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 (…)

The contributive infrastructure for networks

One hour a week, drop-in, for a professional network to know itself better, cooperate and work on its robustness.

We are designing a system for maintaining cooperation across a professional network: a weekly one-hour videoconference meeting, which everyone attends freely, with no attendance requirement, backed by a contribution platform that keeps a record (…)

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 (…)

“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, (…)

The connected audience

Rethinking cultural participation through building connections.

Cultural attendance does not depend on communication but on the bond woven between people and cultural offerings. This prior relationship determines the meaning that each person finds in participating. Beyond the Logic of Supply: Connection as (…)

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 (…)

“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.

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 (…)

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 (…)

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 (…)

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 (…)

Passeurs d’images: Interactive Cinema Session

As part of the launch of the new national coordination Passeurs d’images, I proposed an “interactive cinema session”. Come in, ladies and gentlemen!On June 5, 2018, Passeurs d’images, a national image education scheme funded by the CNC and the (…)

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. (…)

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 (…)

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 (…)

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 (…)

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 (…)

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 (…)

Bibliothèque Carré d’Art (Nîmes): Meeting a poet / a filmmaker. Cédric Le Penven and Benoît Labourdette

Reading-projection and participative cinematographic creation.

A poet and a filmmaker for a crossing around the figure of the window, or rather the discovery of oneself through its projection on the world. Reading, projection, collective creation Lecture-screeningWe embedded the readings and the film (…)

Webinar “Audiovisual and the museum: from exhibition to mediation, including creation, ethnography and the web”.

JE-DIS de la FEMS 2025 #1

A richly illustrated webinar on the subject of audiovisuals in museums, from exhibition to mediation, including creation, ethnography and the web. Moderated by Benoît Labourdette, with Maud Gouy (Project Manager - Universcience), Édith Joseph (…)

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 (…)

“Awakening the eye” web platform

Lille Institute of Photography.

Development and appropriation of a web platform for creating teaching resources and documenting the experiences of the “Éveiller le regard” image teaching project run by the Institut pour la photographie.As part of this project, for which I am (…)

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 (…)

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 (…)

Setting the table

Preparing the room for open cut-out animation workshops

Before a workshop begins, I spend time arranging the tables, the scissors, the camera and the microphone. Whether people who were under no obligation sit down, pick up the tools and discover along the way that they are capable of making a film (…)

Work Without a Share

Faced with artificial intelligences, we fear being replaced, and since we do not know what to do with this fear, we reassure ourselves by seeing them as machines like any others. By comparing them to immigrant workers, Yuval Noah Harari breaks this frame and opens a question we were not asking: that of their place.

As long as we hold artificial intelligences to be mere tools, the question of their place does not arise. Yet these agents do the work of employees with the status of tools: their fabrications come back to whoever puts them to work, the fee goes (…)

Moving screenings to reweave the link between the theatres and their spectators

Post-confinement cultural action project.

Itinerant projections on city walls, in the neighbourhood around a cinema, to experience again the happiness of shared projection, without any fear of health, thanks to the outside and the easy respect of social distancing. The film is also an (…)

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 (…)

Filming in connection

Participative exhibition.

Participative exhibition at the City Hall of the 11th district of Paris, to complete the project “Filming in connexion”. As part of the vast territory project “Connection” proposed by MPAA.On Saturday, September 25, 2021, as part of the (…)

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 (…)

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 café of images

Innovative film distribution proposal.

Project for innovative post-confinement film distribution via QR Codes stuck on coffee tables. Project for innovative post-confinement film distribution via QR Codes stuck on coffee tables. Project for innovative post-confinement film (…)

Leading Collective Intelligence in the Face of Crises

Operating principles for designing and leading collective settings that prepare a group or a territory for uncertainty.

Collective intelligence does not arise by itself when people of good will are brought together: it depends on the frame, the rules and the way the group is led. Drawing on Elinor Ostrom’s work on self-organisation, Marion Carrel’s work on (…)

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. (…)

Suspending Roles

The decisive question of a workshop in an institution is not the activity on offer, but the places people occupy, and this question is settled before the session.

In care and support institutions, the roles of caregiver and cared-for organise every hour of the day. A creative workshop can bracket these roles for the length of a session, provided this bracketing has been built beforehand with the team. I (…)

“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 (…)

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 (…)

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 (…)

Cooperative Narratives

Creating polyphonic narrative devices to transform academic knowledge into living and operative knowledge.

How can we overcome the limits of academic narrative to create truly shared knowledge? A concrete experience of collective writing devices that restore narrative power to participants. The form of narrative as epistemological matrixIn her (…)

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 (…)

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. (…)

The replicable contribution platform

A common base, proven on several real-world projects, for deploying a collective writing platform adapted to each process in just a few days.

Process after process, we have built a common base for a contribution platform: a web space where a group writes, during and between sessions, leading to a joint production. This project consists in turning it into a replicable service, (…)

Trafik Festival 2019: collaborative audiovisual creation event

A high level cultural event, based on the creativity of the participants: making films from commented photographs, broadcast at the time, which invite the spectators to contribute to it.. The projectIn November 2019, as part of the Festival of (…)

Passeurs d’images : Drawn Cinema Workshop

Workshop for making animated films from drawings within the framework of a professional event.Within the framework of the professional evening of the launch of the new national coordination Passeurs d’images (…)

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 (…)

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 Ambient Sound Chorus

Having non-actors play the ambient sound of a scene live during the shoot, using simple musical instruments.

During a filmmaking workshop, when the shoot begins, how can we make sure everyone genuinely contributes, including those who are not acting or running the camera? The method I propose is to entrust the people who are off-camera with creating an (…)

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

Account of the first workshop of a tour of digital creation workshops in the social field.

During the summer of 2023, Cultures du cœur is proposing to eight social structures in France that their beneficiaries participate in the creation of collective and individual stories on the theme of the future. Graphic, video, musical, digital (…)

Words sown on images

Series of 30 photographs illuminated by words.

On my proposal, people have written words opposite images chosen from the thousands that I propose on my website, those that “jumped out at them” and gave birth to words, which illuminate them and dig them, or sculpt them, in return.Life, (…)

The cinephilia of excerpts

Legitimizing new “impure” practices.

Traditional cinephilia venerates the complete work, but the internet has given rise to a new form: cinephilia of the excerpt. Enthusiasts now appreciate films through fragments, creating a participatory culture that redefines our relationship (…)

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 (…)

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: (…)

Projections magazine: “Enlighten the Word”

Tell me LED... A choral film, which connects speech and light.Article in the magazine “Projections” n°37 (Passeurs d’images), December 2015.

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 (…)

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 (…)

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 (…)

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 (…)

See a film or have it told to you?

Take into account the actual location of the film after viewing.

The screenwriter must consider not only the direct viewers, but also those who will be told about his work. These secondary stories, which have become multiple interpretations, contribute to the life of the film in the collective memory, and (…)

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 (…)

“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. (…)

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 (…)

The sustainable links workshop

Create meaningful connections in collaborative workshops.

This “Workshop of Sustainable Connections” encourages the creation of lasting bonds between participants in collective events. Each person exchanges their personalized contact details with five others, while jointly defining concrete reasons for (…)

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, (…)