Creating to think

A French-Finnish meeting at L’Alhambra in Marseille on 4 May 2026, as part of the Erasmus+ Visual Thinkers project.

On 4 May 2026, I facilitated a professional meeting at L’Alhambra in Marseille, organised by the Image Clé association as part of the European Erasmus+ Visual Thinkers project. Around fifteen French professionals from cinema, cultural mediation, (…)

Analyze your project using the Fribourg Declaration

Working method

How to set in motion an approach open to cultural rights, that is to say, to put more democracy in the projects and the relationship with the public? A good way to start is to analyze your project according to the 8 cultural rights proposed by (…)

Workshop “Tools, games and workshops for image education” - Images en bibliothèques

A story of the session “How to run a video production workshop differently”, led by Benoît Labourdette.

Images en bibliothèques has launched a new course, designed by Florian Lecron, for professionals in the library, film, education and culture sectors. I contributed to the design of the course, and led the final session: light, flexible mediation (…)

Dilapidation of resources in supply logic

For a democratic revolution of cultural practices.

Faced with the crisis in the cultural sector, it is urgent to shift from a top-down supply logic to a culture of connection and listening, inspired by digital practices. Traditional supply logic versus the digital modelThe cultural field is (…)

Is Culture Serving the Public?

Reflections on the dead ends of French cultural policy.

Do the 4 billion euros of the national culture budget truly serve the general interest? This question deserves to be asked pointedly, as budget cuts continue to accumulate. On the ground, committed professionals who have long been asking this (…)

Algorithms and Cultural Rights

How algorithms, far from confining us, implement cultural rights through democratic discoverability based on metadata.

Algorithms are regularly criticized as tools that supposedly lock us into “filter bubbles.” We must free ourselves from them, we are told. Yet when we use a music streaming platform like Spotify or Deezer and it offers us effortless musical (…)

A new season with 220 voices

The story of a morning on young people’s cultural practices, facilitated for the 220 staff members of the culture department of Laval, on 2 September 2026.

The “Cultures pour tous” department of Laval and Laval Agglomération entrusted me with facilitating its back-to-work gathering, a full morning devoted to the cultural practices of 15-25 year olds. 150 people were expected, 220 came, from the (…)

The Accelerated Eye

Manifesto for a new ecology of the gaze.

What if speed were not the enemy of culture, but the instrument of a new form of sensitive intelligence? A radical reappropriation of our right to the work that disrupts established cultural hierarchies. Acceleration as an act of creation: moving (…)

On Being a Good Enough Professional

Cultural rights require respect for everyone, not everyone’s approval. On the projections that cultural professionals attract, on the fair measure of their responsibility, and on methods to prepare for it.

In 1987, Bruno Bettelheim published “A Good Enough Parent”, inviting parents to give up the ideal of the perfect parent in order to remain genuinely available to their child. I propose to transpose this renunciation to the cultural professions: (…)

Nuit Blanche at Vitry-sur-Seine

Participatory touring screening/performance/animated film.

During Nuit Blanche 2025 in Vitry-sur-Seine, the itinerant projection workshop transformed a multidisciplinary day into a collective and improvised artistic experience. A day of artistic convergencesNuit Blanche, a major cultural event (…)

Cultural rights and preservation of digital heritage

Bernard Stiegler’s technical philosophy sheds political light.

Have you ever tried to find a video you loved on YouTube from ten years ago? A blog post that made an impression on you? Your friends’ photos on MySpace? There’s a good chance this content has vanished. The Internet Archive’s “Vanishing Culture” (…)

Formalizing the informal

Informality, essential to learning, resists structure while calling for it. How to tame it.

The absence of informal aspects in distance learning forces us to rethink its fundamental nature. This constraint becomes a laboratory for innovation, developing methods that transcend the limitations of in-person training. The paradoxical (…)

Cultural Rights and Digital Discoverability

For a cultural policy adapted to digital spaces.

Faced with the failure of many institutional digital cultural strategies, cultural rights and its corollary cultural democracy seem to me to be very constructive tools. Here’s how. Limits and opportunities of digital discoverability policies (…)

“On the beach of my imagination” : video installation in the hospital

Immersive device: permanent video installation at the Jacques Monod Hospital in Flers (Normandy - 2022).

Accounts of the issues at work in an art for health project. Every morning, the big wall of the waiting room of the hospital in Flers lights up by itself. Video images of nature, calm and serene, are projected there all day long. It is a space of (…)

A clear conscience as a system

When the cultural sector funds its own critique without changing its practices.

The most resilient structures of domination are sometimes the ones their beneficiaries believe they are fighting. The subsidised performing arts sector, of which I am part, offers a ground for observing this, and I want to share that observation (…)

Beyond Mobilizing Audiences: Building Democratic Narratives

Rethinking the link between cultural institutions and citizens through collective storytelling.

Cultural structures struggle to mobilize audiences. Rather than perfecting communication strategies, I explore here a different path: that of democratic narrative as a tool for legitimizing and transforming the cultural sector. The diagnosis of a (…)

Creative Freedom and Cultural Rights

A dialectic at the heart of cultural policies.

French cultural policy today finds itself at the crossroads of two fundamental principles, both enshrined in law: creative freedom and cultural rights, which everything seems to oppose. How can they be reconciled? Two pillarsCreative freedom, (…)

Instituting oneself in one’s rights

Having a right is not enough to be able to exercise it. Cultural rights find their method in institutional psychotherapy and institutional pedagogy: creating the institution with people, rather than bringing them into an institution that is already built.

Everyone has the right to enter a library or a museum, just as everyone has the right to vote, and yet many people never exercise these rights. My argument here is that what is missing is not legal but institutional, in the symbolic and psychic (…)

Collective film shot in a movie theater

Creative participation method.

Giving a voice in a creative way to the spectators of a movie theater, before the screening of a film.I put this proposal into practice in the framework of the Feminist Film Festival of the city of Les Lilas in October 2022. I share the method (…)

"Create your own film on the memory of the neighborhood in Villejuif

Presentation of the project by Benoît Labourdette to the Villejuif City Council on February 9, 2023 (5’53s).

