"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 (…)

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 (…)

Not judging people’s digital practices

Non-judgment and non-hierarchization as conditions for mediation.

Judgment damages the very connection that mediation seeks to build. It goes hand in hand with a more subtle hierarchization, which places the practitioner above those they accompany. These two movements close what they claim to open. To loosen (…)

Filme Tout Court: Account of a First Collective Experience in Villetaneuse

When expert guidance creates the conditions for a successful cultural experience.

Invited as a jury member for a smartphone short film competition in Villetaneuse, I discovered how technical mishaps and collective adjustments transform an event into genuine shared learning. A Saturday in December at the Annie Ernaux Media (…)

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 (…)

Detecting “screen addiction”

The vocabulary of addiction sends us looking for teenagers’ suffering in the wrong place.

Educational teams often ask how to detect “screen addiction” in the young people they support. Yet clinical medicine recognises only one specific disorder, gaming disorder, included by the World Health Organization in its classification in 2018. (…)

The Thirty Seconds That Belong to Them

Why I let people take the time to work through their own difficulties alone.

At a public presentation marking the end of an educational project, several adults present grew anxious because the students took a few seconds to begin speaking. What is at stake in that delay is not the slowness of the students, it is the (…)

Age doesn’t really matter, because when you’re creating, you’re driven by what you have to do.

And, frankly, the pictures I was doing at 20, the music I was doing at 30, and the movies I’m doing at 40, of course I’ve come a long way, but there’s not that much of a hierarchy. So I have all the respect to have for what people younger than me (…)

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 (…)

Validation is not transformation

For the actors, mediators and teachers who lead discussions with young audiences after performances.

After a performance for a school class, the discussion often produces the expected answers, and everyone leaves with the feeling of a job well done. What has really happened, however, cannot be read from what was said. I distinguish here two (…)

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 (…)

Image’Est : Images education facing everyday image practices

As part of the Festival of documentary films “The real in sight”, Image’ is, business education to the images in Lorraine, proposed on 18 November 2016 one day of training for professionals of the education to the image, that I’ve driven, titled (…)

Supporting Young People on What Is Theirs to Live

Working on the causes of domination, not only on its effects.

Violence and inequality are effects. Their causes lie partly in the self-representation built within intimacy, where domination comes to compensate for the missing bond. Supporting young people on this ground is therefore central feminist work. (…)

What are psychosocial skills?

Defined by the World Health Organization in 1993, the term has taken hold in youth, health and justice policies. It is used far more often than it is explained.

The term appears in official circulars, calls for projects and team meetings, and many youth professionals work on these skills without naming them. I propose to define it here: where it comes from, what the French classification into nine skills (…)

Observatory of Cultural Policies: “The challenge of mediation is not in the tool, but in the use”.

Video interview of Benoît Labourdette by the Observatory of cultural policies (3’52s, 2019).

Video interview of Benoît Labourdette: why and how to conduct cultural mediations for the younger generations in the digital age.Directed by Aurélie Doulmet.

What “Pornography” Stops Us From Thinking

Educational puritanism manufactures the very taboo it claims to fight

Florian Vörös proposes that we deconstruct the category “pornography,” inherited from nineteenth-century media regulation. I take his lead onto educational ground: the moralising discourse that claims to protect young people forbids them to speak (…)

Young people have not lost their heads

Eight years of scientific follow-up of adolescents in Finland, the philosophy of Michel Serres, and the endlessly repeated trial of a youth said to have been dumbed down by digital technology.

We keep hearing that digital technology is making young people more stupid. In 2026, Finnish researchers published the results of eight years of measurements that run counter to this judgement, and recent research, read closely, is far more (…)

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 (…)

Must You Have Something to Say to Facilitate a Discussion?

Between the dream of a facilitator who would fade away and the fear of imposing a point of view, the place of the adult voice in discussions with young people is one of the knots of cultural mediation.

A facilitator who steps back does not neutralize the power relations in a group, they let them play out freely; a facilitator who imposes their vision closes thinking down. I defend here a third position, which consists in speaking in the first (…)

Why don’t young people come to us?

