Ladies and gentlemen,
Dear friends,
I cannot begin these wishes without remembering those who lost their lives in the terrorist attack in Ouagadougou on Friday night. And I am thinking in particular of photographer Leïla Alaoui. The announcement of his death shocked me all the more as I had recently discovered his remarkable work at the European House of Photography. I imagine that many of you have seen his very beautiful series, “The Moroccans”. She is a great artist, tireless activist of the human cause, from whom we are deprived today. I also have a thought for the Pakistani victims of this morning’s attack at Bachan Khan University in Charsadda – young people, students. Every day, terrorism shows its hatred for culture, and that is why we must stand together.
So here, where it all started, I wanted to enter the year 2016. And I am very happy to do so with you this morning, you who witness by your presence, faithful and numerous, your attachment to the Ministry of Culture and Communication.
It was here in particular that two men worked to change the destiny of artists and French people, designing the first policy of culture which set itself the objective of making it accessible to all. It will be 80 years in a few months, and these two men were Jean Zay and Georges Huisman.
It is here that I would like to repeat for myself the "probing question" that one of my predecessors dared to launch, one day in November, in the National Assembly chamber: "a ministry of culture, ladies and gentlemen, for what?"
This question is not new. France is honoured, and my Ministry with her, to have women and men of culture committed to asking themselves, on a regular basis, about the vocation of the rue de Valois, about the meaning of its intervention and the extent of its field of action.
But if I ask it again, it’s because times have changed.
There are, of course, new constraints, which permanently disrupt our ways of acting. Digital change is not just coming into conflict with the foundations of our policies; it is radically changing the ground on which we have built them. Combined with globalization, it is, for some, a double-headed hydra, which it is difficult to curb or reorient, especially since its mechanisms seem incomprehensible to many.
The decentralization cycle has come to an end. Together with the necessary control of public expenditure, this term makes visible the action in favour of culture for what it is: a political choice.
To these unprecedented constraints, which sometimes have nothing poetic, I have endeavoured to respond, since the President of the Republic has entrusted me with the responsibility of our Ministry. They demanded inventiveness from us. I’ll come back to that. But it is elsewhere that it is necessary to seek the reason to raise again the stripping question.
So a ministry of culture, ladies and gentlemen, for what?
To this important question, 2015 will have provided the most tragic and striking answer.
Twice our country was struck. Wounded in his flesh, he was also wounded in his values, in the depths of what he is and what is his foundation.
In January, it was freedom of expression. It was also secularism.
In November, it was cultural life, in its openness and simplicity.
Twice, our country rose up. It turned to the state. The public service of culture, like all public services, lived up to these dramatic events. Allow me today to pay tribute to those who were present - and continue to be present - with the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo in January, with music professionals in November. Let me salute all those who ensure the safety of cultural sites. Their work is sometimes little known; with an unparalleled professional conscience, they have shown how precious, if not irreplaceable, they are.
Twice, the French, shaken, turned to the state. And they also turned to intellectuals, to artists, to culture. Because they want to understand; because they want to express themselves; because they want to experience again these bonds, which bring us together, which unite us, despite everything, in spite of everything. These bonds by which we form a nation, they also expect them from culture; they seek them in the cultural life of our country.
For they have not forgotten that in France the state made the nation and established it by language and literature. Without a cultural policy, France lacks something to live as a nation.
So, a ministry of culture, for what?
The question, as we all know here, has nothing to do with utility. It has to do with the meaning of what we do. It is up to me, it is up to us collectively, to answer them. For culture, 2016 will be an hour of truth.
For if we do not meet this immense expectation, who else will?
If we do not respond with art, who tells so well what we are, what we can be, or what we must avoid at all costs, who else will?
If we do not respond by culture, that is, by the ability to be challenged, amazed, disturbed, who else will?
If we do not respond through culture, then the proponents of withdrawal and petrified identity will respond for us. And they will do so by pursuing with their vengeance contemporary creation, calling for a return to the moral order, attacking the freedom of artists, the artists themselves. They have proven their ability to do so this year. By digging up the roots, to which they so love to refer, they will end up turning us into dead trees.
