Reinventing cultural projects with youth?
While public cultural action aims to reach people in their great diversity, it is clear that it is often difficult to mobilize youth. However, young people (from children to young adults) have an intense cultural consumption, especially online in commercial spaces that do not say their name. TikTok is already more consulted than Google for example. These practices take place elsewhere and elsewheret, and can seem radical in the rupture with legitimate culture. For the record, the etymology of the word radical is the link to one’s roots, which is remade with each new generation. How is “our” culture questioned? How do we reweave ties that build?
“...it is always from the darkest point of the landscape that the marvelous arises, just as it is always from the most buried point of our singularity that our recognition of the other occurs.”
(from the book Elsewhere and Otherwise, Annie Lebrun, 2011, Gallimard)
Professionals in the cultural, social and educational fields who make the choice to go beyond the judgment on the uses of young generations come to question their representations and practices. They realize that proposals and methods must be reinvented. The challenge is to be able to continue to achieve the cultural, pedagogical and democratic objectives that are the reason for the public funding of projects, institutions and their staff. The Covid period has also accentuated the disaffection of cultural places, among other impacts.
What if, instead of looking for answers, we first shared our questions? What if we were creative, if we experimented with new practices, if we dared to chart new paths? I share here some of my questions, which set my thinking in motion. Feel free to write to me (benoit benoitlabourdette.com) to offer yours, which I might relay. In addition, in this dynamic, I lead since 2022 a learning course, proposed by the Observatoire des Politiques Culturelles in March 2022, that I will be leading in an energy of creative and collective innovation: « Culture, youth and digital - designing new modalities for cultural and educational projects ». This training aims to accompany the construction of new ideas, skills and ways of working, for new cultural projects related to youth.
So here are some interesting questions to ask yourself, which I am sharing:
- What are my preconceived notions about the digital practices of youth?
- Do I consider that I am the bearer of a “good culture”, which would be better for young people than those to which they have access, which in fact I judge without knowing them?
- Do I think that social networks are dangerous for young people and why?
- How many times do I check my phone every day? Have I ever counted? And am I not “addicted” to digital communication?
- Do I take care of my digital privacy and how? Or not?
- Do I feel that digital relationships (emails, social networks, video conferences, lives...) are dehumanizing?
- What percentage of my day do I spend in front of screens? Do “young people” spend more or less time than me in front of screens?
- What are my qualitative evaluation criteria for cultural, educational or social projects for youth?
- Do I think that I can be changed by a project with young people or do I think that I have to change them?
- Have I ever co-constructed a project with young people and how?
- Have I ever yelled at young people, or been yelled at by young people, and in what types of situations?
- Do I think it is wrong to watch a movie on my phone?
- Am I sure that a movie that kids are forced to go to is better for them than a movie that they freely choose to watch illegally on the Internet?
- Do I own a television set and do I turn it on? To watch what and for how long per day on average?
- What value do I give to the digital productions (photos and videos) produced by my structure and by the young people who participate in projects? Where and how do I store this digital heritage, for how long and in what strategy of human narrative of the territory?
To feed this reflection, I propose you the link to these articles, of which certain aspects can make polemic. I believe it is healthy to debate in depth, starting from well-founded, radical thoughts. This way we can mutually enrich each other with our diversities and disagreements, in a respectful way and without trying to reach a consensus or a standard:
Cultural policy" is a tradition of the French state since the Middle Ages. It was initiated by Louis XIV in the 17th century as a tool of influence and power. And it was defined in its current terms by André Malraux in 1959, with the State’s mission being the democratization of art in society. But today the cultural policies are multiple, because carried by the public authorities at other levels than that of the State (cities, agglomerations, departments, regions) and in many other places, in particular associative (places and cultural actions), individual (the initiatives of the artists, professionals or amateurs) and by private companies (trade of the culture).
The “digital revolution”, i.e. the ubiquitous, personalized and transitive access to information as well as the production by peers as a new model, deeply disrupts the “rules” of implementation of cultural policies, whether at the public or private level, and puts many actors in difficulty to reach their objectives. I propose here tools to understand the stakes of this “digital revolution” and concrete ways of working, hoping to bring useful resources to the work of cultural policies, in all types of contexts.
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How digital technology reshapes our relationship to the performing arts
A synthesis of my contribution to the round table at Chaillot Augmenté × TMNlab on 6 May 2026.
On Wednesday 6 May 2026, I was invited to speak at the round table “Audiences: how is digital technology reshaping our relationship to the (…) -
Chaillot Augmenté x TMNlab 2026: two days on the performing arts and digital technology
A presentation and critical reading of the gathering held at Chaillot on 5 and 6 May 2026, in which I am taking part.
On 5 and 6 May 2026, Chaillot, Théâtre National de la Danse, hosts the second edition of the « Chaillot Augmenté x TMNlab Meetings: Performing (…) -
Rebuilding the Democratic Function of Major Performing Arts Venues
At a time when anyone can be a creator, what could theatres, national stages and drama centres become for the people who live around them?
