Experience Louisiana Festival gathering attention, participants

The Experience Louisiana Festival scheduled Oct. 17 to 18 on the LSUE campus is gaining participants and attention as planning continues, Dwight Jodon, a festival organizer said.
“We are, especially in the last month, starting to attract attention from the rest of the state in very positive ways,” he said. “So, whether it is an art entity or folk entity, whatever it might be, we are starting to be contacted by the rest of the state.”
Experience Louisiana Festival is intended to revive the spirit of the Louisiana Folklife Festival held in Eunice in the 1980s and 1990s.
“As we talk about it there is really no model like this,” Jodon said. “There is no event like this that is so diverse in all of what we are offering. So, the pieces are coming together really well.”
Recent additions to the festival include Chef Drake Leonards, cooking demonstrations; folk demonstrator Dale Pierrottie; folk demonstrator Denise Harding; pétanque game hosted by Mike LeBlanc and La Boule Cadienne de Lafayette; folk demonstrator Sam Riehl; and Louisiana poet Darrell Bourque.
Leonards is a Eunice native who works as a chef for Chef John Besh.
Pierrottie demonstrates bousillage, a mixture of clay and cured Spanish moss, used in early construction.
Harding shows Cajun and creole pastries.
LeBlanc will teach how to play pétanque, a French game with roots in ancient history. The lawn game is similar to horseshoes and bocce ball.
Riehl is a blacksmith.
Bourque is a former Louisiana Poet Laureate.
Festival organizers recently were visited by Gregor Trumel, consul general of the Consulate General of France in New Orleans, and Charles Larroque, executive director of the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana. Both said their organizations are interested in becoming involved with the festival.
“We want to welcome people to Eunice, put our arms around them and tell them ‘Come and experience Louisiana,’” Jodon said.
For more information, contact www.experiencelouisiana.org and on Facebook.