Professional Development

A member of our grants administration team, as well as previously successful applicants, will be available to advise you on your projects and application process during the below remote and in-person office hours and workshops. Lafayette | Friday, February 7, 2025, 5:30pm – 7:00pm @ Parc Village, 2323 Moss St New Iberia | Friday, February 14, 3:00pm – 5:00pm @ A&E Gallery, 335 West St Peter Street, New Iberia Arnaudville | Saturday, February 15, 10:30am – 12:00pm @ NUNU Collective, 1510 Bayou Courtableau Hwy, Arnaudville Opelousas | Tuesday, February 25, 4:30pm – 6:00pm @ Opelousas Museum and Interpretive Center, 315 N. Main St., Opelousas   ...

A member of our grants administration team, as well as previously successful applicants, will be available to advise you on your projects and application process during the below remote and in-person office hours and workshops. Lafayette | Friday, February 7, 2025, 5:30pm – 7:00pm @ Parc Village, 2323 Moss St Iberia | Friday, February 14, 3:00pm – 5:00pm @ A&E Gallery, 335 West St Peter Street, New Iberia St. Landry | Saturday, February 15, 10:30am – 12:00pm @ NUNU Collective, 1510 Bayou Courtableau Hwy, Arnaudville St. Martin | Tuesday, February 18, 2025, 5:00pm – 6:30pm @ African American Museum, 125 S New Market St, St Martinville St. Mary | Thursday, February 20, 4:00pm – 5:30pm @ Teche Theatre, 501 Main St, Franklin Vermilion | Wednesday, February 26, 5:00pm – 7:00pm at Cafe on State, 106 S State St, Abbeville   ...

Join filmmaker Brooke H. Cellars as they teach the ins and outs of crowdfunding, in this beginner-friendly workshop designed for indie filmmakers. We’ll dive into popular platforms like Kickstarter, Seed&Spark, and Indiegogo, sharing strategies to make your campaign stand out in a crowded market. Discover how to effectively leverage social media, craft compelling pages, and engage your audience throughout the campaign. Plus, explore alternative creative funding methods to support your short or feature film. Whether you’re a first-timer or looking to refine your approach, this workshop equips you with practical tools to help fund your independent films. AcA is committed to making our programming as accessible as possible. This Creative Acadiana session will be in-person, streamed and recorded. If you require your accessibility needs addressed, please contact community@acadianacenterforthearts.org ahead of the session to discuss. ...

Interested in figure drawing? Join us for this free session presented in partnership with ARCHIVES Exhibitions. Follow along with artists Jesse Poimboeuf and Lex R Thomas as you practice drawing gesture, human anatomy, and fabric in relation to the body, specifically highlighting the importance of diversity in size, body type, race, gender, and age. Artist Round Up provides a space for community building through creative endeavors. ...

Acadiana’s linguistic heritage is something that sets this region apart from other corners of the United States, and it can help to inspire and enhance your creative endeavors. Whether you’re writing song lyrics, creating dialogue for your novel set in colonial Louisiana, or adding some text to a locally-inspired graphic design, this workshop is for creatives who want to incorporate more French or Creole into their art, but feel less than solid in their language skills. Join Marguerite Justus of CODOFIL as they talk about the importance of accurately representing our heritage languages, discuss opportunities and grants that are available for French and Creole related projects, and share resources that can help artists check their work and gain confidence in the use of French or Creole in their creative process. AcA is committed to making our programming as accessible as possible. This Creative Acadiana session will be in-person, streamed and recorded. If you require your accessibility needs addressed, please contact community@acadianacenterforthearts.org ahead of the session to discuss. ...