Possible talks on the cultural practices of 15-25 year-olds, for cultural teams, youth services, networks and local authorities.

This is the question I am asked most often, and it rarely comes alone. Behind it there is sometimes a territorial cultural plan that mentions students without knowing where to start, sometimes a hundred and fifty staff members from very different (…)

“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 red carpet

A film by Benoît Labourdette (2’07s, 1999).

Allegory on exclusion..

Shame, the invisible emotion of the adolescent spectator

What blocks teenagers’ speech in post-show discussions, when the subject touches on discrimination.

Embarrassment sometimes gets named in post-show discussions, shame never does. Yet shame produces a large share of the silences and the recited right answers that performing companies know so well. By distinguishing it from guilt and (…)

Gossip

Collective film (5’19s, 2018).

A group of objects is preparing for his departure for summer camp.

Design of a professional day on “Artistic and digital practices for young people”

Act’art, artistic and cultural action in Seine-et-Marne.

As part of its mission to promote collective intelligence by facilitating local think tanks, Act’art asked Benoît Labourdette to design, co-construct and co-host a collaborative professional day on the theme of “Artistic and digital practices for (…)

When thirty-five professionals discover their psychosocial skills through creative experience

A look back at the interprofessional seminar of January 12, 2026, in Limoges: a day where theory gave way to lived experience.

At the DRAC Nouvelle-Aquitaine, educators, teachers, caregivers, and cultural actors experienced together what it truly means to develop psychosocial skills (PSS).This article relates the interprofessional seminar that I co-designed, (…)

Towards renewed cultural mediation for young people

Cultural rights and the digital age.

Digital practices of youth: legitimate cultural expressions for rethinking mediation and building a renewed cultural democracy. A necessary paradigm shiftThe relationship between youth and digital technology constitutes a major challenge for (…)

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 (…)

France Culture french channel : Radio show “E-artist” (L’Atelier de Création)

In early 2013, Maylis Besserie, producer at France Culture radio french channel, asked me as she prepared a program about creation with smartphones.So I asked her to come for a day of training in pedagogy with mobile phone, at the Art school (…)

The boat of empathies

Serge Tisseron models empathy as a construction built in stages. Here is that model, in its current version, together with the way we have been drawing from it, for ten years now, the very form of creative workshops.

Serge Tisseron pictures empathy as a boat: the hull of capacities built in childhood, the deck where reciprocity is put to the test, the funnel of intersubjectivity. Professionals working with adolescents can use it as a developmental map, (…)

Homes radio : “A meeting of film like no other”

As part of the “Fine Speaker” week at the House of steelworkers in January 2014, the “Homes Radio” (community radio done by young people in insertion) proposed a program about the « night journey » I proposed.Link to the web page of the emission.

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 (…)

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 (…)

iMédiacinéma 2013 (Vitrolles - France)

I accompanied the design and implementation of the proposed participatory audiovisual creation in the territory of the city of Vitrolles and Bouches du Rhone.My actions were: support for project design, training of field staff, project (…)

Speaking Cinema Association : Pocket Films Training

Learning Workshop in filmmaking with mobile phone.The Speaking Cinema Association in Angers (France), which is involved since a long time in dissemination and education to the image, offered a training in filmmaking with mobile phone, which I (…)

Petite Poucette 2.0

In Praise of Social Networks Against the Moral Panic of the Elite.

What if, far from atrophying our minds, social networks were the new printing press? A revolution of thought that the powers that be are trying to demonize for their own survival. The digital witch trial: a sense of déjà vuI read and hear (…)

Observatory of cultural policies: “Images are like words for today’s young people”

Video interview of Benoît Labourdette by the Observatory of cultural policies (5’, 2019).

Video interview with Benoît Labourdette: state of play of image practices and young people’s needs in terms of image education.Director: Aurélie Doulmet.

Media Literacy: Should We Judge or Guide?

