This spring, 475,000 people gathered at the Fair Grounds for the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. But as its full name suggests, Jazz Fest has never been just about music. People travel from around the world to experience the food, culture and traditions that define this city.
Much of that heritage was on display in the center of the festival in the Louisiana Folklife Village, where visitors could find Black Masking Indians beading their suits, Indigenous artists and storytellers sharing their crafts and language, blacksmiths forging designs in iron and, for the first time this year, the Preservation Resource Center sharing the history and continuing impact of preservation trades.
After all, New Orleans architecture is more than a backdrop. It is a record of the people, materials and techniques that shaped this city over hundreds of years. Positioned inside the Architectural Trades tent, PRC staff, master craftspeople and volunteers shared the evolving history of preservation trades and the skilled craftspeople — brick masons, plasterers, blacksmiths and others — who have passed traditional techniques down for generations. Today, this living heritage is endangered, as fewer people have access to the training and community needed to carry these trades forward.
Through Bridge to Crafts Careers, or B2CC, PRC is training the next generation of craftspeople and building new pathways to employment in the trades. Developed in partnership with the World Monuments Fund, B2CC offers hands-on workforce training in historic trades through active cemetery restoration. The city’s iconic cemeteries are architectural libraries, where brick and plaster tombs reveal the evolving cultural influences and building techniques of the wider city. After a pilot program last fall, B2CC will expand to 10 full weeks in fall 2026, during which paid participants will gain OSHA and safety certifications and fully restore historic tombs in St. Louis Cemetery No. 2.
At Jazz Fest, visitors to the Folklife Village learned more about these trades and B2CC through live demonstrations, conversations and displays, from 200-year-old ironwork to 3D-printed tombs created by CICADA just weeks before the festival.
Karina Roca, B2CC program manager and a blacksmith, has demonstrated her craft at Jazz Fest under master blacksmith Darryl Reeves for years. This year, for the first time, she returned with PRC and the New Orleans Master Crafts Guild for a second weekend to share the history of preservation trades and the need for a program like B2CC.
Over the course of four days, Roca and other craftspeople, including fellow blacksmith Teddy White and fifth-generation master plasterer Jeff Poree, offered demonstrations in rust removal, plaster molds, the lime cycle, and more. Festers of all ages got their hands dirty, met culture bearers who carry on our architectural traditions, and engaged with the PRC. Most of all, they learned that preservation trades are essential as both cultural stewardship and valuable, stable careers for the generations to come.
