A Spring festival in Abbeville

Fifteen years ago Ronney and Dixie Mayard sat in the French Quarter in New Orleans and enjoyed a Spring Festival.

The next morning, Ronney met with Anthony J. Fontana Jr. and over a cup of coffee and decided that Magdalen Square was the most beautiful place on earth and Abbeville needed a Spring Festival.

They knew Abbeville had many wonderful arts and crafts people locally, combining that with great foods should be the beginnings of a great festival.

Ronney hurried home that evening and over supper began scribbling notes. Ronney ,Dixie and Anthony decided that to make this festival unique it should be a family oriented festival and offer a venue to showcase the talents of both the adults and children of Vermilion Parish. They imagined the sounds of High School Bands performing in the center of the Square . Ronney could just imagine the sounds of jazz combos beneath the canopy of ancient oaks that are like an outdoor cathedral in the heart of downtown Abbeville.

A contest was held to give a name to this new adventure, since this festival would showcase Music, Art, Dance and Drama the chosen name would serve it well, “Carousel of Arts”. They invited local artist John Bergeron to create the first poster design that remained as the Carousel poster until 2005.

In the year 1999 another poster contest was held and in the year 2000 we had two posters, the original and a new design by artist Cynthia Breaux.

In 2001 Ronney reinstalled the original pink and white background with John Bergeron’s carousel sketch.. In 2005, the arts council lost Ronney Mayard and so decided to change to a new look for the poster.

Current president Tony Mayard decided that the poster should reflect the theme of that year’s Carousel and keep a carousel image present.

This year’s poster is the direct result of a program began 10 years ago to showcase student art.

Mayard worked with local artist/art teacher Charlotte Gallet Broussard to develop the Vermilion Parish 8th grade “Folk Art Connection”. Charlotte G. Broussard continued working with the current School Board to keep this program funded through the help of grants.

Last year the Arts Council decided that this year’s theme would be “We Sing, We Dance, We Celebrate! “

Ten students were invited to participate in a poster contest, only five elected to complete this summer task and the winning poster art was created by Ms. Morgan Daigle , currently attending North Vermilion High.

With a Fleur-de Lis at its heart , the folk art style reverberates the culture in which we are privileged to live.

We have invited the folk troupe Renaissance Cadien to further showcase our Folk / Acadian roots. This year we are bringing back the 4th grade Dance Jamboree and an afternoon filled with a mixture of Cajun, country, folk and pop music provided by Blayne Mayard and his group Just Passin’ Through. For anyone who desires to hear the refined sounds of a chamber orchestra we have invited the Acadiana Symphony Chamber Orchestra to perform a free concert in Magdalen Place Reception Center at 7 p.m. on April 5.

On the April 6, we fill our magnificent Magdalen Square with Jazz.

All this to appeal to all members of our Acadian families as “We sing, We Dance We Celebrate!”

All this because 15 years ago three people began to dream of enhancing our community with a family oriented Spring Festival: Carousel of Arts.