Let us not leave them free. Let us live up to the promise of culture.
That begs another question: how to do it? How to act in this direction, in the coming year? What method should we retain, what horizons and what lines of force should we devote ourselves to in 2016 and in the years to come?
We will have the opportunity to discuss it together, within the framework of the Assises de la Culture, which I intend to engage throughout France in the spring. I hope that they will bring together artists, cultural actors and local authorities, without whom we cannot act. I will have the opportunity to talk about this very soon before the members of the Council of Local and Regional Authorities for the Development of Culture. We must reflect together on how we do and implement our artistic and cultural policies so that they are aimed at everyone and everywhere in the territory. The time has come to affirm the place and role of culture in the France we want and in the world to come.
However, I will outline for you this morning the priorities that will be those of my Ministry and the public institutions attached to it. They have three movements: democratization, renewal, independence and media pluralism.
Democratization is the first necessity. We have been talking about it for a long time. It’s about doing it, doing more and more, and doing it differently, because the cultural practices of the French have changed. Amateur practice, new writing, the place of the internet and television, crowdfunding, experimentation… These practices are also being invented outside the institutions. The French are waiting for recognition and space. That is why I prefer the term participation to democratization. Let us start with what they are and what they aspire to. It’s not to say that everything is equal. But in a word, let’s not wait for them to come. Let’s go to them.
That is why I have made the massive development of “off-the-walls” actions a major priority for public institutions for the coming year. Where culture is not sufficiently present, in the priority territories, in rural and peri-urban areas, the development of an adapted offer must feed the desire to come to our museums or theatres. In this way, we will help break down the psychological barriers that keep part of our fellow citizens away from culture. If "Lire en Short", the book festival for young people, was such a success in 2015 – and I thank the organizers for this – it was because I wanted it to be set up in leisure centres, like in Cergy-Pontoise, or on the beach, like in Marseille. In Clichy-Montfermeil, where we are going to build a new kind of Villa Médicis, I wanted to set up a «avant-les-murs» programme in 2016. We’re going to give it a million euros this year. But we have to go further. I have asked national institutions and all cultural operators to work actively on new “off-the-wall” offers to get as close as possible to our fellow citizens.
That is why I have made the adaptation of libraries to French lifestyles another priority. The media libraries are the first place they go for culture. We have more than post offices in this country. Librarians do a tremendous job of making culture and reading accessible to all. By extending the hours, evening or Sunday, by modernizing their offer, we will give them an even more central place. We will stand with the communities that are moving in that direction.
That’s why I signed an agreement with the major real estate professionals so that each building newly built in France will host a work of art. «A building, a work» goes beyond the extension of the 1% cultural. It is a way to put art at the heart of the most everyday place – the workplace, the place of life – to raise everyone’s awareness of contemporary art, while supporting the artists of our country.
This is why I also want to change the missions of conservatories and give them a central place in arts and cultural education activities, in the openness of the aesthetics taught, in the diversity and the widening of the audiences received.
This is why I wanted to structure our policy of living art for children and youth in the coming years with «Belle Saison Generation», which takes over 18 months of concrete and successful experiences in this field.
These are a few examples that prove that democratization is not an incantation or wishful thinking. I should also mention the privileged access, reserved for school audiences and those furthest away from culture, one day a week, in three emblematic museums of France. Finally, we should insist on the recognition of amateur practice in the law or on the sustained development of arts and cultural education, to which we will devote additional resources next year. All this is in the same spirit, in the same ambition: to strive ever more for the participation of all in the cultural life of our country, starting with the youngest.
For the French to feel part of cultural life and for the bonds by which we form a nation to be strengthened, it must also reflect more the riches than the blockages of our society. In a word, it is for us to encourage and encourage renewal – François Mitterrand said the break with the established order. This is the second priority we will focus on in 2016.
Renewal is first and foremost youth, the top priority of this five-year period. In 2015, with the Assises de la Jeune Création, we built new measures in favour of the next generation of artists: support for companionship, residencies, cultural incubators, third-party venues, etc. In 2016, we will have to implement them. We will spend more than seven million euros. Higher education and culture, which we will continue to reform, will obviously play an essential role in this.