Digital technology has made each of us a potential creator. This anthropological transformation calls for a rethinking of the political function (…) -
Artificial Intelligence and Cultural Actors: The Laws of Creative Transformation
When the precise definition of artistic desire meets algorithmic power.
Cultural institutions that passively wait without embracing artificial intelligence could see their neighbors transform in just a few months. The (…) -
To Code or Not to Code?
A Plea for Reclaiming Our Digital Tools.
The distinction between “code” and “no-code” is a deception. Instructing a machine, regardless of the language, is an act of creation. Reclaiming (…) -
Putting Artificial Intelligence to good use in the cultural sector
Methodological approaches.
By 2025, it seems essential to enable employees and stakeholders in the cultural sector to share the challenges of AI within their professional (…) -
Helping professionals design new types of projects adapted to the needs of young people
Laboratory for an original training and project development program.
In the face of young people’s indifference toward institutional culture, I propose exploring an innovative training framework aimed at helping (…) -
What digital technology is doing to the cultural sector
Food for thought.
Digital technology has now become one of the essential components of our living environment. How does it change our lifestyles and our (…) -
The elsewhere of the in-itself
Conceptual and methodological proposal for complementarities between in situ and remote cultural projects.
The Covid-19 crisis revealed the potential of remote cultural mediation, but it seems that the public cultural sector has largely returned to (…) -
Artistic creation in a digital environment
Commentary on the report commissioned by DRAC Bretagne (August 2023).
A study on the subject of digital and artistic creation reveals, through its unquestioned biases, the unconscious desire not to move the lines of (…) -
The Freinet method applied to digital mediation
Pedagogy and politics of autonomy.
The pedagogical method known as “Freinet” (conceptualized by the pedagogue Célestin Freinet from the 1920s to the 1960s, as a synthesis of (…) -
"Culture, youth and digital: designing new modalities for cultural and educational projects
Sharing of methodological tracks and professional training.
Deconstructing preconceived ideas about digital transformation and developing projects adapted to young people.The cultural offer is sometimes (…) -
“The Long Tail”: Cultural Diversity in the Digital Age
Tool for the design of cultural projects.
The “long tail” is one of the essential concepts of the Internet economy. Contrary to popular belief, on the Internet it is the great diversity of (…) -
Piracy: an unknown blessing for the audiovisual sector
Legal, historical, technological, economic and political elements.
“Piracy is a danger for creation, infringers must be punished”: this is the commonly accepted discourse, which directs points of view, regulatory (…) -
Reinventing cultural projects with youth?
Proposal of questions.
While public cultural action aims to reach people in their great diversity, it is clear that it is often difficult to mobilize youth. However, (…) -
Nantes métropole: “Cultural and digital mediation in common” meeting
Animation by Benoît Labourdette of a day of sharing digital mediation tools for cultural and digital mediators in the city of Nantes. September (…) -
Institut Français: Innovating in cultural policies for cinema and the relationship with the public, in the light of digital practices
Training for the Institut Français Region East Europe
To take into account the evolution of the use of moving images, in order to conceive adapted cultural proposals, motivating for the public, and in (…) -
Growing up with culture : “The contribution of digital technology in cultural mediation”
Conference by Benoît Labourdette about cultural mediation with digital tools, on the example of the travelling projections within the framework of (…) -
The internet stage for cultural institutions
(text written in 2006, before the advent of social networks and cultural proposals such as the Arte website for example) New Internet IssuesThe (…) -
What is “the audience” in the world of culture? Hypotheses.
Definitions of the cultural institution and the cultural milieu (text written in 2006).Here is my vision, personal and subjective, on which I (…)
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OPC: “Culture, youth and digital” training
Designing new modalities for cultural and educational projects. March 2022.
A new concept of internship for cultural professionals, in order to build an opening to the public who have deserted the public and associative (…) -
“Involving young people in summer cultural projects: issues, avenues of work, proposals”
Webinar hosted by Benoît Labourdette (Thursday, March 21, 2024, 9am-10am).
“Young people” are the main target of summer cultural projects in towns, villages and suburbs. And yet, professionals in the cultural, educational (…) -
Culture and politics: the forgotten lesson of sanitary totalitarianism Reflections on the submission of the cultural sector in the face of authority.
In 2025, the French cultural sector is alarmed by the rise of the Rassemblement National. However, its behavior during the Covid period reveals a (…) -
Helping professionals design new types of projects adapted to the needs of young people Laboratory for an original training and project development program.
In the face of young people’s indifference toward institutional culture, I propose exploring an innovative training framework aimed at helping (…) -
The value of cultural practices for young people Towards a coherent, cross-functional youth culture policy.
Cultural practices, whether traditional or digital, are essential to young people’s development. It seems important to me to open up reflection on (…)