Reflections based on the National Meeting of Regional Centers for Media Literacy (Rouen, March 16–17, 2026).

On 16 and 17 March 2026, Normandie Images organised in Rouen the national meeting of France’s regional image education centres (pôles régionaux d’éducation aux images), entitled “Le temps des regards” (“The Time of Gazes”). A hundred and fifty (…)

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 (…)

“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 (…)

Movie Marathon Evry 2013 (France)

The iniatitiveUrcun Aude, who leads workshops Fine Arts Community of Agglomeration Evry Centre Essonne, is the initiative of the “Marathon cinema,” and had asked me in advance to accompany the design and concrete implementation the project. (…)

Rencontres photographiques d’Arles : “Pedagogy of the digital image” (conference)

Podcast of the conference.

Development of practical and creative thinking in the pedagogy of images, with digital photography.July 8, 2013, invited by Jean-Yves Moirin and Francis Jolly in the Seminar of the Photographic Encounters, I proposed a conference on the (…)

“So what do we offer them?”

The isolation of professionals faced with young people’s screens, and the circulation of practices that already exist.

Professionals who work with young people often ask, in training courses, for tools to act on their screen practices. I hear in this request a loneliness at work as much as a need for technique: each person faces alone situations that colleagues, (…)

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. (…)

The moving debate revisited: playing positions, revealing power, keeping a trace

A popular education method adapted for artistic and cultural mediation, in which the topic of the debate matters less than the way discourses are built and positions are taken within it.

The moving debate is a popular education game in which participants position themselves physically in the room to defend a thesis, including a thesis that is not their own. I propose here a version designed for artistic and cultural mediation, (…)

Sound poetry creation workshops

Poets’ Spring Festival - Arthur Rimbaud’s house - House of Elsewhere (Charleville-Mézières).

As part of the Printemps des poètes festival, installed in Arthur Rimbaud’s house, at the suggestion of the museum team, I designed and ran sound poetry creation workshops for children (schools) and the public.In this very inspiring place, the (…)

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, (…)

Training Eyes in the Age of AI: A Day to Rethink Image Education

Account of a professional training day where teachers, librarians, and young people in civic service explored the challenges of artificial intelligence through creation and critical debate.

On November 26, 2025, in Reims, around sixty education professionals gathered for a training day entitled “Training Eyes in the Age of AI.” I contributed to its design and led an afternoon conference and workshop to enrich critical thinking (…)

Mental health, young people, images: what are we talking about?

Text of Benoît Labourdette’s opening talk at the professional meetings held on 14 April 2026.

Before entering into projects, we need to pin down the words. Mental health, young people, images: three notions we often use together without defining them, and which cover realities far wider than everyday use would suggest. A jointly built (…)

Social media, mirror of our gaze

Rather than judging tools, let’s analyze what our perspective reveals about ourselves.

Social media, neither virtuous nor vicious. What if the real subject wasn’t these platforms, but the partial and subjective gaze we cast upon them? I invite nuance and introspection. The illusion of a single realityInstitutional discourse (…)

The confiscated phone

Teenagers’ mobile phones in child protection institutions: from an object to manage to a bond to support.

In children’s homes and residential care facilities, the question comes up at every team meeting: what do we do about phones? I suggest turning it around. Before being a screen, the phone of a teenager in care is the thread that connects them to (…)

City of Choisy-le-Roi : drone workshop in a neighborhood

Audiovisual workshop with drone for young inhabitants of the city of the Navigators in Choisy-le-Roi, as part of a multidisciplinary artistic project.As part of the Urban Renewal project in Choisy-le-Roi, several successive actions took place (…)

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 (…)

The place of teenagers in cultural life

From cultural democratization to cultural democracy: rethinking our professional postures.

How can we create connections with adolescents in our cultural institutions? The question of their “place” reveals our power relationships and challenges our capacity to recognize their cultures. Beyond the Myth of a Homogeneous YouthThere is (…)

When the instruction is not followed

How departures from the instruction are received decides what a creative workshop authorises people to do.

