Hello everyone,
Dear friends,
Ladies and gentlemen,
I am very pleased to see you here for this traditional ceremony of greetings to the press.
I have been Minister of Culture and Communication for 20 months. In the vows last year, I explained to you the radical change in the functioning, in the methods, in the objectives of cultural policy. The new deal for the cultural policy I wanted to implement in order to put at the heart of the political project the essential vocation of culture: to give substance to French citizenship, to embody republican principles - freedom, equality, fraternity.
A pact that also aims to modernize the tools of cultural policy.
A pact that takes on all the dimensions of culture: the fundamental values that make it up; its emancipatory power that gives everyone the means to better understand the world and to act on it - because culture is not only, not always, contemplation, it is action - and to express its sensitivity and creativity; the creative power that gives France the ability to produce representations of the world - and this is a major issue of sovereignty -, to radiate that is-to--to project these diverse and abundant representations outside oneself. To radiate is also to welcome artists from everywhere who find here a land of welcome but especially of creativity, a land of emergence. The culture, and the cultural policy I pursue, also fully assume their economic and productive reality.
I wanted, in 2013, hire reforms in consultation, by discussing, by negotiating with professionals, with all the actors of the cultural world, with trade unions and citizens - it was essential to inscribe our public cultural policies in the reality of the XXIth century. By meeting the requirements of transparency in methods, equality between territories and citizens, dialogue with professionals and elected officials.
We have collectively shown a great sense of responsibility in the face of the budgetary difficulties that our country is going through and which involve a paradigm shift. This change must be assumed, claimed. No, culture must no longer - can no longer - be synonymous with reckless and sometimes unjustified spending. Culture is a luck and an asset, a strength for France. There is no productive recovery without creative recovery.
Culture gives France an illustration of the three axes of the recovery of the French economy: excellence, sovereignty and citizenship. It is attractive to younger generations. And at a time when many wonder about the confidence of the French in the future, at a time when feelings of distrust and the spirit of resentment sometimes rise, culture gives meaning and strengthens our sense of belonging, of citizenship. Through art we exchange and share. A subjectivity, that of the artist, of the creator calls another, that of the public, which is not in a passive position but in the construction and interpretation of the meaning and echo that this creation will find in him.
Today, I want to present to you the progress that has been made, the work that has been done and the work that is to come. I would also like to remind and illustrate that the Ministry of Culture and Communication is doing a useful job and is bringing a renewed vision of culture.
First because, as I told you, the Culture is an economic force.
This asset of France had never been accurately measured. We may have had some qualms about speaking the language of the economy. We needed it to respond to the arguments of some critics of cultural policies who questioned the merits, effectiveness and relevance of the tools put in place over the years, known as the cultural exception.
So, last year, with the Minister of Economy and Finance, Pierre Moscovici, I commissioned a report entrusted to our two inspections, which I thank: they worked for a year to establish a very remarkable and valuable instrument, a report on the place of culture in the economy.
This work establishes that culture contributes to 3.2% on wealth creation in our country, that is to say nearly 58 billion euros of added value. By value added, I mean the wealth created, because if you take all the cultural production in our country, it’s 130 billion euros. To give you an order of magnitude, it is quite comparable to the combined weight of agriculture and agri-food industries, twice as much as telecommunications and seven times as much as the automotive industry.
Culture alone, and in a rather restrictive sense since the perimeters have been narrowly defined, therefore employs 670,000 people in France in cultural enterprises, 2.5% of total employment in France. If we now include cultural occupations in companies that are not necessarily cultural businesses, there are 870,000 workers. That is a remarkable number. It shows that the cultural sectors benefit from a strong commitment from local authorities and the State: 13 billion euros for the State and for local authorities, just over 7 billion euros.
This public investment is not in vain, it is on the contrary extremely fruitful. This allows us to cut short the comments of those who want to make culture a luxury, a supplement of soul, something we could do without in times of crisis. It also helps to combat the weakening of what could be called a cultural superego among certain political leaders in our country but also in Europe. Europe too often tends not to look at its strengths and strengths. Culture and creative industries are invaluable assets.
Through this report we also recall the importance of culture in territorial policies since the study made it possible to analyse with precision the impact of cultural investments, through a focus on five events and festivals in five territories. And we see that the positive impact of cultural investment is not only the result of large festivals: the more rural and marginalized the territory, the more the impact of a cultural event is felt.
So it is also naturally in the territories that I want to value this cultural asset.