Renewal is also about diversity. I set up a Diversity College last month to help move this project forward. It is a key issue for me. The Ministry, public institutions and public enterprises under its supervision must be exemplary, as for equality between women and men.
Renewal finally involves the reflection that we will lead on the museum of tomorrow. How to renew interactions with the public? What form could the relationship to works take? How are the professions evolving? These are the questions we will have to ask ourselves to draw the museum of the 21st century.
Participating in the cultural life of our country is also participating in its democratic life.
In this perspective, guaranteeing the independence and pluralism of the media is a fundamental challenge. Without journalism and journalists, there is no national conversation.
We will continue to work on this by implementing the reform of press aid: we want to help more and help better where pluralism and the future of the press are at stake. My Ministry will undertake a broad work of reclassification of the magazine press, to ensure that postal assistance is prioritized towards the press of Political and General Information and towards the press of Knowledge and Knowledge from 1 January 2017.
In the immediate future, the redistribution of the State effort has enabled us to complete two projects: the extension of aid to newspapers with low advertising resources to all the periodicals of Political and General Information, and the creation of a sustainable support fund for local media.
Strengthening media pluralism also means preparing for their future. We will therefore stand by the new news media that want to take off, through support for innovation, through the reform of the strategic fund, through a grant for the creation of new media, by launching an incubator programme and a research programme. I will have the opportunity to come back to this plan in favour of emergence and innovation.
Strengthening the pluralism of information is also the vocation of the project of public information channel, led by France Télévisions with the assistance of other actors of public broadcasting. I am not unaware of the reluctance or even the concern about the form it will take. For my part, I had made the deciphering of information one of the major axes of the roadmap that I had prepared for the new presidency in 2015. I believe that the public service has a singularity to claim.
Media pluralism and independence sometimes need to be better guaranteed in law. A fortiori in a context of media concentration like the one we live today throughout the world. With Patrick Bloche, whom I salute, we will work in the coming year on a bill to that effect.
Because they are by their very nature the object of historians' research and work, archives also contribute to the national conversation: they are indispensable for a calm and peaceful scientific interpretation of our history. I will also have the opportunity in the coming weeks to present my policy in favour of archives.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is how we will respond to the desire of the French to participate in the national conversation. In this way, we will give new strength to the ties that unite us: it is through the participation of all in cultural life, through the place given to youth and diversity that we will succeed. Will we be there by the end of 2016? Probably not yet. But we have to work towards that, making it our main goal. My Department will make this a priority in the coming year, and for years to come.
And the reason I can do it today is because I got the resources to do it. We are indeed entering 2016 with a budget that is up 2.9%. The Prime Minister promised it; he kept his word. This is proof that the government as a whole shares with me its desire to make culture a priority. This is all the more a sign that the margins of manoeuvre are extremely limited and that the State must strengthen the means it devotes to the protection of the French and the fight against unemployment.
These resources allow us today to secure the funding of the diversity of French cinema, especially with the extension of the tax credit.
They allow us to strengthen our attractiveness in terms of audiovisual creation.
They allow us to help France Télévisions to correct its accounts, without questioning its commitments in favour of creation, thanks to an additional €25 million.
They also allow us to strengthen the funding of the performing arts – which is currently suffering a great deal – by reforming and increasing in particular our support for artistic teams, ensembles and companies. There is a tax credit that will be specifically dedicated to it. I will come back to this tomorrow, on the occasion of the Biennales du Spectacle Vivant in Nantes.
These resources are above all women and men who dedicate their lives to culture within the Department. The government undertook a major territorial reform, which in fact involved a reorganization of our decentralized services. I know there have been concerns about this reform, but I have fought to ensure that the regional directorates' capacity to act is preserved. Their presence will even be strengthened at the departmental level, and our new drac will have additional resources. When we want to pursue an ambitious policy, we must give ourselves the means.
If I can commit my department today to this ambitious policy, it is because in 2015, we consolidated the cultural policies that needed it, and we initiated a broad modernization movement when it was necessary to do so. And if I have carried out these reforms, it is first and foremost to support artists, showcase their work, and enable them to live from it.