On February 9, 2023, the “citizen hour” of the Villejuif (Val de Marne) city council was devoted to culture for all in the city. Several projects were presented, including “Create your film on the memory of the neighborhood”, a film-making (…)

Theatre and Life

Overturning representation.

Our social life is already a staging, but we have forgotten it, and it is that forgetting that freezes it. Theatre does not exist to represent that life a second time; it exists to overturn our representations and to make us see that they are (…)

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 professionals rethink their cultural approaches. This involves deconstructing preconceived notions and (…)

“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 and social fields know just how difficult it can be to mobilize them, and thus to successfully (…)

“Culture differently: postures and methods for tomorrow”

“L’expert du jeudi”: lecture by Benoît Labourdette for the Cultures du Cœur network (March 26, 2026).

On March 26, 2026, I gave a talk for the national network of Cultures du Cœur, as part of their “L’expert du jeudi” format, a regular videoconference that allows regional coordinators across the network to step back from their daily practice and (…)

Uprooted

A film by Benoît Labourdette (4’01s, 2021).

To see oneself in front of the roots of a tree.

Legitimizing unfamiliar cultural practices

Anthropology of the future.

To foster intercultural dialogue, we need to legitimize cultural practices that are unknown to us, without ranking them above our own. This openness is essential for building bridges between different realities, as shown by the example of young (…)

An advocacy document written by twelve people in one afternoon

The story and method of the collective writing workshop I facilitated on 6 July 2026 at the BnF, during the presentation day of the national project for the future of audiovisual media in public libraries.

During the presentation day of the national project for the future of audiovisual media in libraries, on 6 July 2026 at the BnF, I facilitated a workshop to write an advocacy document aimed at elected officials. Here I describe what this (…)

The specter of the other

From anxious dehumanization to confident recognition.

How can the other, a subject of rights, become a threatening figure? A reflection born from a confrontation with reality, beyond the fantasies and prejudices that our fears construct. The genesis of the fantasy of the other as a threatMy (…)

“Media College” platform for Périfééries

Creation of a digital collective intelligence tool.

To meet a need for creative, intellectual emulation and the production of ideas for one of the axes of the Saint-Denis (93) city’s bid for the title of European Capital of Culture 2028, the best way for me was to create a digital tool for (…)

Monument

The White Paper on Cultural Decentralisation

Material for Dialogue and Self-Transformation.

In late March 2026, the Observatoire des politiques culturelles (the French Cultural Policies Observatory) published a White Paper compiling contributions from some forty national networks on the future of cultural decentralisation. Rather than (…)

Democratisation or cultural democracy: what these two words do to theatre

Why the houses of subsidised theatre do not look like their city, and what cultural rights make it possible to change.

Cultural democratisation and cultural democracy resemble each other and name two different projects. Retracing the history of the first with socio-historian Marjorie Glas, then unfolding the second through cultural rights, helps to understand why (…)

“Cultural participation”: interview with Benoît Labourdette.

Interview with Benoît Labourdette (4’39s, 2020).

Video presentation of Benoît Labourdette’s approach to the democratic dimension of cultural action.

Domination at the Heart of Culture

How laudatory terms mask power relations in the cultural sector.

The praise we bestow upon “great artists” reveals, beneath its flattering appearances, a structure of domination. Behind admiration lies the legitimization of a power that operates against cultural democracy. The Vocabulary of Admiration as the (…)

Cultural rights and professional postures

Tools for the concrete implementation of cultural rights.

Cultural rights, stemming from the Fribourg Declaration (2007), represent a major advancement for cultural democracy. However, their practical implementation remains a challenge, as they are often perceived as too theoretical. This text explores (…)

The skill as a work of art

Writing not a work but a way of doing, transmissible to a machine: an artistic form is quietly being born, and it has ancestors.

Among everything that artists can create with artificial intelligences, a new form is discreetly appearing: the skill, a text that teaches a machine a way of doing. Writing one’s method rather than one’s work places this practice within a history (…)

John Dewey : an inspirer of cultural rights?

Sharing my interest in an inspiring personality.

The notion of “cultural rights” is increasingly present in the debates within the cultural sector. They are seen by many as being at the heart of the issues and processes of change in the field of culture. But they are controversial, their very (…)

White Rabbit

You are in a position of domination. Now what?

Artists and cultural mediators who work in schools occupy, as a matter of fact, a socially dominant position in relation to the students. Denying it does not remove it, and what can be done with it is rarely worked on.

Artist status, cultural capital, class codes, all of this enters the room before the first word is spoken and weighs on what students will dare to do. I propose here concrete ways of working with this position rather than concealing it, (…)

The Free Institution

Opening spaces for creation outside the logics of cultural domination.

For thirty-five years, in response to the systems of domination that structure the cultural field, I have been proposing an alternative approach: the free institution, a framework that legitimizes creation without imposing hierarchy or (…)

Inhabiting before habitability

Baptiste Morizot and Laurent Neyret want to place habitability at the top of the law, alongside freedom and dignity. I believe they set it up as a precondition, when it can only come at the end of the ways of inhabiting a place, where co-resilience and cultural rights come into play.

In a short book published in spring 2026 in Gallimard’s “Tracts” series, the philosopher Baptiste Morizot and the legal scholar Laurent Neyret propose making habitability the cardinal value of this century’s law. I share their aim, but I resist (…)

The artist as guarantor

We think that being an artist means deciding. I believe instead that being an artist means holding the place of the one who opens others to creation, and answering for what makes it possible.

When an artist is invited into a collective project, we expect them to decide. I propose another answer to the question of what it means to be an artist: to be the person others follow and who helps them decide, because they know what creating is (…)

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 troubling propensity for submission that questions its capacity for future resistance. The cultural (…)

Educating about images, organising disagreement

Practical concepts and tools for building a shared understanding through images.