We have, in each of our regions, a singularity that makes its attractiveness. A year ago, I had wished the establishment of a new relationship with local authorities. Because culture is not an exclusive competence of the State - nor has it ever been. It is par excellence a shared jurisdiction, a field of intervention intimately linked to the very exercise of democracy, and thus citizen participation, at all levels. The effectiveness of our common action is based on the convergence between different levels of territories, between public and private partners. As you know, the action of local patronage is important, it has been considerably developed over the last ten years, since the 2003 law.
The relationship between the state and local authorities has been and will continue to evolve for 50 years. 2014 will be the year of the implementation of the law of «modernization of territorial public action and affirmation of metropolises» presented by Marylise Lebranchu in Parliament. The place of metropolises in cultural policy is important, because even within the cultural expenditures of the territories, we see that of the 7 billion, more than 5 billion are spent by the municipalities and by the intercommunalities. Even if sometimes, at the regional level, some people claim that the bulk of public spending on culture is due to them, the reality of the figures is quite different: it is the State that invests, and which invests the most with more than 13 billion euros, in culture. Local authorities invest more than EUR 7 billion, but within these local authorities, municipalities and inter-municipal authorities account for most of the investment.
My strong conviction is that the presence of the State, everywhere in the regions, everywhere in the territories is absolutely essential to be able to conduct a strong cultural policy, an ambitious cultural policy that respects this concern for equality between citizens and territories. The presence of decentralized services of the State, recognized for their competence in all our regions, is therefore a indispensable condition the implementation of this national policy concerned with preserving the general interest, ensuring equity, justice and balanced development of the territories in our country.
It is without renouncing any of the missions of the ministry that I will enter the new time of decentralization that the government began to write as the President of the Republic had promised. I know that this law is viewed with concern by many because of one of the provisions it contains on the possibility for the State to delegate to a territorial authority some of its powers. Culture is not specifically concerned, nor is it excluded. If some see in this provision a threat to the existence of the regional cultural affairs directorates and the sign of a withdrawal of the State, I want to reassure them: it will not be either and I will continue, In 2014, my action in favour of a strengthened presence of the State in the regions, alongside the local authorities, in a dialogue that has always been fruitful and excellent since the beginning of my action.
I would also like to increase confidence in the DRAC by reinforcing devolution the treatment of state resources and within the budget of the Ministry of Culture and Communication. It is the state intervention funds in the regions through the drac that I have ensured to preserve and sometimes even increase. This movement will continue, it is absolutely essential for the success, in particular, of the arts and cultural education project.
France’s cultural asset is also the measure of its influence in Europe and in the world.
Here again, in an international context in motion, with the emergence of new powers that all invest massively in culture, we have a multiplication of the cultural offer. We must therefore remain offensive to maintain and develop our international influence, to promote this culture that makes our country great and excellent.
By not giving up anything, by strongly expressing our convictions, by bringing with us several of our European partners - 15 European Ministers of Culture - and especially in a beautiful collective movement with the massive support of professionals, artists, creators, In June 2013, we won a magnificent battle, embodied by the President of the Republic himself. It is the fight for cultural exemption under the draft free trade agreement with the United States. France, and France alone, within the European Union, has ensured that the possibility for Europe - and not only for France - to continue to defend and promote the diversity of its creation and the objective of reaching the widest possible audience. These economic mechanisms known as the cultural exception, France alone, defended them and secured the exclusion of culture, such as the audiovisual sector, from the scope of the free trade agreement.
2013 was also an opportunity for the European Commission to modify a text on which it was working: film communication. Here again, we have maintained rules which make it possible to support the film and audiovisual sector, both at Member State and regional and local level. We have obtained validation by the Commission of the TSTD tax, the tax on television and distribution services, so that, once again, the financing of cinema, creation, audiovisual and animated images can enter the digital age. It is the adaptation of the mechanisms of the cultural exception that were conceived in the analogue era, in the digital era. This is the whole issue of the technological transition to digital.
These victories are therefore absolutely decisive to allow us, not to watch over a defensive model with a obsidional mentality, but rather to show that our model can adapt, It is relevant to the risks of concentration and thus of homogenisation that digital technology can create through these large globalised companies that tend to establish themselves in an ultra-dominant position in certain markets. France has therefore played a role that is hers, that of carrying this word of culture in Europe.
