These are dark days for the New Orleans music community and live music across the world. And while we don’t know when we will see the light at the end of the tunnel, we have some new reason to hope that New Orleans’ music venues will be accessing the best possible information and resources about how to reopen safely.

OffBeat has learned that New Orleans will be one of six pilot communities invited to participate in the Reopen Every Venue Safely (REVS) initiative, a project of Music Cities Together. REVS is facilitating collaboration between local governments, public health officials, venues and communications experts to develop locally-oriented workplans, protocols, budgets and outreach strategies to make sure music communities are able to take a hyper-pragmatic look at what it’s going to take to bring back live music. Working locally and as a national (and international) cohort, REVS communities will mesh directives from Federal, State and local governments with the tangible needs of music venues. This includes frank discussion of sanitation standards, social distancing practices and how to communicate with music workers and audiences. Pilot cities will then share their best ideas and innovations to make sure all policy approaches, corporate partnerships and funding models are promoted and explored. This work is intended to ensure venues to be true partners in the process of reopening our cities, not at the end of the line.

Music Cities Together is a new collaboration between Music Policy Forum and Sound Music Cities. The network was co-founded by the Ella Project’s Ashlye Keaton, the key driver in ensuring New Orleans was chosen as a pilot city. The formal announcement of REVS’s workplan and other pilot cities is slated for May 8, but we can tonight confirm that New Orleans has indeed made the cut and will be in the first wave of cities participating in the REVS network.