Memory of sport in the Great War, participative creation of a photographic exhibition

11 November 2024. Published by Benoît Labourdette.

13 min

During three weeks in the summer of 2024, the Musée de la Grande Guerre in invited the public, including young people, groups, and adults, to participate in the creation of photographic collages. These collages formed an exhibition of participatory works centered on the theme of sports during the First World War, connecting it to our present-day reality, all within the context of the Olympic Games being held in France.

I co-created this project with Pauline Casanova, head of the public engagement department at the Musée de la Grande Guerre, building on previous initiatives that I had co-developed and co-facilitated with Marie-Priscilla Leterme, a cultural mediator.

The Artistic Project

Participants were invited to independently create visual artworks that would later be exhibited in the museum and then travel to various social and cultural institutions in the city. The artistic and mediation principle—which, for me, represents artistic mediation—was to offer a vast, carefully designed creative workshop. Participants were encouraged to work autonomously within this space, with tools serving as the cornerstone of interaction and personal expression. In this large room—a performance space with its seating removed (the Espace Caravelle in Meaux)—the setting was arranged with a black backdrop and specific lighting for each station:

Tables with an abundance of paper to cut: Featuring photographs of sports during the First World War, sourced from archives provided by ECPAD through a partnership.
Graphic tools: Scissors, glue, paint, markers, and various types of paper.
Graphic creation space: Tables with black foam boards of different sizes, the largest being 50 cm by 70 cm. When crowded, the floor also became a workspace.
Digitization station: A camera with lighting equipment allowed participants to digitize their creations collaboratively, adjusting brightness, etc. All works were uploaded to a mini-website, and participants left with a QR code providing immediate access to their digital works in high quality, as well as to others’ creations over the three-week workshop.
“Cinema room”: A large screen, red seats, and digitized works projected in large format, giving them strong symbolic value and enabling collective sharing.
Music space: Simple, high-quality musical instruments.
Podcast space: A microphone and computer. Participants could record themselves telling stories inspired by their creations, though this was optional.

The idea was for participants to engage in various activities around graphic creation, catering to different forms of intelligence. Some might spend more time on graphic creation, while others focused on music or storytelling. Some took time to admire others’ works projected on the large screen. When participants finished their graphic creations, they could pick up instruments and rehearse, experiencing a different type of activity. Regular collective gatherings took place in the mini-cinema, where participants, each with an instrument they had practiced on, created a collective soundscape to accompany a projected graphic work. The resulting MP3 files were immediately uploaded to the mini-website alongside the graphic works.

Autonomy

During the three-week workshop, many professional visitors remarked on the strong sense of autonomy they felt upon entering the space. Each participant was engaged in their own way, and none of the professionals present could resist joining in, either individually or collectively, to create their own graphic works.

For me, autonomy is key to meaningful encounters, allowing individuals to delve deeper into themselves. The principle was simple: I invited participants into my multimedia workshop and provided the tools. I brought far more tools than necessary. For example, I initially didn’t bring Posca paint markers, which are tricky to use for beginners, but I added them on the second day after seeing how much they were needed. Similarly, I purchased translucent water-based markers mid-workshop, which participants used extensively to colorize black-and-white photos. These tools, while useful, were appropriated by participants in ways I hadn’t anticipated, highlighting their autonomy within the framework I provided.

This autonomy allowed participants to create for themselves. While they were within a structured environment, they encountered their own creativity, discovering and inventing their own methods, enriching both themselves and others, including me. Each person worked at their own pace, with the simple goal of creating graphic and, if desired, sound works to share.

Sports, Process, and Meta-Reflection

Alongside the workshop, I occasionally took groups to the park adjacent to the Espace Caravelle for sports training sessions, which we photographed. These photos were printed and added to the materials available for cutting. Unexpectedly, we also took photos of the workshop itself, and one day, these were printed as well. As a result, some graphic works incorporated images of the workshop in progress, effectively narrating their own creation process.

This was significant because it highlighted the importance of the journey over the final product. While the graphic works were beautiful, the most valuable aspect was the process each person underwent to create something they might never have attempted in their daily lives. This is why the final exhibition also needed to tell the story of the process.

Workshop Structure and Participants

The workshop was initially designed for groups of children from Meaux’s social programs during the summer, with a three-day schedule. Some groups followed this program:

Day 1: The museum mediator visited their facility with a suitcase of objects to introduce them to the First World War. In the afternoon, the group visited the Musée de la Grande Guerre.
Days 2 and 3: The group spent four half-days in the Espace Caravelle creating graphic works, with each participant engaging in graphic, musical, and sound creation, and digitization at their own pace.

During the first week, no groups were scheduled, so we collaborated with the nearby library and a neighborhood festival to open the workshop to other audiences. Over the three weeks, groups, individuals, and families worked together, which proved to be a great success. Some individuals, having heard about the workshop at the library, spent entire days there and returned later.