A detailed account of the lecture given on 10 June 2026 at the Archives départementales de Loire-Atlantique, for the Grandir avec la culture network: cultural rights, regimes of images, critical thinking and concrete devices, to build common (…)

TMNLab: “Digital technology is not a subject that deserves a position for or against...” - Benoît Labourdette

Podcast of the meeting with Benoît Labourdette at the TMNLab café on March 9, 2023 (1h08’).

At the invitation of Anne Le Gall, exchange with Benoît Labourdette on innovative and agile working methods for the cultural sector, thanks to digital tools, for a change of posture and openness to the interests of audiences, young people in (…)

Citizen contribution beyond the cultural field

Carrying the contribution methods proven in the cultural field towards the co-construction of public policies, with the people concerned.

The contribution methods we practise in the cultural field hold true beyond it. We are opening a line of work to put them at the service of the co-construction of public policies (social, educational, youth, health) with the people they concern, (…)

What we avoid seeing when we defend culture

When young people are forced to go to the theater under threat of sanction, the promised emancipation can become suffered oppression.

Calls to defend funding for arts and cultural education are multiplying in the face of budget cuts. While these commitments are legitimate, they often reveal a significant “unthought”: the absence of a critical analysis of our own practices and (…)

On the role of artists

For a politics of the artist.

The political role of the artist is never neutral. Whether they want it or not, their social position and aesthetic choices reflect an engagement, conscious or unconscious, in the life of the community. Becoming aware of it and defining it allows (…)

Arming Oneself

Why the soundest professional intuitions need theoretical backing, and where to find it.

In culture, social work and care, many professionals hold positions that are right, yet that they cannot put into words. Research has established that this silent knowledge is real knowledge; it nevertheless carries almost no weight in an (…)

Symbolization as a tool for mobilization

When the collective and digital traces build cultural engagement.

Faced with an abundance of digital cultural practices, cultural venues struggle to mobilize “audiences.” I argue here that this difficulty does not stem from a lack of attention, but from insufficient differentiation in what is offered. (…)

OPC Media: “What if we changed our posture?”

How can we learn to consider the richness of teenage digital practices and avoid giving in to preconceived ideas?

How can we learn to consider the richness of teenagers’ digital practices and not give in to preconceived ideas? For Benoît Labourdette, if we want to design cultural projects that are attentive to the aspirations of young people, and therefore (…)

Inquiring in the spirit of cultural rights

Territorial diagnoses, evaluations, dissertations, theses. So that the way we study a cultural situation puts into practice the cultural rights it takes as its object, and how to go about it.

A territorial diagnosis, an evaluation or a dissertation is about people, about their practices and about what they say. When we claim to work in the name of cultural rights, we have to bring them to life in our method, and not only describe (…)

Social Networks and Cultural Institutions: Breaking the Strategic Deadlock

Towards a digital policy that renounces communication in favor of citizen empowerment.

Local authorities are massively investing in their presence on social networks without questioning the relevance of this approach, and are generally losing resources in futile endeavors. Yet magnificent projects can be built there. The (…)

The logic of the gift

When giving creates a debt, and debt creates exclusion.

Giving is not a neutral gesture: a gift creates a debt in the person who receives it, and debt installs a hierarchy. When cultural institutions say they give access, open their doors, bring art to people, they place those they address in the (…)

Cultural investigation with artificial intelligence

An open, non-directive investigation method, based on spontaneous dialogues analysed by artificial intelligence, to discover what one would not have thought of looking for.

We are developing a method and a tool for cultural investigation that start from informal speech rather than from questionnaires: spontaneous dialogues, gathered over time, which artificial intelligence helps analyse without a predefined (…)

Rights Story

Un film collectif (2’42s, 2021).

Des objets parlants illustrent les huit « droits culturels ».

Cultural rights: what do they mean in practice?

Possible talks on cultural rights, for local authorities, culture departments, networks, and teams writing or revising a project.

Cultural rights have been part of French law since 2015 and 2016, they appear in almost every territorial cultural plan, and many professionals admit to me in private that they could not explain them to a colleague. Vocabulary has much to do with (…)

Raising awareness of cultural rights - Nantes métropole (September 30, 2022)

Co-design and co-hosting of a one-day event for Nantes’ cultural players.

Taking ownership of cultural rights concepts and approaches through cooperative creativityA small group of cultural players from Nantes, led by Véronique Guiho-Leroux, Head of the Publics and Cultural Citizenship Mission at the Directorate (…)

Cultural democratization, cultural democracy: situated definitions

Professionals who aim at the same horizon nonetheless define the words of their trade differently. I propose to read this divergence as a sign of coherence between each person’s position, their words and their acts.

In cultural policy, we debate the definitions of cultural democratization, cultural democracy and cultural rights as if a single one would eventually have to prevail. I propose another reading. Each of us builds our definitions from the position (…)

Why Are Cultural Actors So Fragile?

A plea for a democratic refoundation of cultural institutions in the face of political arbitrariness.

From Arcadi in Île-de-France in 2018 to the Agence culturelle Grand Est in 2025, cultural agencies are disappearing into indifference. Beyond the observation, a reflection on the conditions for a sector’s resilience. When Cultural Institutions (…)

“Cultural rights” creative writing seminar

Master Arts du Spectacle, université de Caen Normandie 2021-2022-2023-2024.

A practical seminar on digital writing, with the theme of cultural rights. Students approach writing in the contemporary sense of the term, through the creation of a thematic collective website. Seminar presentation textA hands-on approach to (…)

I just watched my movie “The Break”, and I think it’s really good. At the time, I didn’t realize it, I just did it.

In fact, this film is going somewhere.« Break ».

Everyone is talented, I realize that all the time when I get people to do things.

What makes the difference between being talented and doing creative work is the fact of going to the end of things, producing, sharing.

The desacralized aura of live performance

From the domination of aura to shared experience.