In the creative workshops I lead, the instruction is regularly overstepped, forgotten or reinterpreted, and I have learned to receive these departures as contributions. The instruction is a framework that authorises, not a contract on results. In (…)

“The use of screens at the heart of child protection”: conference / training by Serge Tisseron and Benoît Labourdette

Proposed by the Federation of the sunbeams of childhood and the IRTS PACA - Corsica.

Training day for 80 social actors of the child protection, to equip the professionals with the good use of the images and the digital in an educational perspective. Intervention by Serge Tisseron, psychoanalystChildren’s rights in the digital (…)

Mental Health and Cinema - Experiencing the World Through Images

Two professional conferences in Romainville (April 14 and 15, 2026).

On April 14 and 15, 2026, ACRIF, as part of its coordination mission for Passeurs d’images in Île-de-France, is organizing two days of professional meetings at Le Trianon cinema in Romainville (Seine-Saint-Denis) on cinema, image education, and (…)

When young people get involved

A film by Benoît Labourdette (1’08s, silent, 2019).

Younger generations are always more engaged than we think.

Youth as a power relationship

Deconstructing infantilization to liberate potential.

Youth is not an age but a role we are made to play. Between infantilization and resistance, how can we rethink our intergenerational relationships to build together rather than dominate? The Moving Boundaries of YouthWhat does it really mean (…)

The Journal of animation : Action article “Making a film with a cell phone: creativity citizenship”

Manage a workshop with mobile phone.The Journal of animation monthly reference tool for facilitators of socio-cultural field, invited me in 2010 to write a “share folder” to transmit issues, interest and workshops about filmmaking with mobile (…)

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 (…)

Lilas News: “When everyday devices become creative tools!”

Newspaper article.

The municipal newspaper “Lilas News” announces the digital audiovisual creation workshops, as part of the project “The Digital Factory”, proposed by Benoît Labourdette..

Art and Culture in the Service of Psychosocial Skills

Account of a founding seminar for professionals of the Judicial Protection of Youth in Limousin.

On November 27, 2025, the Limousin Regional Directorate of PJJ brought together its teams for a half-day of collective reflection on psychosocial skills, the first step in a three-year initiative. An institutional framework with ambitious goals (…)

Artificial Intelligence as an Amplifier of Reading and Writing

Moving beyond moral panic to see AI as an ally of thought.

Faced with concerns that AI would “dehumanize” writing and reading, I propose a different perspective: what if these tools were catalysts to enrich our cultural practices rather than threats? The Recurring Cycles of Technological Fear (…)

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 (…)

The symbolic third, a tool to connect

Psychoanalytical tool to promote the construction of the link.

The symbolic third is a concept that may seem very abstract, but for me it is very effective in creating a constructive link, especially between adults and youth. Here is a short synthesis of it, as I understand it. In psychoanalysis, to be is (…)

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. (…)

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 (…)

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 (…)

“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. (…)

What Teenagers Can Teach Us About Artificial Intelligence

Summary of insights from the ai/teens global conference (TUMO, March 2025).

90 teenagers from 16 cities, 24 hours of dialogue about AI: the ai/teens conference delivers unexpected perspectives. These young people neither fear nor idolize technology. They think. A conference organized by and for teenagersOn March 15, (…)

Banning social media for under-15s

The symptom of adult domination, or how to deal with it.

The law banning social media for minors under 15 was passed by France’s National Assembly on the night of January 26–27, 2026. Rather than simply deploring it, I propose here to understand it as a symptom — that of adult domination — and to draw (…)

"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 (…)

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 (…)

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 their symbolic value and the place of public policies. Understanding the symbolic value of cultural (…)

“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 (…)

Developing Psychosocial Skills Through Artistic Practices

Methodological principles for an experiential approach.

Psychosocial skills (PSS) are now at the heart of public health, education, and child protection policies. The 2023-2027 intersectoral roadmap, jointly led by the General Directorate for Social Cohesion and the Directorate for Judicial Youth (…)