Experience Louisiana Festival planning takes a focus on youth

The food, music and culture of Louisiana has been the focus of Experience Louisiana Festival planners.
But a pivot toward youth was suggested by the Charles Larroque, executive director of the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana.
Larroque was one of about a dozen people who met Wednesday at the Community Education Building on the Louisiana State University Eunice campus.
Festival organizers are planning “French tables” as a place for people to people to have conversations in French and for others to learn the languague.
“My concern is that it’s a very staid model and I don’t think it is the best fit for your festival,” said a man with a unique job of charting a course for the French language and culture through an ocean of English language and American culture.
“I’m just hesitant about people just sitting around the table and others gawking at them,” he said.
“Codofil’s goal is to engage youth,” he said.
Larroque suggested integrating French throughout the festival.
But it is youth and the French language that he focused on.
“They want to go out and do something,” he said of youth.
“They want to engage even if they don’t understand the language. They want to hear it They want to be invited to the way it used to be,” he said.
“I think what you have right here is you’ve got the living heritage,” he said. “It is just mainly being interpreted in a foreign language because the mother tongue is French. If you go back and honor that I think you’ll get a lot of milage out that...”
Where the Codofil director’s suggestions go with the festival remains to be seen, but it is indication of the thought taking place to shape a new festival.
Experience Louisiana Festival is scheduled Oct. 17 to 18 on the LSU Eunice campus. The primary sponsors are LSU Eunice, Eunice Rotary Club and the City of Eunice. Other main sponsors are the National Park Service and the St. Landry Parish Tourist Commission.
The festival will be a revival of the Louisiana Folklife Festival that as held in Eunice in the 1980s and 1990s.
Dwight Jodon, one of the festival organizers, said the earlier festival is summoned up when explaining the new festival.
“We are wanting to bring back the core of that, which was folk demonstrators and build a festival around it,” Jodon said. “That usually helps people right away understand where we are going with this.”
The festival plans to focus over the regions of Louisiana.