Aura is the power that radiates from a work and seizes us, and it is also what places us in a position of being dominated by it. The digital has shifted that aura from the original to its reproduction, and in doing so has desacralized the moment (…)

Dignity and Freedom

For an Ethics of Emancipation

Human dignity is not decreed, it is conquered. Through the authentic exercise of our freedom and our capacity to emancipate ourselves from the norms that confine us, we establish our own dignity and that of the collective. Philosophical (…)

Video chaptering: Online summary of the Meetings on participative creation 2022

Théâtre de la Poudrerie / observatory of cultural policies.

Accompaniment in the collection of media and their editorialization, then realization of the web page of the “deliverable” of the third edition of the biennial of the participative creation organized by the Théâtre de la Poudrerie of Sevran. The (…)

Regulating the Regulators Too

Cultural rights call into question what our profession takes for granted, and this questioning unsettles even the people who chose to be trained. Training courses and support programmes run in their name need instituted spaces where the process itself, facilitation included, can be put up for discussion.

In a training course or a support programme on cultural rights, each person present is asked to re-examine assumptions that are part of their professional identity, and this re-examination produces resistance, projections onto the person (…)

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 offer. By the Observatoire des Politiques Culturelles. Course led by Benoît Labourdette.Trainee (…)

Holding on

Cultural venues and social networks

How to turn audiences into ambassadors rather than chasing followers.

Cultural venues are on social media out of obligation, without a clear strategy or convincing results. We need to rethink their presence: no longer communicating vertically, but nurturing audience sharing. A presence to be questionedCultural (…)

Webinar presenting the findings of the AI Monitoring Committee of the Forum des images

Humanize AI rather than robotize humans.

For eleven months, philosophers, artists, educators, institutional leaders, and corporate experts worked together within the Artificial Intelligence Oversight Committee, launched by the Forum des Images and TUMO Paris. I facilitated this (…)

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 cultural hierarchical system, a comfort zone for professionals, which cuts off cultural players (…)

The Fribourg Declaration analysis tool

Analyse your project through the eight cultural rights of the Fribourg Declaration, and draw from it a working basis for the team.

We are developing a tool that guides a team through the analysis of its project using the eight rights of the Fribourg Declaration: the project is described, examined right by right, and the tool produces a written synthesis that serves as the (…)

Thanks to all these books to which I give myself access, I have access to an immense amount of information, which allows me to advance very very quickly in creation, in knowledge and in work.

Reinventing youth reception in cinemas

Remote training for cinema operators in Lot-et-Garonne.

How can we transform our cinemas into spaces for authentic encounters with 15-25 year-olds? This question guided an intense training session with professionals brought together by the Ligue de l’enseignement of Lot-et-Garonne. A pedagogical (…)

OPC : The digital transition in professional and amateur cultural practices

Master 2 “Management of cultural projects” (Science Po Grenoble - OPC)

The digital practices of citizens are changing the meaning of cultural proposals, both public and private. The paradigm of access to culture has shifted and remains in motion. A training day to provide tools to consider cultural projects with (…)

Authorizing Creation

For a radical democratization of the creative act.

How can artistic creation become a political act of collective emancipation? By carrying within itself, in its form and process, the authorization for everyone to risk themselves in it. Learning by doing, or the genesis of my practiceMy desire (…)

Proper time

“We never have the time” does not describe a shortage but a dispossession. Proposals for giving people back their proper time, in the cultural field and not only there.

In the cultural sector as elsewhere, this sentence comes up again and again: we don’t have the time. It serves to explain why we don’t tell the story of what we do, why we don’t cooperate, why we don’t think. Yet time-use surveys show that we (…)

“The future machine” website

Design, production and animation of a resource site for the contents of a tour of creative workshops.

A website designed to implement cultural rights in form and content.“The machine to travel into the future” : www.ateliersnumeriques-culturesducœur.org/2023During the summer of 2023, Cultures du cœur proposed to eight social structures in (…)

Dominating Intelligence and Democratic Intelligence: Two Regimes of Thought

From Geddes to Freire, Another Politics of Thought.

A thought can be transmitted in two ways. In the first, someone states their ideas from a position of height, and those who receive them, even when the ideas are valuable, are placed in a position of being dominated, their freedom diminished. In (…)

Will Heritage Still Be Part of Our Lives in 2045?

Digitising collections is not enough: the challenge is to enable their appropriation by citizens.

Cultural practices in 2045 will be as different from ours as ours are from those of 2005. At that time, YouTube did not exist, no one had a smartphone, and content creation was reserved for professionals. For heritage to remain alive in future (…)

Access

A collective film led par Benoît Labourdette (3’22s, 2026).

In this collective film, the participants lend their voices to the objects in a museum that nobody looks at: a piece of equipment that calls itself beautiful, accessible and “democratic”, an artwork laid on the floor that visitors trample without (…)

“Territorial approach, participation, youth and digital technology”: interview of Benoît Labourdette by Serge Saada (52’, 2021)

Observatory of cultural mediation in the social field.

As part of the Observatory of cultural mediation in the social field, Serge Saada interviewed Benoît Labourdette on the impact of the proliferation of digital images on young people and the public in general. Here is the soundtrack of the video. (…)

Youth and culture: for a radical change in posture

Giving young people the power to create, not just consume culture.

How can cultural institutions break out of their chronic failure with young people? By abandoning condescension to embrace a genuine cultural democracy based on trust and creative autonomy. I was invited on October 17, 2025 to speak about youth (…)

Experimenting together to become autonomous: seven years with the cultural affairs department of Les Lilas

Ville des Lilas (Seine-Saint-Denis, France). An overall account of a long-term support of the city’s cultural affairs department, from 2017 to 2024, within the framework of a cooperation agreement between the city and the department of Seine-Saint-Denis.

From 2017 to 2024, I worked alongside the cultural affairs department of Les Lilas on youth, mediation and digital practices. Workshops, training sessions, a video platform, business tools, a “mediation compass”: all these actions were held (…)

Defending culture differently: methods for tomorrow

Free book by Benoît Labourdette (PDF, 520 pages, 2025). BIP Éditions.

Download the book for freeThis book, based on my regular posts on my website, is addressed to those who work daily in the French cultural sector and who, faced with the profound transformations underway, are questioning the paths to its (…)

“Participatory creation as a laboratory for democracy?”

