AcA Awards $220,000+ in 2025 - 2026 Grant Cycle
The AcA has the pleasure of administering 7 grant programs annually. Just this year, the Community Engagement Department has disbursed over $220,000 to over 50 recipients. Those 50 recipients take those funds and create jobs for artists who share the work they do with audiences throughout the Acadiana region.
Arts Grants for Teachers – Lafayette Parish
This year, thanks to the Lafayette Parish School System, over $15,000 went towards 12 projects in Lafayette Parish Schools. Through 24 teachers, over 1,200 students will be directly impacted by these awards. These projects span: integrating arts into immersion classes, a high school production of “Little Shop of Horrors,” and Geno Delafonso visiting three elementary schools.
Schools Awarded: Woodvale Elementary, Ossun Elementary, Southside High, Edgar Martin Middle, Live Oak Elementary, Comeaux High, Prairie Elementary, Westside Elementary, Lafayette Elementary, Alice Boucher Elementary, and Myrtle Place Elementary.
Arts Grants for Teachers – Vermilion
This is the first year that this grant has been available to teachers in Vermilion Parish, and nearly $4,500 went towards five projects in four schools. Funded by Vermilion Parish School System, students in Vermilion are gaining access and experiences to arts and culture in exciting and unique ways.
Schools Awarded: Abbeville High, LeBlanc Elementary, Kaplan High, and Rene Rost Middle.
Jean Breaux Award
This award provides students up to $1,000 to enhance their skills through participation in advanced study beyond what is available in their present school curriculum. We see a lot of these students participate in summer programming or specialized lessons with experts in their respective fields.
Recipients: A’Myra Menard (college), Ashtyn Raxsdale (college), Emma Zaunbrecher (high school), and Jonas Johnson (high school)
Courtney Granger Memorial Award
This award provides young traditional musicians in Acadiana the opportunity to attend local and national camps for traditional music, provide mentors for private and small group music lessons, and instruments or instrument repairs – all opportunities that were very important to Courtney.
Recipients: Addyson Broussard (high school) and Elise Riley (college)
ArtSpark
Supported by the Lafayette Economic Development Authority for the past 11 years, with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts over the past two years, ArtSpark awards individual artists in different stages of their creative careers. This program has funded 105 projects and distributed $467,500 into the creative economy. These artists don’t work in silos, they are small businesses who feed back into the economy by working with professionals to execute their projects. This year, $50,000 was distributed to two early career artists, three mid-career artists, and three establish artists.
Recipients:
- Early Career – Audrey M. Broussard, Drake Hardy
- Mid-Career – Kylie Griffin, Marguerite Justus, Marie Kimball
- Established – Christine Balfa, Hagit Barkai, and Michelle Joan Papillion
FY26 LCG External Agencies Arts and Culture Grant
Festivals, museums, and cultural preservation, capture our region’s culture, recreation, entertainment, arts, tourism and hospitality unlike any other industry. In 2024, these categories contributed to Lafayette’s economic impact significantly. They provided over 26,000 jobs, $1.1 billion in earnings (roughly 31% of all household earnings in Lafayette) with a total of $2.6 billion of impact. That accounts for 9% of the total GDP in Lafayette MSA.
Lafayette’s cultural economy is not a side story, but a core economic engine. The following arts and cultural nonprofits in Lafayette attribute to that success and were awarded a share of $50,000.
Recipients: Chorale Acadienne, Heritage Parc, Children’s Museum of Acadiana, Wonderland Performing Arts, Louisiana Folk Roots, Southern Screen Film Festival, True Friends Society of Lafayette, Performing Arts Serving Acadiana, Cité des Arts, and Basin Arts.
Louisiana Project Grant
The Louisiana Division of the Arts distributes $1 million annually to the 9 regional arts councils (per capita) for the Louisiana Project Grants. As the regional arts council for Region 4 (Acadiana), we received $96,424.
In the FY25 cycle, 20,631 adults and 9,846 youths benefitted from these projects across Acadiana (made possible by 20 projects).
Louisiana State Representative Tehmi Chassion said that “seeing what our FY25 projects accomplished with this investment is truly inspiring. With less than $100,000, these projects reached more than 30,000 people – that’s roughly three dollars per person for meaningful arts experiences that enrich lives, support local artists, and strengthen our communities. When we talk about impact, this is what it looks like, I’m excited to see how our FY26 recipients will continue building on this incredible momentum.”
Recipients:
- Louisiana Folk Roots: Créativité culinaire à Balfa Week 2026
- Louisiana Folk Roots: Expanding Folk Music Kids Camps through YEP and MIP Zoo Connections
- Whirlybird Project: Blown Away on the Bayou 2025
- Acadiana Cares: Recovering Senses, Recovering Stories
- Acadiana Open Channel: CineBites: A 3-Minute Film Project for Teens
- Basin Arts: Window Wonderland: Tinsel Through Time
- Festival International
- Performing Arts Serving Acadiana: Pop Ups at Baranco
- True Friends Society of Lafayette: Echoes of the Ancestors: A Musical Bridge Between Senegal and South Louisiana” (A Trans-Atlantic Artist Residency & Creative Exchange)
- True Friends Society of Lafayette: Good Hope Park: A Youth-Designed Creative Wonderland for Play, Expression, and Community Connection
- Children’s Museum of Acadiana: Music Mosaic: A Year of Sound and Place
- KRVS Public Media: World Cafe/KRVS Acadiana Music Showcase Season 2
- Opelousas Museum: Where We Live: Opelousas Neighborhoods
- Louisiana Crafts Guild: Open Studio Acadiana
- Atelier de la Nature: 2025 Halloween Art & Nature Festival
- Vues de Culture: 4th Annual Creole Culture Day
- Southern Screen: Southern Screen Multimedia Education & Networking
- Vermilion Reach Group: Vermilion Arts Experience
- Monique Morton Derouselle: The Candy Lady Animation Design