The absence of scheduled groups in the first week turned out to be an opportunity to engage a broader audience, fostering connections among participants. Whether children, animators, or city officials, everyone participated and created something because the desire to do so was shared. For example, all the animators from the children’s groups also created works without being asked—they simply felt inspired to do so, as the opportunity was open to them.

The Exhibition Opening

The exhibition opened at the Musée de la Grande Guerre in late July 2024. I had initially planned for 12 large panels (4 per session), imagining collective works on very large boards. However, as the workshop unfolded differently than expected, I purchased smaller, lighter foam boards. In the end, there were not 12 but 80 panels—some collective, some individual.

I realized that my initial expectations were theoretical and that the reality of working with participants led to something far richer than I had envisioned. I bought a large number of foam boards as creativity overflowed. On the day of the opening, we had to hang not 12 but 80 panels. Participants were invited an hour and a half before the opening to help arrange the panels aesthetically and thematically.

I had purchased supports and cradles, but 80 panels of varying sizes were challenging to hang securely. We discovered that double-sided gaffer tape (a strong fabric tape used in theater) worked better than the cradles, though it might loosen over time. When participants arrived, some panels weren’t yet hung, and others weren’t secure. The challenge, as the exhibition was to remain until November 11, was ensuring the panels stayed up. For an hour and a half, I cut gaffer tape, handed it out, and participants worked together to secure the panels. Nothing fell until November 11.

This experience taught me something important: I had focused on the aesthetic aspect of the hanging, but the participants showed me that practicality was equally, if not more, important. They brought me back to a multifaceted reality where aesthetics and practicality complement each other. There is no hierarchy between the two—only enrichment through their interplay.

The Digital Tool as a Catalyst for Participation

For the opening, I was concerned that participants who had spent only a few hours in the workshop weeks earlier might not want to return. I also noted the richness of different temporal engagements: some participants were there for three days, others for just an hour. This openness to varying levels of involvement was crucial. It allowed someone who planned to stay for half an hour to become inspired and return the next day, the day after, or even the following week. This happened frequently, and the coexistence of different engagement times enriched the mediation process.

What motivated people to attend the opening? Why do people want to attend such events? Because they value what they’ve created. For children who needed parental accompaniment, it was also important that parents valued their children’s work, even if they hadn’t seen it. Here, the digital tool—the mini-website, a simple gallery of images and sounds—played a key role in fostering engagement and the desire to attend the opening. Participants and their families spent time viewing the online gallery, appreciating the high-quality digitization that elevated each work. The digital tool thus served as a bridge, ensuring a good turnout and making the event meaningful for everyone involved.

The Itinerant Exhibition

After November 11, 2024, the museum’s mediation team took down the exhibition, and it became itinerant. It was displayed for a few weeks in various social and cultural institutions across the city, accompanied by QR codes linking to the digital version and, where applicable, the corresponding sound files. This extended the exhibition’s life and continued to foster connections, a key function of artistic mediation.

Project Design and Cultural Rights

For me, this artistic project—and why I refer to it as artistic mediation—is about the encounter between my artistic world and the worlds of the participants. The tools facilitated this encounter. I brought my own tools, organized in a way that suits my creative process, and invited participants into my studio. However, they were able to appropriate the space and tools in their own way. This is what I call a meeting, and this is what I call artistic mediation. What matters to me is not just what I can offer others but also what I can receive from them. I propose a space of artistic cooperation, not a space of artistic transmission where participants are integrated into my aesthetic and approach. We enrich each other in this space.

This approach is atypical because, often, cultural projects involving artists expect the artist to bring their expertise, skills, and aesthetic, integrating participants into their vision. For me, this is insufficient and reductive. Each person carries their own way of thinking and expressing themselves, and I believe it’s essential to give them the space to do so within a certain framework.

Thus, my idea—and this project aligns with cultural rights—is not about cultural democratization, where I merely impart my skills to participants in a predefined artistic project. Instead, it’s about creating a space of cultural democracy, where participants are free to contribute to the collective project in their own way, transforming it through their input.

It’s also important to return to the project’s objectives and the texts that fund such initiatives. The goals are the participants’ journeys, with art serving as a tool for their emancipation. The aim is not artistic production but artistic exploration, which is entirely different. However, a recurring issue is the pressure to produce a “beautiful” result, which can shift the focus from artistic mediation to artistic production. The artist may feel compelled to refine participants’ works to maintain their artistic identity, potentially diminishing the participants’ contributions. For me, this is problematic. What needs to be showcased is not just the final product but the process that led to it.

The artist’s role, in my view, is to meet participants with their experience and skills, and together, invent something new. Everyone emerges enriched, far more so than if everything had been confined to the artist’s vision. But for this to be understood by participants, institutional leaders, and funders, it must be communicated. This is why the process must be narrated in the exhibition or final presentation. In this project, the inclusion of photos of the process within some works allowed the story of the process to be embedded in the works themselves.