4^th edition of the biennial festival of participatory creation - Les Rencontres de la Poudrerie - Théâtre des habitants - May 16 & 17, 2025.

Les Rencontres de la Poudrerie are a moment for reflection and co-construction, at the intersection of art forms and the practice of social life. They bring together citizens, artists, elected officials, professionals from the cultural and social (…)

To make culture - From fathers to peers

Collective book under the direction of Pierre Brini and Emmanuel Vergès. Presses universitaires de Grenoble, 2021.

Findings, analyses and proposals to make cultural policies evolve towards the redefinition of their meaning in the contemporary world, towards more democracyI wrote one of the chapters of this book, “Image 2.0 - Become an author-producer”, (…)

Digital technology, a tool for mediation and cultural democracy

Webinar on Monday, October 9, 2023 from 10am to 1pm.

Restitution of the “Digital Workshops” project by Cultures du Cœur and Benoît Labourdette Production, offered as part of the Été culturel program with the support of the French Ministry of Culture.For the past 2 years, Cultures du Cœur, in (…)

Transmitting cultural rights: a question of coherence

The way a training day is facilitated already shows how much respect one has for people.

Training people in cultural rights means transmitting knowledge to people while affirming, at the same time, that their culture and their knowledge are legitimate. The way one facilitates (the layout of the room, the instructions, the room left (…)

On the Fragility of Corporatism

When the defense of cultural privileges masquerades as freedom of expression.

The recent condemnation of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region has aroused enthusiasm among performing arts professionals. Yet, this provisional legal victory masks, in my view, a real problem: the corporatist defense of a caste at the expense of (…)

Needle in the hay

Helping young people and professionals to speak out: “Cultures and youth policies” national meeting

Observatory of Cultural Policies / Villeurbanne (TNP, May 11 & 12, 2023).

As part of the Rencontres nationales “Cultures et politiques de la jeunesse” (“Cultures and youth policies”), which brought the year of the French Capital of Culture to a close in Villeurbanne, I was commissioned by the Observatoire des (…)

Freedom and Cultural Rights

A renewed approach to democratic dignity, through the contribution of two new rights.

Cultural rights, seemingly guarantors of human dignity, are emptied of their meaning when they fail to forcefully articulate the question of freedom. Their full recognition requires renewed vigilance, particularly against any authoritarian (…)

Art and artists as society’s infrastructure

What cultural rights oblige us to say about the political function of artistic practice.

A society without artists cannot stand. The claim is easy to state and hard to argue for. Here I try to ground it, by bringing together a proposal from Australia, the surveys on amateur artistic practice, and what cultural rights teach us about (…)

Legitimate participation as the horizon of cultural events

From legitimacy to participate: how cultural rights transform our practices.

Cultural rights are often misunderstood. Their strength lies in their capacity to transform our practices: moving from a top-down programming logic to the creation of spaces where everyone can legitimately contribute. Legitimacy as foundation: (…)

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, young people (from children to young adults) have an intense cultural consumption, especially online in (…)

Cultural rights and the “fight” against the far right

How to rebuild democracy in our cultural spaces.

How the discourse of “fighting against the far right” stigmatizes voters, compromises democratic dialogue and becomes hate speech. It would be better to “fight for democracy” while respecting everyone’s dignity. Warlike representationsPeople (…)

The Fertile Margin

Reframe cultural and therapeutic practices within the current reality, where digital culture has become the dominant culture.

Publicly funded culture has become marginal in the face of digital practices. Rather than lamenting this, this article proposes to embrace that margin and turn it into the most vibrant space for our action. We are marginalsCulture is people’s (…)

Have respect for my work.

What Professional Artists Can Learn from the Amateur Model

On the standard set on the process, the reciprocity between stage and house, and the confusion between artistic quality and domination.

We readily accept that amateurs have something to learn from professionals. The reverse seems less obvious, even slightly provocative. Drawing on an article by Sonia Leplat about amateur practices, I want to show what professionalisation erodes (…)

Activating collective intelligence with digital tools

Method and stakes, from the analysis of a contribution session held on 11 June 2026

How does one actually activate the collective intelligence of a group? Drawing on the analysis of a session run over videoconference and supported by a digital contribution platform, I set out the conditions that make such approaches work, from (…)

Cultural Rights and Digital Technology

Rethinking digital tools in service of cultural democracy.

How can digital technology become a lever for cultural emancipation rather than an instrument of dependence? I propose a digital implementation of the eight fundamental rights, to open concrete democratic pathways. From democratization to (…)

Truth and truthful religion

When scientific certainty becomes dogma.

Some researchers believe they hold absolute truth, while obscuring questions that disturb them. This dominating posture reveals a form of “veridist religion,” which denies the complexity of reality. The manufacture of consensus and the erasure of (…)

The Trace as Artistic Act

A definition of art through experience, with John Dewey, Leibniz and Nicolas Frize.

In this article I look for a definition of art as lived experience that transforms through action, drawing on John Dewey. Nicolas Frize’s unrecorded concerts and my own documentation practices, almost opposite in method, then shed light on what (…)

Working with Artists in the Social Field

An account of a training session for Cultures du Cœur on setting up artistic workshops in collaboration with artists.

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 (…)

Making Room for Adolescents: Rethinking Our Approaches in Cultural Action

From democratisation to cultural democracy.

Cultural action and mediation with adolescents challenge the foundations of our practices: between framework and transgression, between physical presence and digital practices, what place is there for horizontality? Two models of cultural policy (…)

Video platform “Connection” for MPAA

Design, construction and animation of a collaborative video platform.

To animate the living story of a cultural project of territory, in the present and for the future, via a dedicated collaborative video platform: https://connexion.mpaa.fr/.The Maison des Pratiques Artistiques Amateur (MPAA) in Paris proposes (…)

The sovereign contribution wall

An online contribution wall whose contents belong to you, can be exported in full and remain accessible over time.

