Congratulations to our newest ArtSpark award winners!!

Acadiana Center for the Arts and Lafayette Economic Development Authority announce the 10 recipients of the 2023 ArtSpark grant, which totals $25,000 in funding.

ArtSpark is an annual award that supports Acadiana-based artists, musicians, and creatives in every discipline to help “level up” their careers through grants up to $5,000 and year-round entrepreneurial coaching through the Opportunity Machine.

Stay tuned - you'll be hearing a lot about the following #artsparkacadiana projects:

A Filipino Louisiana Story is a 26-minute documentary film about the loss of history in marginalized communities. Filipinos have lived in Louisiana for over 200 hundred years, but their story is excluded from the dominant narratives that describe the state. This film will be an adaptation of Settling St. Malo (UL Press 2023), a collection of poems by UL professor and community historian Randy Gonzales.

Traitement is a three-part documentary series about healing the collective unconscious by having dialogues with an anthropologist, a folk medicine practitioner, and a French modern language specialist hosted by the infamous traiteur and Acadiana culture bearer, Becca Begnaud. This project serves as a proof of concept for bi-monthly content distribution, drawing upon Begnaud’s life experience, French language, international healing practices, and cultural anthropology. Mathé Allain, Debbie Clifton, and Ray Brassieur will be the first featured experts interviewed by Begnaud.

Singer, songwriter and harmonica player Grant Dermody will produce his sixth recorded album Trouble Down Teche. This album will be a departure from his previously more traditional acoustic or amplified Blues records. He will dive more deeply into the other kinds of acoustic music of this region incorporating Gospel,Creole, Jure, Louisiana Blues and other, older forms of local and regional music, both vocal and instrumental.

Dustin’s project is an eight song conceptual folk album highlighting the story of his ancestors' exile from Nova Scotia using non-traditional bi-lingual songs written about the sights, struggles, and adventures they experienced offering a soundtrack to their journey. The record will correlate to a river touring release by boat, in honor of the 80 day voyage taken by them to arrive in Louisiana.

Ten choreographers. Ten dances. All on a tiny 4x4’ stage. An experiment in confined space, Ten Tiny Dances® is a performance series dedicated to fostering inventive dance/performance art and providing an accessible performance experience for a diverse audience–all on a 4 by 4-foot stage.

Louis Michot will be producing a music video for the single "Boscoyo Flo" from his new album, 'Rêve du Troubadour'. 'Boscoyo Flo' is about his path as an artist, bringing sustainability and environmental awareness through his music. Adjoining his push for sustainability is his passion for Louisiana French, bringing obscure phrases and words forward into his art, symbolized in this song by a sample of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker. He used this rare bird as a symbol for the current resurgence of Louisiana French; some think it's gone, but if you look deep enough you can find it still alive in the day to day life of some Louisianians.

UNTITLED NATURE PROJECT is an audio storytelling series where each episode focuses on one person’s experience to tell a bigger story. The first season will explore the relationship between humans and the natural world in and around Acadiana. Some stories include:

How one man has restored a planned development site into its natural form; The Wax Lake Delta which is one of the only places where land is being created not lost; A local farm using native plants in their regenerative agriculture methods; Native Tribes working to restore to restore the old cane breaks that once existed on river banks; And how one town is looking to stop local development to combat flooding.

Kathleen will be part of a residency at Basin Arts entitled NATURE & ART between  July to September, 2023. The goal of the project is to promote deeper and intimate awareness and interactions with nature in our daily encounters through art-making.

Lex will be using live models from the local LGBT+ community and pairing them with native Louisiana wildflowers and flora to showcase the importance of representing this subculture of the Acadian population in a time where it is actively being repressed. The goal of this project is to bring awareness to the beauty and perseverance of Acadiana queer individuals who aren't traditionally perceived as fitting within Cajun Culture.

In Chasah’s directorial debut, she will produce a short film that starts in the present day and replays the day's events. At each pivotal moment, the audience's perception is changed about who the instigator is of a violent outburst during a class reunion.  By presenting the story in reverse chronology, the visuals support the thematic question of "who is the victim and who is the aggressor?"