Staff Report
The Experience Louisiana Festival announced on its website and Facebook page that the four-year-old event held at LSUE has been discontinued.
The festival, first held in 2015, offered an expansive vision of what a community festival could be. With the National Park Service as a partner, the festival offered venues to highlight life in Louisiana.
The festival was organized and staffed primarily by members of the Eunice Rotary Club.
Van Reed, club president, said, “I’m disappointed we had to shut it down, but logistically we were hitting up the same people in town that keep getting hit up.”
Reed was referring to the fundraising that was needed to stage the festival.
The club did achieve its goal of establishing a scholarship at LSUE. Reed said about $13,500 was raised to endow the Eunice Rotary Club Outreach Scholarship for a student in the STEM field who plans to transfer to obtain a four-year degree.
The scholarship for a student in a science, engineering or mathematics area was approved Friday by the LSU Board of Supervisors.
The Eunice Rotary Club plans to continue funding the scholarship, Reed said.
As for the festival, LSUE is looking at ways to fill the void including going back to the community day once held on the campus, he said.
The online message included the following.
The Experience Louisiana Festival would like to sincerely thank the hundreds of you who made the 2018 festival possible…and so incredible! Despite damp and drippy conditions, it was obvious that festival guests as well as vendors, staff and volunteers had a wonderful time dancing, laughing, eating and, well: Experiencing!
The list is far too long to name each person, organization and participant, so please accept our heartfelt expression of gratitude if you were part of the 2018 festival. We were blessed with support – whether in-kind, monetary or feet-on-the-ground – enabling us to stage what we believe was an enjoyable, family-friendly event.
With that said, a decision has been made by festival organizers to discontinue the project. After careful consideration, a determination has been made that it would not be prudent to go forward, even in the abbreviated, one-day format.
We believe that some things are meant for a reason, some for a season and some for a lifetime. In our summation, the Experience Louisiana Festival was meant for a season, and we are thrilled to have had the opportunity to produce a grand, family-oriented showcase for all that makes Louisiana such a wonderful place to live and visit. Though we are sad to see the close of this event, our hearts are filled with gratitude and joy for the countless memories we have collected since the initial planning phase in 2014.
For four years we welcomed guests from many US states (coast to coast) as well as international visitors from France, Great Britain, Belgium, Germany and Canada…just to name a few. We were also able to dedicate proceeds each year to fund a scholarship for LSU Eunice STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) students as an ongoing, living benefit of the festival. That scholarship has been endowed and will have a lasting impact on students of the university as well as the life of graduates as they pursue careers.
On behalf of the Experience Louisiana team, we wish to thank everyone who played a role in the production of the festival for four years. We are extremely proud of the attention drawn to Louisiana culture, music, folklife, food, crafts, film, art, sport, auto enthusiasts, literature and so much more. Thousands of memories – large and small – have been gathered and will be cherished for decades to come. Friendships have been formed that will last a lifetime. We are all richer for the experience.
May you cherish the time we have spent together, as we certainly will. And, by all means, keep the torch burning for all things that make the State of Louisiana unique and special! May our heritage thrive and our culture live forever!