We are developing an online contribution wall: a space where a group posts texts, images, sounds and videos from a phone or a computer, during a workshop, a consultation, a training course or a participatory project. With sovereign hosting and (…)

Balance and supports

A method for the sustainability of projects.

Based on the way the human body balances itself, for a sustainable approach to project management.Observation of nature is often very good advice for engineering projects (architecture, aviation, textiles, IT, neural networks for example...). (…)

The myth of recognition through cultural democratization

Rethinking artistic value beyond systems of domination.

Artistic recognition is less about talent than about a social game that some refuse to participate in. A reflection on alternative paths to creative legitimacy. The meritocratic illusion of cultural democratizationCultural democratization, in (…)

Giant digital brainstorming

Design and implementation of a digital collective intelligence tool.

Method of activating a vast contribution for the axes of a cultural project. The needIn the solidarity I had with the city of Saint-Denis’ bid to become European Capital of Culture 2028, Juliette Bompoint, the general delegate, had told me (…)

The marginality of cultural institutions

Lucidity of a paradigm shift.

Traditional cultural institutions, once central, have become marginal in the face of digital practices that now dominate citizens’ attention. This paradigm shift demands a reinvention of public cultural service—more humble but potentially more (…)

Research-action “Image Education 2.1”

Collaborative action-research project led by Benoît Labourdette production in 2018 and 2019, to develop the synergy between teenage cinema attendance and cultural action.In co-production and co-piloting with Arcadi, ACRIF, Images Forum and (…)

“Women and Architecture”: in Villetaneuse, residents film the women who made their town

Cut-paper animation film workshops, held in February and March 2026 in Villetaneuse with the town’s cultural action department and the Annie Ernaux media library, around nine women who built or marked the town.

A travelling exhibition about nine women who built, named or defended Villetaneuse, five cut-paper filmmaking workshops in four places across the town, a public screening on 7 March 2026, and an online space where everyone can find the films. I (…)

Towards the cultural experience

Essay, by Emmanuel Vergès

In the construction of cultural proposals, focus attention on the lived and shared experience. Short essay on the philosophy of action and the function of art.Benoît Labourdette’s work, between By my window and street projections, makes me (…)

What words do to cultural policy

My situated account of a week-long symposium at Cerisy, and of what I learned there.

For a week, at Cerisy, researchers, artists, elected officials and practitioners confronted their ways of thinking about cultural policy. I offer here a crossing of that week through its words, because that is where everything is decided. By the (…)

When Cultural Professionals Question Their Approaches to Adolescents

Reflections on a day of professional cross-fertilization.

An interprofessional day organized by the Réseau Jeune Public au Centre at Équinoxe, Scène nationale de Châteauroux on November 19, 2025, which I co-designed and co-facilitated, brought together one hundred and fifty professionals. Here is an (…)

Keys to the Kingdom

“Careful, it’s slippery”

Making an ABC of the words at work in cultural policies.

At the Cerisy conference « Transformations of Cultural Policies », in June 2026, I built an online ABC of the words that were debated over six days. This is the story of how the object came to be, starting from a joke in the room, and of how a (…)

“Cultural Class” : creation of a photographic exhibition with a CM2 class

Lille Institute of Photography.

As part of the City of Lille’s “Classe Culture” program, I accompanied a class of 5th graders to the Institut pour la photographie to create, mediate and install a photographic exhibition, in two locations and digitally, as part of the Lille 3000 (…)

Need

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 and professional choices. And yet, the very people who hold this discourse contradict it in their (…)

The Representation of One’s Cultural Role

What the Association of French Mayors survey reveals about the cultural imaginary of local authorities.

What do we presuppose when we speak of “audiences distant from culture”? The AMF survey, read as an anthropological document, unveils the unexamined assumptions of a cultural policy struggling to become democratic. The good news of a surveyThe (…)

Raisons d’Agir Festival: When Collage Gives Voice to Ideas

A photography workshop at the Le Local community centre (Poitiers).

Strangers coming together around scissors, glue and quotes from Bourdieu. And leaving with images that say something about who they are. Workshop produced in collaboration with Guillaume Cuny and the team at Le Local community centre.On (…)

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 representations of the world? And what could we take into account to evolve the cultural field toward greater (…)

Engagement in Time

What matters in cultural mediation is not the duration of actions, but the quality of shared time.

The duration of cultural actions is often considered a guarantee of quality. I defend here a different approach: what transforms people lies in the intensity of shared presence, not in the quantity of time spent together. Duration is not a (…)

Synthesis of the seminar: “What pedagogy by and for cultural rights?”

Organized by UFISC, Opale, Réseau Culture 21, Observatoire des politiques culturelles, Laboratoire des droits culturels and Ligue de l’enseignement (February 6, 2025).

Workshop to find out what stage the partners had reached in their work on the “cultural rights” certification referential project in the context of professional training, to co-construct together (using the open forum method) reflections on (…)

Enlarging the Silo

An account of the collective intelligence process carried out with Le Silo, in southern Essonne, from May to June 2026.

Around a reinforced concrete grain silo built in 1907, inhabitants, artists and heritage professionals worked together, from May to June 2026, to lay the foundations of a museography about ways of inhabiting the world. This is the story of how (…)

Corporate memory at the service of cultural rights

Rethinking the relationship between cultural venues and people.

Cultural institutions, through their failure to collect and care for data, forget those they welcome, denying their dignity. This amnesia contradicts cultural rights: how can we build a relationship without memory? Institutional Amnesia in the (…)

Culture and political power: from a marriage of convenience to a consummated divorce

From Louis XIV to Rachida Dati: anatomy of a rupture between subsidized culture and political legitimacy.

Culture is no longer the theater of power. Once an instrument of political influence, it now struggles to justify its public funding. How can we renew democratic dialogue in a context where cultural practices have profoundly evolved, under the (…)

The heroisation of the artist

How the story of vocation, genius and revolt serves to distribute power within the cultural sector, and why artists have much to gain by stepping out of it.

