Chamber looks for ways to promote arts in the parish

The Evangeline Chamber of Commerce held another installment of the Lunch and Learn series recently. This time around was an opportunity for the public, as well as members of the newly created Evangeline Arts Council, to find out ways to enhance the arts here in the parish.
The speaker for the event was Samuel Oliver, who is the new executive director for the Acadiana Center for the Arts in Lafayette.
“We were originally founded in 1975 with a real mission to fill a specific need throughout the eight parish region,” said Oliver. “There was no centralized way to provide funding from the state to help support the viable activity that happens in communities throughout the region.”
Through this mission, as Oliver explained, “we support relationships with the Evangeline Parish Library to bring performances, activities, and connections for young people, old people, and everybody in between.”
Oliver then went over specific areas such as art eduction where the ACA helps to fill needs in the region.
He said, “We think arts are a vital part of education and a part of how young people become functional human beings who know about their culture and who are capable of expressing themselves, standing up in front of a group of people, and saying what they think and who they are.”
The ACA, in its efforts to enhance art education, began a partnership with the Lafayette Parish School System to bring teaching artists into every classroom. Oliver called it a “very successful program.”
He added, “The art classes are where the teaching artists co-teach with the classroom teacher in a core subject area, and it’s a unit that provides a creativity component. We think it enhances learning because students who are low performing can really get inspired and engaged.”
Oliver stated this education program has moved into St. Landry Parish, “and we’d love to be in Evangeline Parish for that as well.”
Besides art education, Oliver explained the ACA also fills the art needs in the region by providing grants, such as those from the state to help fund non-profit organizations, schools, or governments through the decentralized art fund.
“We always fund within Evangeline Parish through the decentralized art fund which is phenomenal,” expressed Oliver. “It means we are fully committed to seeing work proceed in this parish and seeing cultural activity. We want to be an equal partner in that.”
Ville Platte Mayor Jennifer Vidrine asked Oliver if that kind of grant program can be used to enhance the Swamp Pop Museum.
Oliver replied, “The program funds between $1,000 and $5,000 for a variety of projects. That project could be a performance, a new way of getting out information about the Swamp Pop Museum, or a number of many things.”
Other grant programs, according to Oliver, are designed to help individual artists.
“These are entrepreneurs who could live anywhere in the world,” he said, “but we want them to be here in Acadiana. We want to be involved in that, and we want to put tools and resources into their hands to help their personal business grow.”
The next Lunch and Learn will be held Thursday, March 21, from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. at the Chamber’s board room. The topic will be Marketing 101: “The importance of establishing a brand worth following!”