Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities

The Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities partners with communities, institutions, and individuals to explore Louisiana's past, reflect on our present, and imagine our future. Our vision is everyone realizing their full potential through the humanities.

The humanities are a vital pathway to Louisiana's history, traditions, and values. Your support of the LEH is essential in empowering all Louisianans to discover and realize their full potential. GiveNOLA Day is an opportunity for people like you to rally around the causes that make our community stronger, more equitable, and more resilient. With a gift to the LEH on GiveNOLA Day this year, you help ensure that all Louisianans can explore and enjoy LEH's The Helis Foundation John Scott Center, which opened in 2022.

The Helis Foundation John Scott Center serves as a modern public square: a vibrant community space empowering the public to gather, raise critical humanities questions, and experience a renewed sense of civic agency and voice. Its design builds on the LEH tradition of offering humanities-based, award-winning, participant-centered programs that encourage critical thinking and promote respectful dialogue.

The center's programming model is an extension of LEH's mission, with artist, educator, humanist, and Louisiana native John T. Scott at its core. Drawing inspiration from Scott's unique ideas, the humanities and community are consistent threads woven throughout program activities within art, culture, and social change. The center features artists, culture makers, storytellers, and curators who embrace art as a language, as a medium to share ideas, tell stories, and interpret individual experiences. Our programming highlights the lived experiences of artists and storytellers while facilitating the exchange of memory and tradition shared within and by communities. We embrace the power of education to affect social change. Our programs are influenced by Scott's 42 years as a teacher and mentor, bearing witness to the power that art and learning have to inspire change.