Working with Artists in the Social Field

How can artistic practice and social support be combined? This question drives social work professionals seeking to integrate culture into their practices. A look back at a training session that enabled the sharing of experiences and reflections—a true moment of collective intelligence.

A Collective Intelligence Approach

On November 28, 2025, as part of the certification training program “How to Integrate Cultural Mediation into Social Support?” offered by Cultures du Cœur, I facilitated, as I do every year, Module 4 on setting up practical workshops in collaboration with artists. This remote session brought together participants with very diverse backgrounds: social workers, specialized educators, an employment counselor, a recreation center manager, and cultural coordinators. All share the same concern: how can culture be given a place in supporting people? After an introduction on my approach, I proposed oral exchanges, in the spirit of collective intelligence and cultural rights, during which I noted what was said in a mind map. And it proved fruitful: the contributions from each person were extremely valuable, and we all learned from them, made possible by the space I gave to everyone. Then we did a photography creation workshop, in order to live a sensory experience, to experiment with what we had discussed, and thus acquire other skills. I will recount here what I received from it.

Professionals with Varied Backgrounds, Common Intuitions

The professional contexts are multiple. Charline works as a social worker in Seine-Saint-Denis, primarily in individual support. She notes that collective work is often considered a “bonus,” not legitimized by the employer, making it difficult to open up to unconventional projects in an administrative setting. Isabelle, a social mediator in the Ardennes working with women in precarious situations, transformed a simple cultural outing into an afternoon of sharing with a choreographer from the local youth center. Rachel supports people housed through the 115 emergency shelter system in Loire-Atlantique, dealing with people focused on survival for whom spontaneity works better than long-term projects.

Sophie M., a specialized educator at a CCAS in Niort, created a project called “Relaxation at the Museum”: relaxation sessions in workshops prepare people for museum visits. Eight city residents who had lived there for over twenty years had never set foot in a local museum. One participant, of Algerian origin, stopped in front of a 1905 sculpture depicting the traditional costume of women from her village. This moment of identity recognition, unexpected, constitutes one of those encounters that give cultural projects their value.

Hubert, an employment counselor at France Travail in Pas-de-Calais, developed the program “The Art of Accessing Employment,” which brings vulnerable job seekers to the Louvre-Lens or the theater. He observes a transformation in participants: “We’ve seen people transformed by frequenting these places. They feel legitimate in attending a cultural venue, which gives them a sense of legitimacy for other areas of social space.” The rebuilding of self-esteem comes through shared cultural experience.

The Artist’s Position: Meeting Rather Than Transmitting

I shared with the participants a conviction that has structured my approach for many years: the role of the artist, within the framework of cultural action projects, is not to transmit professional techniques to people who would not have them. The professional practices of cinema, theater, or visual arts have their meaning in a given professional field, but their methods are not necessarily suited to the goals of emancipation and education that drive cultural action.

Take the example of cinema. The classic method is to write a screenplay, then prepare the shoot, film, and edit. However, starting with writing a screenplay poses a problem: language can be a factor of social exclusion. The French school system, despite its intentions, often functions as an organ of exclusion through language. Asking vulnerable audiences to begin by conceptualizing their film with words can reactivate symbolic violence they have experienced. Another entry point is possible: in the animation film workshops I led with Cultures du Cœur during two cultural summers, people arrive at a large table with sheets of paper, newspapers, magazines, and pairs of scissors. They cut, manipulate images, and the desire to create comes gradually, through sensory appropriation of the materials.

This approach is rooted in John Dewey’s pragmatist philosophy, who developed in Art as Experience (1934) the idea that art is not an object but the experience lived by human beings in their relationship to that object. Célestin Freinet read Dewey and drew from it the foundations of progressive education. Paulo Freire, the Brazilian educator who worked in the favelas, was inspired by Freinet to develop his popular education practices. Jacques Rancière, in The Ignorant Schoolmaster (1987), tells the story of Joseph Jacotot who, speaking neither Dutch nor German, managed to teach German to Dutch students by creating conditions for autonomy rather than transmitting knowledge. The ignorant schoolmaster was indispensable: they created the framework that authorized students to learn by themselves.