This workshop is an intro for filmmakers and producers interested in making their films accessible to visually impaired audience members by laying out the fundamentals of creating film audio description. The festival world is beginning to wake up to the fact that there are more barriers to the filmic experience than can be accounted for with subtitles and closed captions alone. Netflix as well as many festivals are finally beginning to take the much-needed initiative towards requiring Audio Description for their content. Hosted by filmmaker Abby Waters and composer Alan Kamen, the workshop will provide examples, tips, and best practices on how to not only create audio description for your film, but how to make the experience of listening as full of color, meaning, and nuance for a audio-only audience as it is for a viewing audience. AcA is committed to making our programming as accessible as possible. This Creative Acadiana session will be in-person, streamed and recorded. If you require your accessibility needs addressed, please contact community@acadianacenterforthearts.org ahead of the session to discuss. ...

Join photographer Milton Arceneaux in this studio workshop, designed to help photographers master the art of lighting for people of color. By focusing on the unique undertones often found in people of color, such as red and yellow, participants will learn how to enhance these hues while maintaining depth, richness, and authenticity. The session explores the use of hard light for dramatic definition and soft light for a more subtle, flattering look, combined with adjustments to cooler (blue) and warmer (orange) tones in white balance for vibrant, true-to-life portraits. AcA is committed to making our programming as accessible as possible. This Creative Acadiana session will be in-person, streamed and recorded. If you require your accessibility needs addressed, please contact community@acadianacenterforthearts.org ahead of the session to discuss. ...

Artist Round Up is an opportunity for creatives of all disciplines to come together in a space to meet like-minded creatives who they could collaborate with, talk to, find inspiration from and just generally hang out with. For our April meetup, artist Sam Wróbel will be showing us the ins and outs of papercraft. AcA is committed to making our programming as accessible as possible. If you require your accessibility needs addressed, please contact community@acadianacenterforthearts.org ahead of the session to discuss.  ...

Interested in applying for our NXT Series? Join AcA Performing Arts Director, Brandon Motz, along with former NXT artists as they discuss and answer questions about the upcoming submission period for the 2026 season. AcA is committed to making our programming as accessible as possible. This Creative Acadiana session will be in-person, streamed and recorded. If you require your accessibility needs addressed, please contact community@acadianacenterforthearts.org ahead of the session to discuss. ...

As an artist, commissions are great way to gain clients, develop your style, and offer personalized works. Still, commission work can be fraught with issues if you don’t know how to advertise yourself, communicate properly, and protect your time and money. In this workshop, artist Sam Wróbel will explain his process for finding clients, gathering information, pricing his work, securing payments, creating contracts, and dealing with client feedback. You will learn how to get started with commissions and streamline your process to avoid common problems, so you can focus on creating work that your client loves. AcA is committed to making our programming as accessible as possible. This Creative Acadiana session will be in-person, streamed and recorded. If you require your accessibility needs addressed, please contact community@acadianacenterforthearts.org ahead of the session to discuss.  ...

Join AcA’s Visual Arts Director, Jaik Faulk, in conversation with exhibiting artist, Lynda Frese. Lynda Frese’s artwork has been exhibited across the United States, and in Europe and South America. Her pieces are represented in private and public collections including the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the Center for Photography at Woodstock, the Manetti Shrem Museum in Davis, and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and the Center for Louisiana Studies. Lynda Frese is 2016 professor emeritus at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where she served on the visual arts faculty. She received BFA (1978) and MFA (1986) degrees from the University of California at Davis, and fellowships from Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine; the Bogliasco Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, Italy, Vashon Artist Residency, WA; ArtLab at the Mountain Lake Biological Station, University of Virginia; and Willapa Bay AiR, Willapa, Wa. ...

Artist Round Up is an opportunity for creatives of all disciplines to come together in a space to meet like-minded creatives who they could collaborate with, talk to, find inspiration from and just generally hang out with. For our May meetup, artist Lynda Frese will be leading us in our quarterly zine making workshop. This months theme: UFOs! AcA is committed to making our programming as accessible as possible. If you require your accessibility needs addressed, please contact community@acadianacenterforthearts.org ahead of the session to discuss.  ...