From the beginning, the couple behind New Orleans’ Nous Foundation has joked that they’re bringing French back to the French Quarter. And when the dust clears, the nonprofit’s chic new headquarters on Toulouse Street will feature French music, French letters and a petite French bookstore.

But the foundation’s ambitions are bigger than the Quarter — bigger than New Orleans or even Louisiana.

The New Orleans Foundation for Francophone Cultures, known as Nous, supports the revitalization of Louisiana’s heritage cultures, focusing on Cajun, Creole and Indigenous communities. Its small staff curates exhibits, produces films, publishes books and records albums through the independent label, Nous.

In 2024, Nous focused on Haiti-Louisiana. In 2025, the theme was “Musique(s).” And, in its new season, titled “L’Amérique selon la Louisiane,” or “Louisiana’s America,” founders Scott Tilton and Rudy Bazenet are making the case that Louisiana contains the key to the United States. That by looking at Louisiana, one can more clearly see the country.

“What I like is the idea of reversing the narrative in Louisiana that we’re always viewed as almost an oddity, as something on the periphery of this country,” said Tilton. “You can see the imprint of our culture everywhere, from architecture to music to cuisine.”

“It’s had an indelible impact all over the country,” he added.

The season, announced in September, is timed to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, but it doesn’t feel dusty. Francophone culture “doesn’t just have to be a documentary with a rocking chair, going on about the good old days,” Tilton, 33, said with a smile.

A new space 

The Nous Foundation, French for “we,” captures — and creates — what’s happening now. This season is its biggest yet.

After hosting years of events at the BK Historic House and Gardens, this year the Nous Foundation moved into an old shoe shop in the heart of the French Quarter, owned by the Historic New Orleans Collection. Renderings of the refreshed space, set to reopen in November, show arches clad in handsome cypress wood, a petite gallery for exhibitions and a workspace open to the public via a glass wall.

The duo made a strong case for the many things it could accomplish in 700 square feet, said Heather Hodges, director of institutional advancement for HNOC, which uses its collection to tell the story of New Orleans.

“What we don’t do — and what they do — is provide a clearly marked door and point of entry into the Francophone heritage,” she said.

Over and over, Nous has shown the diversity of that Francophone heritage, Hodges said, in both their programs and their grantmaking.

When, last year, they recorded an album titled “Musique(s),” a project backed by the Library of Congress, they included not only French folk music but also reached out to the Baby Dolls, she said. The Baby Dolls, a stalwart of Black Mardi Gras celebrations, resurrected and recorded old Creole songs, now preserved on the album.

In September, Nous brought another act on the “Musique(s)” album, the duo Sweet Crude, to New York to perform for the United Nations General Assembly.

‘With care and heart’

The Nous Foundation launched in Paris in 2020, where Tilton and Bazenet had met at a party. They’ve been married since 2021. 

Tilton, who grew up hearing his family speak French in New Orleans, was studying international relations there. Bazenet, who grew up in France, was working for the French Foreign Service. Just weeks after meeting, the pair began working on a project some doubted could be done — have the L’Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie recognize Louisiana as a member.

It wasn’t unheard of: The OIF gathers more than 90 French-speaking countries and regions. In addition to Canada, it recognizes Quebec and New Brunswick. Over two years, Tilton and Bazenet sent hundreds of emails, lobbying for Louisiana to join the Francophonie. In 2018, it did.

The couple saw an opportunity to be of use. They loved living in Paris, “but Paris doesn’t need anyone,” Tilton joked. In New Orleans, “you feel like you can make a difference.”

More than a century after French was banned from Louisiana classrooms, the numbers are bleak. There are perhaps 120,000 French speakers in the state, some data suggests, down from about 1 million just 60 years ago. Of those, perhaps 20,000 speak Cajun French, others traditional French.

Even a decade ago, people who cared about French language and culture in Louisiana were “really worried,” said Evelyne Bornier, a professor of French at Auburn University.

But in the past five years, she says they have really seen a strong revival of the Francophone culture. The revival is in part due to organizations across the state, including the Nous Foundation, said Bornier, author of “Parcours Louisianais,” a collection of Louisiana literature in French, from the 1680s to 1900.

“The amount of things they have done in such little time is nothing short of a miracle,” she said of the Nous Foundation. “They’re not just preserving the culture. They’re building something new and meaningful with care and scholarship and heart.”

‘Invest in the culture keepers’

At a time of shrinking resources, the Nous Foundation is growing.

The nonprofit raised $300,000 in fiscal year 2025, which wrapped up in June. It received 56% of the grant funding for which it applied, about twice the national average. But during a conversation in September, Tilton focused on another number: 50.

As in, the foundation’s operations in 2025 supported some 50 artists, musicians and creatives across the state.

For a long time, “our cultures have been exploited, to a certain degree, for tourism purposes,” Tilton said. But that commodification often doesn’t lead to artists getting paid. Policies can help revive Francophone cultures, he continued.

“I think we, as a movement, focused on the policy side of this for a very long time, and it may have escaped us that there was this real importance to actually getting funds into the hands of artists, into the hands of musicians, into the hands of creatives,” he said. 

To that end, Nous has launched a cultural accelerator program, Le Lab, to boost projects and start-ups with a hand in heritage culture. The program has raised some $235,000 to support 12 projects, a few of which have turned into nonprofits and businesses.

Next month, with the help of Le Lab, Mélange Dance Company will remount “Love Letters of World War II,” this time interweaving the story of how Louisiana’s French-speaking Cajuns helped win the war. 

It’s a beautiful show, said Monica Ordoñez, the dance company’s artistic director, that reveals “how powerful we are if we join forces and preserve our culture.”

The show is also costly to produce, said Ordoñez, who works as a paralegal. The nonprofit dance company pays the show’s 21 dancers for their rehearsal and performance time. It pays a live band, too.

“We hope we can break even,” she said.

Already, though, the partnership with the Nous Foundation is paying off. Bazenet and Tilton are helping the dance company connect with partners and possibilities, Ordoñez said.

“They’ve been selfless with their support,” she added.