The role of the framework is often misunderstood. People believe it should contain, regulate, prevent excesses. In my view, a framework serves to protect the freedom of what happens inside it. It creates a space of trust where people can experiment without fear of judgment. Artists, like all professionals, have identity questions: they can confuse who they are with their social function. Offering them a project where they don’t transmit their usual techniques can destabilize them. They need to be supported in understanding that their contribution lies elsewhere: in human encounter, in the quality of presence, in creating a space where everyone can authorize themselves to create.

Experimentation as an Entry Point

Marine, a recreation center manager in Toulon, has developed a remarkable practice of projects with artists. She works with a visual artist on bottle cap recycling, with an engraver on printing techniques, with circus performers, dancers, choreographers. What strikes in her account is the importance of experimentation: “What they love is experimentation. In everything I do, there’s always a moment when we experiment. We touch, and then we see what it does. And if it doesn’t work, we do it differently.”

She describes tataki-zome workshops where you hammer plants on fabric to print their pigments, cyanotype where exposure time to the sun changes the result, making recycled paper with integrated plants. Each technique opens a space for trial and error: “We go pick plants, we see which plants it works with, what color comes out. Because there are plants where it doesn’t work at all.” This approach connects to what I call putting into activity: immersing people in concrete practice rather than starting with explanations or instructions. The body and hand are engaged, which transforms self-representation.

Gwenaëlle, a specialized educator in a residential facility for adults with intellectual disabilities in the Paris region, developed with Cultures du Cœur of Essonne a project with a Franco-Malian troupe around theater and exile. The residents visited a theater’s technical booth, experimented with virtual reality headsets showing the troupe rehearsing in Mali, then attended the performance. A non-verbal resident of African origin didn’t want to take off his VR headset. This moment, impossible to predict, opened conversations about exile that nourished new projects. Artistic experience always overflows the framework assigned to it.

Sophie T., a former actress who became a cultural coordinator in Indre-et-Loire, mounted theater projects for years that transformed into musical comedies then into films, notably after a workshop I had facilitated. She summarizes her philosophy: “We allow ourselves things, at our own scale. It doesn’t have to be perfect, we have the right to make mistakes, it’s not serious.” This permission for imperfection is a condition of creativity. Projects evolve, adapt, transform through contact with people. What matters is not the final result but the journey traveled together.

Bureaucracy as a Brake, Cultural Rights as a Resource

Sophie M. raised a point that many professionals share: regulations can become obstacles. “As soon as it starts to become a little visible, we’re bothered: what about GDPR, and photos, and authorizations, and the museum... Discussing our objectives together, that happens naturally with an artist, with a mediator. As soon as we get into procedures, into regulations, it starts to get complicated.” This bureaucratization dehumanizes relationships where culture should create spaces of freedom.

Faced with this tension, cultural rights constitute a resource and can give confidence to disobey bureaucracy. Defined in the Fribourg Declaration (2007), cultural rights affirm that every person has the right to choose and have their cultural identity respected. Patrice Meyer-Bisch, one of the main theorists of these rights, insists that they should not be thought of as a limit to cultural policies but as a demanding foundation requiring their implementation. Cultural identity is defined as “the set of cultural references through which a person, alone or in community, defines themselves, constitutes themselves, communicates, and wishes to be recognized in their dignity”.

In my own research, I consider that cultural rights are above all a practice: an exercise of democracy in work organization methods, in the relationship to others, in programming choices, in mediation methods. It is not about cultural democratization, that top-down logic that assumes audiences must be educated in “proper” reception practices. It is about cultural democracy: recognizing that each person carries a legitimate culture and that cultural work consists of creating spaces for encounter between these cultures. This is precisely what I put into practice in the very form of this training, in the space I gave to each person.