The theatre world speaks readily of vocation, of singularity, of genius. This heroic story serves to distribute power, and it suits us: following a rebellious artist gives the feeling of being committed without risking anything, when that artist, (…)

Cultural data and cultural rights

For an inclusive heritage democracy in the digital age.

Citizen cultural data is tomorrow’s heritage. Their recognition and preservation constitute a major democratic challenge for building a constructive collective memory for future democracies. The technical foundations of an interoperable digital (…)

Website: Artistic and digital practices for young people

Web resource platform for Act’art (Seine-et-Marne cultural agency).

Advice, development and support for the appropriation of a web resource platform for cultural professionals in the Seine-et-Marne department.The Act’art association, a cultural agency of the Seine-et-Marne département, asked Benoît Labourdette (…)

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

A film by Benoît Labourdette (1’30s, silent, 2017, pseudonym: Emile C.).

To reconstitute the foundations of the ethics of our societies.

Video platform “The digital factory in Les Lilas”

Video platform for a city.

Co-construction, development and transmission of skills for a local video platform designed to promote the productions of the inhabitantsThe digital factory in Les Lilas | The digital creations of the inhabitants of Les Lilas. (…)

15-25 year-olds have not deserted politics

A survey of recent research on the politicisation of young adults, and concrete ways of bringing democracy to life with them.

Young adults vote intermittently, express themselves first of all online, and young women and young men now diverge in their political orientations. I bring together here the recent research that documents these shifts, by Anne Muxel, Vincent (…)

“When it comes to culture, there exists today on the left a philosophically reactionary mode of thought that fails to recognise itself as such”

Interview of Benoît Labourdette by Cyril Lemieux (revue {Germinal} #8 – May 2024).

This interview appeared in May 2024 in issue 8 of the journal Germinal, devoted to critical culture and to the relationship, long essential and then neglected, between socialism and culture. Founded in 2021, Germinal brings together young (…)

Nothing

Everyone is an artist, really.

Only, some assume it more than others and choose to use their creation in the exchange with others. This is the only difference, there is no hierarchy, there is a social choice, to assume or not.

Cultural Mediation as a Device for Symbolic Emancipation

Methodological Principles for a Horizontal Approach to Collective Creation.

Lived experience radically transforms our relationship to thought. Cultural mediation does not consist of transmitting knowledge but of creating the conditions for shared symbolization. I propose a conceptualization of the methodological (…)

Itinéraire bis, the path of cultural rights

Action research conducted by the MPAA (Paris).

Accompaniment in the animation, production of traces and fabrication of the web platform resources of the research-action “Itinéraire bis, chemin des droits culturels” led by the MPAA between 2021 and 2023, and piloted by its director Sonia (…)

What defines us as human beings

Cultivating empathy and sensitivity in the age of artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence has now occupied our daily lives since the launch of ChatGPT on November 30, 2022. How can we produce critical thinking about what is happening to us? That is to say, how can we think for ourselves, without taking refuge (…)

“Artistic creation and digital heritage”: conference by Benoît Labourdette

Bibliothèque Forney (Paris) on Thursday, April 28, 2022 from 7:30 pm to 9 pm. Free admission.

Awareness and responsibility in the present with regard to our digital heritage are the guarantee of the construction of our humanity.Human beings have always told the story of their sensitivities and their visions of the world by all possible (…)

Creating with people

Methods of cultural mediation for shared creation.

This text brings together the principles that underpin my approach to cultural mediation. They are not rules. They are reference points, shaped by twenty-five years of practice with very different audiences – autistic children, Roma teenagers, (…)

Audiovisual media in libraries is a political subject

Why support for audiovisual media in libraries begins with local political championing of libraries.

As part of the national project for the future of audiovisual media in public libraries, a series of hearings described as “political” was conducted in June 2026. Here I set out what they taught us, together with the personal convictions I bring (…)

Conference: “EAC and cultural rights: convergences to be identified and implemented”

Dans le cadre des Rencontres territoriales “Artistic and cultural education & Territorial cultural projects” (Foix, February 5, 2025).

How can cultural rights be a tool for better implementation of artistic and cultural education projects? And how we can identify convergences between the two, and how one can help the other, or the other can help the other!As part of the (…)

The presumption of competence

A definition of cultural rights: they address people in positions of power, and ask them to presume the competence of others.

Cultural rights are often presented as rights of access to culture, which each person could claim. I propose here a definition that reverses this reading. Cultural rights are addressed first and foremost to people in positions of power, and ask (…)

Welcoming radicalized people to cultural venues

For a truly inclusive cultural democracy.

Do cultural venues filter their audiences, consciously or unconsciously, according to criteria of radicalism? This question reveals our contradictions about violence and extremism. Proposals for exercising democracy. What is a radicalized person? (…)

Man

The Périfééries project’s heritage council of influence

Facilitating collective intelligence in a short space of time.

As part of Saint-Denis’s bid to become European Capital of Culture 2028, I led a collective intelligence session to collect proposals on the subject of “Making local residents active players, from the production to the editorialization 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 questioned in a brutal way by the “young” public. A questioning that manifests itself in particular (…)

It is the educator and not the child who needs pedagogy

Podcast on the subject of pedagogical posture.

Contrary to popular belief, the most effective way to help people learn is not to pass on knowledge and skills, but to put yourself in a position to learn. Why is this? In this one-minute podcast, we explain why, and suggest a concrete (…)

Robert

Self-effacing

An incredible talent

Why put creations in competition hurts the people social work is meant to support, and how to design project endings that bring people together instead of ranking them.

Talent contests, prizes and rankings are spreading through the social and medico-social field, presented as a valorization of the people being supported. Drawing on social psychology and on cultural rights, I argue here that any competition (…)

“On the ineffectiveness of our works in real life”.

Commentary on the text by Eva Doumbia & Kader Attia (2023).

In July 2023, visual artist Kader Attia and director Eva Doumba published a text (in Analyse Opinion Critique) in response to the youth “riots” that followed the killing of young Nahel by a policeman. Their text questions the usefulness of (…)

The spectator’s score

Reflections on the programme note and the place it gives the audience.

