUBS: ‘TWO VERY DIFFERENT MODELS’

No project is perhaps more central to the work of Trinity City Arts than the organization’s Young Artivist Clubs, from which the writers and illustrators of TRINITY CITY COMICS are recruited and mentored in the pedagogy of art-activism. The clubs, initially based at area schools, were expanded last summer to reach youth beyond the classroom walls.

“[These were] two very different models,” according to D’Amour, noting the difference between the group’s well-established artivist club at Morris Jeff High School, largely composed of tenth-grade students, and a new club created in partnership with the New Orleans Youth Alliance. “Both clubs,” however, “yielded some very compelling art work.”

A group of journalism students at Morris Jeff created a 40-page zine addressing the current political climate that is hostile to diversity, equity and inclusion, immigration, the controversy over drag queen story hour, white supremacy and the environmental dangers of climate change. “Artivism,” the students wrote, “is the super heroic practice of using art to fight for social change, challenging harmful norms, and expressing resistance to oppression or hate.”

Clarence Foster II, a member of the New Orleans Youth Alliance Artivist Club, elected to dissect the myth and propaganda of the American Dream by creating a short video in which he asks fellow young people to determine how will they “ignite change” after reminding them that “capitalism,” the current economic order that pervades most of the world, “makes us forget each other” and that it is a system that “rewards disconnection” among the exploited and those who exploit.

The NOYA artivist club was a first-time departure from the school-based model normally employed by Trinity City Arts. “Prior to our work with NOYA, we had never attempted to create a young artivist club outside of a school setting,” said Mat Schwarzman, (TCArts Director), adding that more partnerships with area youth organizations are likely in 2026. “Students are a bit of a captive audience, if you will, and so our challenge going forward is to figure out how to incentivize participation in a club where doing so is neither mandatory nor might we provide a stipend to attend.”

WATER WONDERFUL WORLD: ‘FLOODGATES, FLOODWALLS AND LEVEES’

What did a children’s coloring book, billionaire Michael Bloomberg and Trinity City Arts have in common last year? Each were ingredients in a new recipe to raise awareness of the importance and scarcity of water on a warming planet.

Bloomberg Philanthropies, via its Youth Climate Action Fund, provided indirect funding to Trinity City Arts for the creation of Water Wonderful World, “a reading and coloring book that delves into the unique relationship New Orleanians have with the water that surrounds us,” according to the book’s description, that includes a pledge for readers to “appreciate water, ameliorate water, conserve water, respect water, protect water, utilize water [and] value water.”

The book was designed and written by hrilina♡, a local author, graphic designer and student-educator who, along with three youths hired to illustrate the project—Lauryn Landers, Zion Mercadel and London Salvant—created a page-by-page exploration of the meaning and function of the “floodgates, floodwalls and levees” that surround New Orleans.

The book’s young creators said of their experience: “[W]e learned a lot creating this book,” the publishing of which garnered support from the Mayor’s Office of Youth and Families and inspired the design of a new physical education curriculum that teaches area students about local waterways, adding, “[O]ur goal was to create something for kindergarteners to engage with, and the outcome is a book that can be embraced by all ages…in this beautiful world.”

SUMMER DRAWING INTENSIVE: ‘MENTORING THE YOUNG PEOPLE’

Issue number two of TRINITY CITY COMICS is set for release this summer thanks to a group of small, but dedicated, illustrators who put pen to paper between June and August last year to draw the universe of the sophomore edition.

Zion Mercadel (Math and Science Charter High School), London Salvant (Morris Jeff High School) and Keith Singleton (Southeastern Louisiana University) were selected to illustrate Issue #2, much of which occurred during a   summer drawing intensive., For 10 weeks, these three artists were mentored by illustrator Steve Prince (Illustrator, TC Comics Issue #1), comic artist Keith Knight and graphic lettering expert and comic book sketch veteran, Leo McGovern. 

The team was kept on track by Timeka Julius (YAYA mentor). Julius, an alumna of YAYA New Orleans, remembered the experience of working with the junior artists warmly, “I really enjoyed mentoring the young people through the comic book process.”

OUTREACH EVENTS: ‘INTO…YOUNG PEOPLE’S HANDS’

Three outreach events dotted the calendar of Trinity City Arts last fall; the first, a mixer at the Tremé Center in September sponsored by the Mayor’s Office of Youth and Families, “was the first in a series of outreach events that we were able to approach intentionally in terms of structuring and keeping track of our community impact—it felt good,” said Schwarzman. “We made some new connections with other youth programs that want to collaborate with us.”

Later in the month, the New Orleans Children and Youth Planning Board held a Youth Connections Festival & Town Hall at McDonogh 35 High School, which “got our materials—coloring pages and comics—into many young people’s hands,” D’Amour said, noting the giveaways of Water Wonderful World, the first issue of TRINITY CITY COMICS, and sample coloring pages that some folks colored at the event itself.

In October, Trinity City Arts held its own Water Wonderful World outreach event at the Mid-City branch of the New Orleans Public Library, which was “well-attended” and included an interactive activity lead by the Sewerage and Water Board, plus an informational table about the rehabilitation of Lincoln Beach.,”It was so inspiring to bring these organizations together to uplift the importance of water in New Orleans - and how we live with it every day. 

ARTIVIST AWARDS: ‘HOW MUCH IT HAS GROWN’

“To see how much it has grown over the years has been simply quite amazing,” said Carolina Guadalupe, co-director of Trinity City Arts, referring to the third and largest iteration of the group’s signature event—the Artivist Awards.

Held October 21 at Beanlandia in the historic Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans, the award recipients, for the second time, were selected from among three age groups—youths, adults and elders—resulting in honors, respectively, for historian and journalist Cierra Chenier, visual artist Monique Verdin and community griot Jennifer Turner.

The annual awards ceremony—which last year included an art auction, live musical performances and a meet-and-greet artists lounge—continues to garner local media coverage and public recognition as a platform to recognize homegrown artistic difference-makers who through their respective crafts challenge us to think differently about the world.  For more on this year’s Artivist Awards, check out this blog post here.