LE LAB

APPLICATIONS FOR 2025 WILL OPEN IN NOVEMBER 2024.

AN ACCELERATOR PROGRAM POWERED BY THE NOUS FOUNDATION

1 YEAR
ACCESS TO FUNDING
ACCESS TO NETWORKS
ACCESS TO MENTORSHIP

Le Lab is the first accelerator program designed around culture and language in the United States. Each year, we select 4 projects including French, Louisiana Creole, or another heritage language in their mission. Selected projects receive funding, mentorship, and are given access to networks of like-minded professionals. Applications are open nationwide, with a focus on applicants from Louisiana and the Gulf South.

Past laureates have gone on to start businesses and carry out projects that support more sustainable communities and place French and Louisiana Creole as innovative languages. Since 2022, our expertise has led our laureates to raise over $75,000 to fund their projects. Join Le Lab!

meet le lab, class of 2024

DR. KIM VAZ-DEVILLE
THE NEW ORLEANS BABY DOLLS AND LOUISIANA CREOLE

Traditionally, the New Orleans Baby Dolls, a Mardi Gras tradition, incorporated music with parading, with some of their songs being chanted and sung in Louisiana Creole. This workshop-based project restores the practice by teaching Baby Dolls folklore and select songs in Louisiana Creole.

Kim Vaz-Deville, education professor at Xavier University of Louisiana wrote The “Baby Dolls”: Breaking the Race and Gender Barriers of the New Orleans Mardi Gras Tradition (LSU Press, 2013), the 2016 selection for One Book One New Orleans’ campaign for literacy and community. She edited Walking Raddy: The Baby Dolls of New Orleans (UPM, 2018). Her cocurated exhibits include They Call Me Baby Doll: A Mardi Gras Tradition and Mystery in Motion: African American Masking and Spirituality in Mardi Gras, both at The Presbytère, Louisiana State Museum, and Black Indians from New Orleans, at Musée du Quai Branly Jacques Chirac.

NICK PANZARELLA + CHELSEA SHANNON
U SICILIANU ‘N LUISIANA: A CHILDREN’S BOOK IN ENGLISH + SICILIAN

This book will tell the story of a Sicilian-speaking family in Louisiana. There are currently less than 10 children's books available in Sicilian, and this community may have never been visually represented in the 21st century. This book will be written in standard Sicilian with English translations and accompanied by high-quality illustrations.

Nick Panzarella is a language activist working with the Sicilian language. He is the current president of Cademia Siciliana Foundation and studied linguistics at Tulane where, among other things, he worked on the Tunica Language Project. Chelsea Shannon is an art educator and writer. For more than 15 years, she has worked to create accessible and inclusive arts and culture experiences for all ages, most recently as the interpretation manager at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Nick and Chelsea are both descended from Louisiana French speakers and are raising their son in Houston trilingually with Italian, Sicilian, and English.

DR. OLIVER MAYEUX & CÉCILE SMETANA BAUDIER
PHOTOGRAPHIC DOCUMENTATION OF LOUISIANA’S CREOLE SPEAKERS

“How many people still speak French or Creole in Louisiana?” This is one of the first questions people ask when they hear that these languages are endangered. This project aims to show the people behind the numbers by constituting a photographic documentation of the rural, historically Creole-speaking communities of South Louisiana.

Dr. Oliver Mayeux researches the history and development of the Louisiana Creole language and has been involved in the language revitalization movement for over a decade. He is currently a Research Fellow in Linguistics at Trinity College, University of Cambridge, UK. Cécile Smetana Baudier is a French/Danish documentary photographer. Her personal work centers around the African Diaspora and has been featured and commissioned by The New Yorker, National Geographic, Vogue Italia, i-D Magazine and has been exhibited at UNSEEN (Amsterdam), Aperture Foundation (NYC), Photo Vogue (Milan) and Red Hook Lab (NYC) among others. Cécile is based in Paris, France.

BRUNO BONTÉ, JÉRÔME BROUSSARD, DR. AURÉLIE GODET, MANU POULAIN
NANTES TO NEW ORLEANS

The Nola xo Nola Project aims at connecting Nantes to New Orleans (and more broadly, Loire-Atlantique to Louisiana) through a series of exhibitions, conferences, concerts, and workshops over the next five years (2024-2028). This project will highlight the historical connections between Nantes and New Orleans, foster professional exchanges between artists and cultural bearers, and further transatlantic conversations about the future of francophonie, the place of art in the city, and environmental challenges in deltaic milieus.

Bruno Bonté is a former program planner for La Déferlante and La Vague à l’art festivals. Jerôme Bossard is the founder and artistic director of the professional, Nantes-based, Zygos Brass Band. Aurélie Godet is Associate Professor of United States history at Nantes University, who specializes in the history of Louisiana and of festive practices in North America. Manu Poulain, Steward of the 2024 International Arts Biennale in Nantes and general manager of various festivals in Nantes.