A new community arts center built from five repurposed shipping containers is opening at 1660 N. Roman St. in New Orleans' 7th Ward, teaching local youths a combination of design and activism through a mix of classes, a community kitchen, and a garden. The Black Schoolhouse will host its grand opening on October 10, running from noon to 5 p.m. with a blessing and drumming ceremony, guided walkthroughs of the building, a second-line, an exhibition, and artist talks.
The building itself is a striking piece of architecture: five industrial steel shipping containers featuring corrugated steel, timber elements, solar energy, and elevated terraces, spanning roughly 2,000 square feet, according to freeyork. The design comes from New York and Naples-based studio LOT-EK, working alongside New Orleans-based, Black woman-owned firm Whawn Allen Architects & Construction Consultants, which was involved in the project, per LOT-EK. As reported by Axios, the finished space includes a community kitchen and garden and is designed to host neighborhood events.
A Decade in the Making
The Black Schoolhouse is the physical home of The Black School, an organization co-founded by Joseph Cuillier III and Shani Peters Cuillier that began in New York in 2016 as a mobile art project aimed at organizing community efforts to solve local challenges, according to Axios. Before it had any permanent building, the group led more than 120 art workshops, served over 450 students, and employed 20 design apprentices, per the same account, per Toward Common Cause. The organization relocated to New Orleans in 2021 and has since focused on developing its 7th Ward space, hosting cultural and professional exchanges along the way, Axios reports.
Both co-founders bring academic pedigree to the project: Cuillier and Peters Cuillier previously served as university faculty at the Pratt Institute and Parsons School of Design in New York before shifting their focus to community-based radical arts education, according to The Black School. Peters Cuillier said the schoolhouse was built to allow the community to use art and design for liberation, according to Axios.
Programs Built Around a Leadership Pipeline
The Black School describes its work at the new site as creating a leadership pipeline for future generations, per Axios. Central to that mission is a paid design apprenticeship, a workforce training program with an application deadline of September 30. Cuillier said the apprenticeship creates opportunities and pipelines for young people to enter creative careers and apply them to activism, according to Axios.
The organization has also piloted a community garden and hosts Black Love Fest, which is set to transform into a twice-monthly, multigenerational community event series, per the same report. Those programs sit alongside the arts education The Black School already provides, rounding out a schedule built to keep the schoolhouse active well beyond its opening weekend.
Rooted in the 7th Ward's Craft Legacy
Organizers spent 18 months on a community design research process in the 7th Ward before finalizing construction plans, including neighborhood surveys, workshops, and volunteer efforts to determine what the neighborhood actually needed from the space, freeyork reports. The 7th Ward has long been recognized as a stronghold for Black Creole artisans, plasterers, and building tradespeople. In 2020, the surrounding A.P. Tureaud–7th Ward neighborhood was officially designated a Louisiana Cultural District, granting local artists sales-tax exemptions on original artwork sales and unlocking historic preservation tax credits for building renovations, per the Preservation Resource Center.
The project's model draws explicitly on earlier traditions of Black self-determination in education. The center adapts the early 20th-century Washington-Rosenwald Schools, which built nearly 5,000 Black community schoolhouses across the Jim Crow South in partnership with the Tuskegee Institute, as well as the Black Panther Party's Liberation Schools, according to The Louisiana Weekly. In 2022, The Black School published The Black Schoolhouse Manual: Blueprints for Black Radical Education and Space with support from the Graham Foundation, reimagining the Tuskegee Institute's rural-school publication with contemporary considerations, per Toward Common Cause.
Funding a $1.7 Million Vision
The total project represents an investment of roughly $1.7 million, with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation alongside $317,000 raised through a 2020–2021 crowdfunding campaign, according to freeyork. Doors open October 10 in the 7th Ward, with the design apprenticeship's September 30 application deadline arriving just ahead of the celebration.
