New Orleans, LA — The New Orleans Foundation for Francophone Cultures (Nous) will celebrate its fifth anniversary with a special gala – La Nuit Américaine - on Friday, May 8, 2026, from 6:00 to 8:30 PM at the historic Pitot House along Bayou St. John.

Conceived as “La Nuit Américaine” (“American Evening”), the gala reflects the energy Nous has brought to French in Louisiana and a\irms the language’s enduring and creative place in the United States. The evening will celebrate five years of cultural programming and highlight major recent milestones for the organization, including two grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities supporting Nous’s upcoming America 250 exhibitions, as well as a $100,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation to develop the foundation’s growing digital archive of Louisiana Francophone and Creole cultural materials.

Set in the gardens of the Pitot House overlooking Bayou St. John, the gala will bring together supporters of Louisiana culture for an elegant spring evening featuring cuisine from some of New Orleans’s most celebrated restaurants, including Brennan’s, alongside champagne toasts and cutting-edge musical and dance performances.

Guests will also enjoy a special performance by Mélange Dance Company, a 2025 laureate of Nous’s Le Lab cultural accelerator. Their upcoming production Love Letters of WWII will be presented at the Library of Congress on September 10, 2026, an opportunity helped organized and supported through Nous.

“This evening is a celebration not only of Nous’s fifth anniversary, but of the extraordinary vitality of Louisiana’s cultural and linguistic heritage,” said Scott Tilton, Executive Director of Nous. “From new national partnerships to the preservation of French and Creole archives, the momentum we are seeing today shows that Louisiana’s Francophone culture continues to inspire people far beyond our state.”

The gala will serve as both a celebration of Nous’s achievements and a gathering of the growing community committed to preserving and promoting Louisiana’s Francophone and Creolophone cultures for future generations.

Additional details, including ticketing and sponsorship opportunities, are available at nousfoundation.org/gala, where you can also view the gala’s video announcement, written and directed by Nous co-founder Rudy Bazenet.

###

About the New Orleans Foundation for Francophone Cultures
Founded in June 2020, the New Orleans Foundation for Francophone Cultures (www.nous-foundation.org) is an institute dedicated to preserving and promoting French and Creole in Louisiana and the United States. The foundation’s actions center around three priorities: organizing cultural events, creating original content, and launching innovative programs (based on an incubator model to promote language transmission). Through an initiative launched and spearheaded by the Nous Foundation’s co-founders, Rudy Bazenet and Scott Tilton, Louisiana became the first state to join the International Organization of the Francophonie (OIF) in 2018. The OIF brings together 93 countries and regions, 16% of the global economy, and over 1 billion people.