Hubert, the France Travail counselor, provided an interesting counterpoint: his regional management, despite the administrative burden of the structure, gives agents real freedom to carry out their cultural projects. “They respect the agents’ desire. Even if these projects came from above, we’re given the freedom and latitude to carry out the projects.” This institutional intelligence, which understands that the engine of action is the professionals’ desire, shows that another way is possible.

Photography as Shared Experience

To conclude the training, I proposed a practical exercise to the participants: take a photo with their phone, on the theme of art, culture, and the social field, with a simple formal constraint: their hand had to appear in the image. Sharing was done via a QR code hosted on my own server, allowing each person to upload their photo to a common space.

The feedback protocol reverses the usual logic: instead of each person explaining their photo, it’s the others who comment on it. The author doesn’t speak about their image. This reversal produces something important: it’s the gaze of others that enriches our own creation, that helps us understand what we’ve done, that legitimizes us. We accord little value to what we do ourselves; it’s in the gaze of others that this value can be constructed.

The photos were varied and touching. A collection of turtles in a display case, “like in a museum.” A hand holding a cup with a play of shadows evoking Christmas. A person carrying a painting “like a gift, an invitation to enter a palace.” A clock with a hand that seems to “hold back the passing time.” In just a few minutes, with a device everyone owns, singular creations emerged. The constraint of the hand in the image created a common thread while allowing great diversity of expression.

Walter Benjamin, in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935), developed the concept of aura to think about what distinguishes the original from its reproductions. But he also showed how reproduction can create new forms of appropriation. The photo of a creation, once it is invested in and shared, nourishes the process of symbolization: it allows the person to represent themselves differently, to show their loved ones what they’ve done, to inscribe their experience in a shared memory.

What Remains: The Quality of Shared Time

This training confirmed an intuition I have been developing for a long time: what matters in a cultural project is not so much the final production as the quality of shared time. Sophie M. put it well when describing her “Relaxation at the Museum” project: the relaxation workshop that precedes the visit is not a simple preparation, it’s already the heart of the project. It creates the conditions of trust that will allow openness to artworks and unexpected encounters.

The participants shared stories of moments when “something happened”: a woman who recognizes her village’s costume on a century-old sculpture, a non-verbal resident who doesn’t want to take off his virtual reality headset, autistic children particularly present during a barrel-painting project, job seekers who perform skits in front of potential employers and are seen “from a different perspective.” These moments cannot be programmed. They occur when the conditions are right: a protective framework, a listening posture, a sincere interest in the people.

Gwenaëlle recounted how her CNAM training on science and technology mediation had confronted her with artificial intelligence, which she initially rejected. “It blew my mind. I said to myself that it can be used for good things. It’s no longer the very fixed image I had.” This openness to the unexpected, this capacity to let oneself be transformed by the experience, is perhaps what cultural projects can offer that is most precious: not confirming what we already know, but opening ourselves to what we don’t yet know.

Gwendoline, who supports people with disabilities toward autonomy in the Sarthe region, described the Mont-Saint-Michel project: three residents prepared for months a three-day trip they made alone, with a booklet detailing each step and volunteers on site. The educational team worked upstream and downstream, but was not present during the stay. This trust given to people, this meticulous preparation aimed at autonomy, connects to the principles of cultural rights: recognizing each person’s capacity to fully live their cultural life.

The training ended a bit abruptly, as the Cultures du Cœur board meeting was to be held on the same Zoom platform. But the exchanges had been dense enough that everyone left with ideas, references, and perhaps above all the confirmation that the intuitions guiding their work are shared by others. The social support and medico-social sector is full of professionals who invent, tinker, create spaces for encounter with culture. Recognizing them, networking them, giving them conceptual tools to defend their practices: this too is the work of training.