New Orleans 2
With the eyes of the world focussed on the Louisiana oil slick pollution, in the second of two programmes recorded from New Orleans, The Strand looks at how the city's arts and culture has been recovering five years on from Hurricane Katrina.
VIDEO FROM NEW ORLEANS
Mark Coles visits the recovering Lower Ninth Ward neighbourhood. 85% of the city was flooded after a barge smashed through the levee walls here and most houses were destroyed. Today many plots are abandoned but there are individual efforts to get it back. Hollywood actor Brad Pitt's Make It Right foundation is one group involved in regeneration efforts.
VIDEO FROM NEW ORLEANS
Taking a taxi to the Bywater and Mid City neighbourhoods, Mark visits The Good Children Gallery, one of the artist-run spaces of New Orleans. He talks to artist Chicory Miles about her series of delicate watercolours that imagine hybrid plants flowering toes and mouths. In the context of the polluting gulf oil slick Chicory's work warns that we mess with nature at our peril.