The programme note, that document we read or don’t read, because it was handed to us as we entered the house and we are waiting for the show to begin, is often the first written word the institution addresses to its audience. It provides (…)

Why the power to act is so often experienced as a transgression

Two photographic creation workshops at Le Rize in Villeurbanne, with the local cultural rights groups of the Paideia programme (Réseau culture 21).

I ran these two workshops on 1 July 2026, as part of the “Developing the power to act” module of the training course for organisers of local cultural rights groups. Asked to represent the power to act in a photograph, the teams mostly (…)

Parallel universes

Nothing

Not Letting Go of the Controller

A summary and discussion of the strategy document “Making, thinking and learning when capability is no longer scarce”, published by the TUMO Center for Creative Technologies in July 2026, on education at a time when making, thinking and learning can be delegated to machines.

In July 2026, the TUMO Center for Creative Technologies published a strategy document that rethinks education, starting from one observation: artificial intelligence makes intellectual capability abundant, and what becomes scarce is authorship (…)

Definition of Cultural Mediation

An ethics of relationship in service of singular experience.

Cultural mediation is often reduced to a set of transmission techniques. Here I propose a definition that places the person at the center: an ethics of relationship creating the conditions for a singular experience. Mediation as ethics, not (…)

Reflection on the Evolution of Audiovisual Media in Libraries

For a citizen-driven heritage preservation of territorial audiovisual creations.

Libraries are facing the disappearance of physical audiovisual media. This technical transformation calls, in my view, for an anthropological redefinition of their missions (in the audiovisual field) around participatory creation and digital (…)

Visio-corporal metamorphoses: participatory artistic action at Louvre Lens

Creation of fantastic images using video projections on the body.

A pictorial account of the shared poetic creation of visio-corporeal transformations, proposed by Benoît Labourdette, with painting, drawing, video projectors, photography, cell phones and digital tools, at the Louvre Lens on Saturday, December (…)

The framework that authorizes

For a reflection on space, time, and institution in therapeutic mediation.

When we speak of a frame, we often think of what contains and what forbids. This understanding is partial. In the analytic cure as in mediation work, the frame is not first what prevents overflow. It is what makes expression possible. The whole (…)

Build antifragility for cultural projects

Methodological proposal.

What methodology should be adopted to build cultural projects that have the capacity to tame uncertainty and thus become more deeply rooted in their objectives? Methodological proposal, based on the thesis of Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the (…)

For a narrative revolution of territories

The urgency of a horizontal cultural democracy.

What if true cultural power resided in the stories we write, daily, from our positions, with our words? Each territory produces a narrative. Not the frozen and smooth one communicated by institutions alone, but a living, multiple narrative, (…)

Professional meeting “Public participation”: presentation by Benoît Labourdette

Interview of Benoît Labourdette by Jean-Yves de Lépinay (11’37s, 2020).

Sharing examples of audiovisual creation workshops conducted in the spirit of cultural rights: moving from “participation” to “interaction.”This trust we choose to put in others is a risk we take, it changes us. We take the risk of being able (…)

Artistic Legitimization, Cultural Rights, and Construction of the Individual

Between horizontality and the need for recognition.

Artistic legitimization, between traditional hierarchies and new digital forms, questions individual and collective recognition. By intersecting Dewey, Latour, and cultural rights, let’s explore how art and the mastery of symbolic objects (e.g., (…)

The True False Cultural Freedom

When defending creative freedom masks a corporatist conflict.

Faced with recent film deprogrammings by elected officials from various political sides, a collective statement expresses outrage at political interference in cultural programming. Yet this corporatist indignation obscures a structural reality (…)

Cultural summer 2022 with Cultures du coeur: “Changing horizons”.

Tour of film-making workshops in the social field.

During “l’été culturel 2022” (French Ministry of Culture), Cultures du cœur offered nine social structures around France the opportunity to take part in cut-paper animation workshops, designed and run by Benoît Labourdette, on the theme of (…)

How digital technology reshapes our relationship to the performing arts

Summary of my contribution to the Chaillot Augmenté x Rencontres TMNlab round table of 6 May 2026.

On Wednesday 6 May 2026, I was invited to speak at the round table “Audiences: how does digital technology reshape our relationship to the performing arts?”, part of the Chaillot Augmenté x Rencontres TMNlab days. I argued that digital technology (…)

Image Education and Citizenship: When Youth Professionals Rethink Their Practices

{{Reflections on the “Out-of-School Time” professional day that I co-designed with ALCA and the Gironde Departmental Council.}}

On December 2, 2025, around a hundred youth, animation, and culture professionals gathered at the MECA auditorium in Bordeaux to explore together the contemporary challenges of image education. I co-designed this day and facilitated its key (…)

Culture and youth: two professional cultures a city chose to connect

The story of the training-action programme “Getting to know each other to work better together”, carried out in Fontenay-sous-Bois from November 2024 to June 2025, at the request of the city’s cultural affairs department and youth department.

In many cities, culture teams and youth teams have to work together even though their professional cultures differ profoundly, and the service delivered to residents suffers from it. Fontenay-sous-Bois chose to invest in addressing this problem. (…)

What is a cultural policy? Why is culture political? And what is political in culture?

A critical approach to cultural policies through the lens of cultural rights.

All culture is political because it imposes rules of belonging and worldviews. Exploring this dimension illuminates the democratic stakes of cultural policies. Why is culture necessarily political?The answer is obvious. A culture represents a (…)

The political dimension of organisational frameworks

When forms contradict intentions: organising cultural democracy.

We talk about cultural democracy, horizontality, cultural rights. But the concrete frameworks we put in place often tell a very different story. This inconsistency, which I have observed for years in my own practice and in that of my peers, (…)

Rethinking youth culture

From democratization to cultural democracy.

Cultural institutions often fail to reach youth. To reverse this trend, we must move from cultural democratization to cultural democracy, recognizing the diversity of practices. The Eternal MisunderstandingIt is striking to note that Hesiod, (…)