Louisiana Inspired is all about shining a light on people and organizations who are working toward solutions in Louisiana neighborhoods, communities, towns, cities and throughout the state — it's work that takes extra effort by special people, demonstrating the good stuff of the human spirit.
For the inaugural Inspirit Awards, we received nominations from across the state of people who are making a positive difference and improving their communities.
Webster says inspirit implies instilling life, energy, courage or vigor into something.
We are pleased to announce the 2023 Inspirit Awards winners. In creative, conscientious, clever and industrious ways, these Louisianans are making the world a better place. These winners were selected from a field of nominations received from the general public. The nominations were reviewed by a newsroom panel who selected eight Inspirit Award winners.
School co-founder Shirley Trusty Corey poses in the printmaking room at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts in New Orleans, La., Friday, Dec. 15, 2023. (Photo by Sophia Germer, The Times-Picayune)
New Orleans' Shirley Trusty Corey began her career as a high school drama teacher, though her ambitions soon led to bigger things. In the late 1960s she lobbied for a professional theater company (which she calls a "big federal project") to tour New Orleans' public schools, which proved to be a hit.
After its success Corey was offered a principalship, but she turned it down. Her focus wasn't on running a school: It was on making an impact through the arts.
"(The school official) looked at me dubiously and said to write a job description and come back tomorrow," she remembered. "So I did, and it was a very vague job description … but, for whatever strange reason, they decided to accept it."
Thus began the road to the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, which got off the ground in 1973. Over its half-century existence, the center has impacted thousands of budding arts students with programs covering everything from culinary arts to music.
School co-founder Shirley Trusty Corey poses in the printmaking room at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts in New Orleans, La., Friday, Dec. 15, 2023. (Photo by Sophia Germer, The Times-Picayune)
Notable names to have passed through its doors include the likes of Troy "Trombone Shorty'' Andrews, Jon Batiste, Terence Blanchard, Jeanne-Michele Charbonnet, Harry Connick Jr., Mary Catherine Garrison, Anthony Mackie, Wendell Pierce, Wynton and Branford Marsalis.
Today, NOCCA is a regional, preprofessional arts training center that offers students intensive instruction in culinary arts, dance, media arts: filmmaking and audio production, music (classical, jazz, vocal), theater arts (drama, musical theater, theater design), visual arts, and creative writing, while demanding simultaneous academic excellence.
"Thousands of kids gone through NOCCA who have been enriched and fulfilled," she said. "It's been very positive. I have kids come up to me all the time who say 'I went to NOCCA and I'm a lawyer now, an account, a candlestick maker,' whatever. They're all different professions, and though many are in the arts (they have) all been fulfilled. That’s what drives my engine."
School co-founder Shirley Trusty Corey pose at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts in New Orleans, La., Friday, Dec. 15, 2023. (Photo by Sophia Germer, The Times-Picayune)
Melissa Hodgson, who nominated Corey for an Inspirit Award, said the road toward creating NOCCA was, for Corey, a "journey in igniting change began with a profound vision: to create an institution that didn't yet exist."
Along with Corey's role in founding NOCCA, she was also the longtime executive director of the Arts Council of New Orleans and later spearheaded the development of the art studio complex Louisiana Artworks.
By no means has her work in the arts community been exclusively at the board level. Recently, she worked one-on-one with students at the New Orleans Public Library through a YMCA Educational Services program, helping with whatever was needed. She even filed papers and swept the floor.
School co-founder Shirley Trusty Corey poses in a dance studio at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts in New Orleans, La., Friday, Dec. 15, 2023. (Photo by Sophia Germer, The Times-Picayune)
"They have a wonderful staff, and they’ve been doing incredible work for years," she said. "They've been quietly helping people to become literate, and there are lots of people who are extremely sharp and wonderful, but don’t speak our language."
Corey said the arts provided a wealth of opportunities on a personal level.
"Everybody's got to follow their own inner voice and develop as a human being," she said. "The arts is a dynamite way for a lot of people to do it. We all want our kids to be the best they can be — develop into human beings that are good and intellectual, creative and kind, all those things — and the arts path touches so many students in ways that other things can't. Why would we deny them?"