NEW ORLEANS (WGNO)– Recently, the historic Beauregard Keyes House gained a partnership with The Nous Foundation.

The French Quarter is the beating heart of French Louisiana. The Nous Foundation is a cultural institute that promotes French and Creole culture and encourages the continuation of French speaking in both Louisiana and the United States.

“We do a lot of different projects, from creating original content such as films and documentaries and exhibitions as well, to creating larger programs.  We run a program to support scholarships and we also have a lot of educational resources,” says Scott Tilton, a co-founder of Nous.

The Nous Foundation began a few years ago. The B.K. House was built in 1826.

Rudy Bazenet is also a co-founder and says, “It’s very exciting because we’ve been working with B.K. house for almost two years now.  This is a wonderful museum dedicated to the French Quarter and it’s cultures.  We wanted to join forces encouraging people to not only learn the French language but also to use the language.”

The culture center opens it’s first exhibition Saturday. It covers the full story of Louisiana, starting with the indigenous communities that were here before the French arrived, to the modern revitalization movement.

Nous has it’s work cut out for it. In 1970, there were about one million French speaking people in Louisiana. Today, there are only about 200,000.

“Understanding how these cultures developed in Louisiana, it’s much easier to understand what some terminology refers to.  Creole is a culture in Louisiana.  There are people of African and European decent.  We talk about the different communities of Louisiana.  We Talk about the indigenous communities.  We talk about the Cajun and Creoles.  But we also talk bout people who is learning the language today,” says Tilton.

The Nous Foundation celebrates it’s culture center opening on Thursday, with a Gala at it’s new home at the Beauregard Keyes House. For tickets and to learn more about the Nous Foundation, click here.