The Contemporary Folk Collaborative recently received a grant from the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation.

This project is supported by a grant from the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation’s Community Partnership Grant program to create a visual and oral history installation exploring death, dreaming, and diaspora in Black Louisiana communities
through filmed interviews and zines. This will be an immersive exhibit hosted in New Orleans.

This project promotes and preserves the cultural traditions of Black Louisianans through storytelling and
creative documentation. By uplifting spiritual, ancestral, and artistic folk practices, the installation aligns with
the Foundation’s mission to encourage and perpetuate Louisiana heritage.

Videos will be projected in a public installation and shared online via the Contemporary Folk Collaborative’s
website and Folk Riot’s website and social media pages. Audio files will be embedded via QR code and flash drives. Zines will be made available online and at the exhibit. Digital archive
will be submitted to the Jazz & Heritage Foundation.

This project will be led by Dr. Liz Johnston-Dupre, an award-winning folklorist and multimedia artist with a PhD in Comparative
Studies from LSU. Dr. Johnston-Dupre works on oral history documentation, zine publishing, and cultural programming. They
won the 2022 Zora Neale Hurston Prize for their paper on dream interpretation in the African Diaspora. Their
dissertation, Death, Dreaming, and Diaspora, argues that Afro-spiritual micropractices—like dreamwork, spirit
communication, and ancestral reverence—serve as tools for reclaiming identity and resisting the cultural
erasure of colonization. Blending literary and ethnographic analysis, it highlights how these evolving rituals foster diasporic orientation and cultural survival. Dr. Johnston-Dupre also founded Comparative Woman, a peer-reviewed journal, and led the Comparative Collective at LSU and Folk Riot: A Southern Arts and Culture Company. They taught literature, folklore, and theatre and worked as Storytelling Manager at Propeller in New Orleans, where they gathered stories and videos from
nonprofit alumni.

The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation channels proceeds from Jazz Fest and additional funds raised into year-round programming focused on education, economic development, and cultural enrichment. Education initiatives include the Don “Moose” Jamison Heritage School of Music, Tom Dent Congo Square Lectures, the Class Got Brass school band competition, youth audio and vocal workshops, and more. Economic development efforts encompass Community Partnership Grants, the Catapult Fund accelerator, and Sync Up workshops for the entertainment industry. For cultural enrichment, the Foundation offers the Jazz & Heritage Concert Series and present annual festivals like the Crescent City Blues & BBQ Festival, Congo Square Rhythms Festival, Tremé Creole Gumbo Festival, and Louisiana Cajun-Zydeco Festival. These free programs demonstrate the Foundation’s commitment to giving back to Louisiana. The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation also owns WWOZ 90.7-FM radio and the Jazz & Heritage Archive, as well as the George and Joyce Wein Jazz & Heritage Center, a community education facility. For more information, visit online at http://www.jazzandheritage.org.