Cultural summer 2023 with Cultures du coeur: “The machine that travels into the future”

During the summer of 2023, Cultures du cœur is proposing to eight social structures in France that their beneficiaries participate in the creation of collective and individual stories on the theme of the future. Graphic, video, musical, digital creations, podcasts, use of artificial intelligence... to dream together the world of tomorrow! Workshops designed and run by Benoît Labourdette, with the collaboration of Loussiné Villelegier.

www.ateliersnumeriques-culturesducœur.org/2023

In Bordeaux, the COS Maison Relais is an adapted form of housing: beneficiaries have their own very inexpensive apartment. A mini-team takes care of these people, who are self-sufficient but would be unable to move into a normal apartment. The team’s work is very intensive, and is carried out with partners. The beneficiaries are in very precarious, isolated situations, with very low incomes. It’s a place where you’re sheltered, where you can bond, where you’re in a caring environment, where you can regain your self-confidence. People’s backgrounds are very different, it’s a mixed public, intergenerational, families... The beneficiaries come to the Maison Relais for a period of transition and reconstruction.

The workshop took place all day in the common room. Franck Angibaud, the facility’s animator, had prepared and started sharing visions of the future with the residents, on a common board. Then we set up computers, microphones, cameras, felt-tip pens, cutting paper, scissors, musical instruments... transforming the space into a vast creative factory. Everyone got straight down to creating with whatever material they felt comfortable with. Our creative hubs (film studio, recording studio, musical creation, story factory, emotion machine, etc.) encourage everyone to go the extra mile, to surpass themselves, to discover unsuspected abilities. The productions are of high quality, and the moment of communal restitution at the end of the day is a powerful one.

Discovering yourself to yourself, workshop story by Benoît Labourdette

“It’s not content I have to pass on, I’d be careful with that, every soul is in such richness. But this richness must be awakened. Transmission is this attention paid to another person, which brings out the best in him or her.”

Christiane Singer, writer (1943-2007), quoted in the collective book “Transmettre” (Paris, J’ai Lu, 2019).

In preparing this summer’s workshops, my primary concern was to imagine a set-up that would have the virtue of opening doors of expression for each individual. We, the “art specialists”, were going to come and offer creative practice to people for whom this was not their daily practice; what pretension, and then how could we do it?

My proposal can be summed up in three words: tools, practice, sharing.

Tools
First of all, we’re transforming the everyday place into a space for creative production. To do this, we bring in lots of accessible tools: musical instruments, microphones, cameras, computers, pairs of scissors, cutting paper, felt-tip pens, and so on. The areas in which we place the tools are identified by these signs with pictograms, to give meaning to their use:

It’s not just felt-tip pens and paper, it’s a “drawing workshop”; it’s not a camera connected to a computer and video projector, it’s a “film studio”, and so on.

A working and mediation tool we’ve invented for the occasion is the moodboard, a personal board on which to draw, and arrange all your ideas and inspirations, which is an identified and legitimized space for the concrete translation of the person’s ideas and desires, and which will accompany them throughout the day (thanks to Loussiné for this idea of a concrete “moodboard”, based on the boards I’d planned to bring).

The patient work of collecting tools and ideas for their implementation is already a work of attention to others, and of encountering objects that seem to me to be welcoming. Over the summer, new tools will be added to the workshops, thanks to what I’m learning. Next time, we’ll be using an Ipad Pro tablet with a stylus for drawing, and an electronic instrument just invented in the USA, the Artiphon Orba 2, will delight our ears.

Practice
Each tool will “speak” more or less to each person. What we propose is immediate, spontaneous, authorized practice. You discover yourself through your encounter with an object.

• For example, Siham (9), as soon as she put her fingers on the Novation MiniNova synthesizer, let us hear melodies and sounds that immediately “sounded” almost magical. It was her favorite tool for the day, and she recorded several pieces, alone or in group, and did the music for several of the films.
• For Daniel, using his moodboard, the talent he discovered was that of vocal improviser, inventing stories from disparate elements, thus joining the great founding traditions of the surrealist poets of the early 20^th century.
• For Guillaume, who didn’t wish to speak, the construction of his moodboard filmed by the camera gave him and us all the discovery that what he had created was a powerful ecological narrative.
• And so on, for one and all...

To begin with practice, to find the object with which our body and mind resonate, by manipulating it, is to set off on an adventure on the path of our own capacities, which we ourselves didn’t even know existed. It’s not about “valuing” ourselves, but about discovering ourselves. This process was echoed and explained to me by several of the participants. If we hadn’t started by practicing, the images of ourselves and our inabilities would have blocked everything.

Sharing
This creative dynamic takes place in a shared space, in which everyone has their own personal place (and circulates, thanks to the moodboard). We receive and benefit from everything each other discovers and invents. In this way, a real emulation takes place. Sharing the diversity of our creations with others is intrinsic to this system. At the end of the day, we organize a moment of joint “restitution”, which is very important, as it signals the importance of what has been experienced. But as the day progresses, new collaborations begin to emerge, by capillarity, so to speak.

Sharing is part and parcel of creative practice, in the present. You’re not alone. We are fully ourselves, in a community. The more singular our contribution, the richer it will be. For example, Barnabé was only able to be present in the morning: he recorded a podcast with Philippe and Najwa, and together they put together a moodboard, entrusting us with the task, for the afternoon, of creating a film from the elements of the moodboard and the soundtrack (which also contains music by Siham and Franck). Emmanuelle and Lou made the film, with my guidance. So the film “À la maison relai” exists thanks to the shared and successive contributions of at least six people.

And here, the photographs of the activity process, taken by Loussiné and Franck, are part of the routine (Franck leads the production of a quarterly newspaper). I’ve come to realize that posting these 200-plus photos, which recount certain moments in great detail, is part of the day’s artistic output. To show the creative process, to tell the story through images, is in itself a rich creative work that allows us to share the journey (and not just the results).

I put the productions online as I go along on the dedicated web platform (www.ateliersnumeriques-culturesducœur.org/2023). The access QR code is given to those who have phones, I also text the link directly to some, and I’ve put a shortcut to this platform on the collective computer at the COS Maison relais. It’s clear that this creative work is meant to be shared, with other people too, from the outset. At the end of the day, I use the web platform to view and listen to each other’s productions: what I do here, each person can do for themselves afterwards.

The web platform

Cultures du cœur

+ 20 years of expertise in social investment through access to cultural, sports and leisure activities

Since 1998, Cultures du Cœur has echoed the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), which establishes culture as a fundamental right to which everyone should have access, as well as the Freiburg Declaration on Cultural Rights.

It is also based on article 140 of the 1998 law to combat exclusion, which stipulates equal access for all to culture, sports, vacations and leisure activities.

The work of the national network, with its 34 regional structures, is underpinned by the conviction, shared with its partners, that experimenting with cultural practices not only enables the exercise of citizenship, but also contributes to repairing or rebuilding social ties, calming and re-mobilizing people.

Founded on the fundamental principles of equal access to culture, freedom of choice, cultural experiences and appropriation through sharing, the Cultures du Cœur association is committed to a fairer, more open society that cares about the collective.

In 2022, over 300,000 invitations will be made available to social structures throughout France, enabling them to reach out to people in situations of exclusion. And more than 5,000 cultural structures support us every year to create this ecosystem of solidarity.

To find out more + :
https://www.culturesducœur.org/