The Bayou Culture Collaborative (BCC) works to expand the community resilience BCC workshops prepare arts and culture agencies as well as climate and policy planners to understand the human dimension of environmental change. They explore how culture plays a role in community processes and cultural tools for those in migrating zones and receiving zones. Emphasizing cultural strategies to integrate climate migrants and immigrants with long-term residents, this workshop has been presented in and out of state to arts, folklore, historic preservation, Main Street, and coastal leadership groups. conversation to include the role of culture in environmental planning in Louisiana. Two BCC co-founders will explore how this broadens the environmental conversation and why this is critically important to include culture in environmental planning. Our efforts offer a model for others to add culture to the community resilience conversation and address cultural climate adaptation measures, especially climate migration. 

Louisiana is a state with exceptionally strong ties to place. The state also has a strong network of non-profit organizations, university faculty, and state programs that focus on cultural heritage. We are also at the forefront of climate change with sea level rise and intensifying storms resulting in land loss and accelerating climate migration amid predicted economic changes. While the state’s traditional cultures struggle with the increasing disruption, research shows that culture plays an important role in social cohesion and well-being, two factors even more important in times of disruption. So, it is no surprise that many were concerned about how this disruption is impacting Louisiana’s traditional cultures and how state planners overlooked culture and the human dimension in coastal planning.