It is for artists and their future that we have stabilized the intermittent system. It is so that they can make a better living from their work that the Prime Minister has accepted the creation of the Jobs Fund, which represents so many additional means to support creative activity in its structuring and operation. Of course, I will be following closely the negotiations which will be launched between the social partners for the renewal of the Convention on Unemployment Insurance. I hope that in 2016 the crisis of intermittency will definitely be behind us.
It is for artists, again, that I have been working since 2015 to adapt the cultural exception and cultural diversity to the era of digital change.
I am thinking of the agreement we signed for an equitable development of online music. A world first.
I am thinking of the agreements we have signed to combat piracy, and our work to support the development of the legal offer.
I am thinking of the battles we are waging within Community bodies to preserve and modernize copyright.
I am thinking of the agreements concluded between producers and France Télévisions, which will have lasting benefits for audiovisual creation.
And of course I’m thinking of the tax credits, which I mentioned earlier. They will facilitate the transition to digital on the one hand and the relocation of filming on the other hand, in an increasingly competitive cultural universe.
It is also for artists that I introduced the bill on creative freedom, architecture and heritage, which was passed at first reading by the National Assembly last October.
It is a great law for artists, because it enshrines in our texts freedom of creation and freedom of broadcasting. It will separate the artistic from the political, while entrenching in law the action of the State with them and all those who accompany them.
It is also a great law for architects, who participate in the creative life of our country and develop the daily space in which we live. It will give them new freedom. Our national architecture strategy will accompany it.
It is a great law, finally, a law of progress, for heritage. I do not forget that. I fully appreciate its importance. It occupies an essential place in the cultural life of the French. Heritage brings us together; it contributes to the identity and cultural life of territories; it helps make them more attractive.
By creating historic cities, we will better protect and enhance these remarkable neighbourhoods that reflect our past. Many centres in medium-sized cities, which are emptying, impoverishing and are thus threatened today, will find the support they expect. And I have no doubt that historical cities will soon, in the minds of the French, have the same value and importance as historical monuments.
By protecting the movable assets attached to them, by creating the national domains, by restoring the scientific dimension of public policy in preventive archaeology, we are modernizing our heritage and archaeology policy.
There are still questions, I know. The debate on the bill will continue in 2016 - I will introduce it in the Senate next month - and we will still have an opportunity to improve the text. But rest assured that this law will strengthen the foundations of our policies and contribute to the growth of cultural life.
All these projects, my dear friends, we have begun and completed in barely eighteen months. And I want to say today that I am proud to be able to rely on a very high-quality departmental administration, capable of carrying out so many essential reforms in such a short time. The path, as I said, will not stop there. We will write it together. There will be obstacles. But I have no fear of the magnitude of the task.
I have confidence, because I believe it is necessary in view of what our fellow citizens expect from the cultural life of our country. They expect it to continue to make them more and more free; they expect it to continue to give depth to this bond, sometimes a bit abstract, which makes us a nation.
Georges Huisman, whom I mentioned in the preamble to this speech, once held a great discourse on cultural policy that he intended to lead, under the authority of Jean Zay. It was in 1937, Salle Pleyel. He stressed the need to establish new relations between art and the state, noting that there had been many acts missed. Finally, he insisted, multiplying concrete examples, on the need to give everyone a taste of art, evoking in particular the figure of Ernest Gaillard, «incomparable curator» of the Cambrai Museum. Gaillard was one of the first to be concerned to make the history of sculpture accessible to all, using the means at his disposal, from the mouldings of famous works to conferences open to all. He made his museum a «cultural centre», especially for the workers, which radiated far beyond the city’s borders. Huisman believed in these innovations, he believed in these gestures, because we must take advantage, he said, of leisure and the reduction of working time, “to prepare new generations to enjoy a culture that France’s artistic wealth and the talent of its creators can distribute with such magnificence.”
I could almost repeat those few words.
I therefore wish you a year in 2016, at the service of this ambition and generosity.
I wish you a creative year, an inventive year, a rich and dense cultural year.
I wish you a year 2016 when the arts continue to push us, challenge us and bring us together.
Thank you.