It is in order to continue this work and this impetus praised by all our European partners - both the Ministers of Culture and the professionals and artists - that I have decided to organize on 4 and 5 April, at the Chaillot theatre, a European Culture Forum, “Forum de Chaillot - avenir de la culture, avenir de l’Europe”, which will bring together artists and political leaders to put culture at the heart of discussions on the future of Europe.
We will be in a period when Europe will return to the forefront with the European elections. It will therefore be an excellent time to reaffirm the need to have a strong cultural ambition for Europe. To rebuild the European dynamic and ambition through the construction of a European cultural policy.
To promote this cultural map, the Ministry of Culture and Communication also has a role to play by encouraging more export of French cultural productions to reach a wider audience abroad. We often think of cinema, film works, audiovisual. We have a dynamic and ambitious export policy through a strong investment in the writing phases, to improve the writing of our audiovisual productions and thus make them more attractive. We must also continue to export our know-how in fields other than cinema and audiovisual: I think for example museums, curators, trainers, heritage restorers. They are often referred to as a model for many countries around the world who come to see the Louvre, Orsay, how our museums work, or who come to train at the National Heritage Institute. That is why, and it will be a priority in 2014, I intend to develop our ability to promote this excellence by creating a heritage cooperation and export agency, based on the experience of Agence France Museums, which took care of the Louvre Abu Dhabi project. The Louvre Abu Dhabi remains a very unique project, and it is not a question of duplicating this operation. On the contrary, it must retain its specificity and uniqueness. But we learned from that project, and I personally made sure we got it back on track. I hope that our museums can build on this experience, with Agence France Museums, to better export and enhance our heritage know-how around the world. Stéphane Martin, director of the Quai Branly museum, knows how well this expertise and know-how is recognized.
In Cambodia, together with Japan, we co-chair all the follow-up work on the restoration of the Angkor site for UNESCO. We have an expertise that allows us to intervene both on archaeological sites thanks to the great competence of Inrap and on heritage restoration sites. In Latin America, Central America, Asia, Oceania, Africa where heritage and BnF experts are working in Mali to restore the mausoleums destroyed by the fundamentalists and the manuscripts on which the National Library of France is working.
The Ministry of Culture and Communication must understand and accompany the movement of the world. This means adapting, transforming our public policies to the 21stth century.
I want to bring the Ministry of Culture and Communication into the digital age with confidence.
Making France a pioneer country. To be the Minister who brought the Ministry of Culture and Communication into the digital age by transforming the rue de Valois into a Sillicon Valois.
I wanted 2013 to be the first year of a renewal and modernization process for my department. A recasting work has been engaged, which is bearing fruit, which is being done notably through various legislative provisions that have entrusted to the CSA for example - and I greet its president and team, the CSA commissioners - new digital skills.
I am also thinking of other sectors, more traditional but essential for our country, for the vitality of our territories, for its economic vitality and for cultural diversity, simply for what France is!
I think, you guessed, at book and bookshops. The book, too, is undergoing a transformation with digital technology. The weakening of our bookstores had to be stopped urgently, and I greet Matthieu de Montchalin, president of the Syndicat de la librairie française.
We worked for several months on a digital publishing contract which will help reconcile the rights of authors with the demands of publishers in the digital age. This digital publishing contract has just been validated by an enabling law in the Senate.
The library help plan It is possible to accompany with important financial measures the transmission of the retaken bookshops and of course the acquisition of a certain number of bookshops of the Chapter network. We already have 16 bookstores on which completely relevant takeover offers have been made and about 20 others on which takeover offers will be submitted.
I also made sure we created a book mediator to help resolve conflicts between the different actors in the book chain.
We have reformed the law on the single price of books making it impossible to charge free shipping fees for online sales, which introduced unfair competition mechanisms vis-à-vis our independent local bookstores.
The book needs all the vitality of creation and constant support. However the book is not a subsidized activity and receives paradoxically less public support than many other activities. This is where the cultural exception shows its relevance through the mechanism of the Single Price Act which has allowed all companies in the book sector to flourish and develop.
In the film, audiovisual and video game sector, we have consolidated the support account and reform the TST-d, but we have also tax credit reform : international tax credits, to attract foreign shootings in France, CICA national tax credits, which allowed to reduce by 25% the announced relocations of shootings to other European countries. Cinema collective agreement, production collective agreement: after seven years of failure and delay, the collective agreement has therefore been completed, signed with an amendment by almost all stakeholders. But also reduction in VAT on cinema ticketing and for the non-commercial distribution of works, that is to say, for film clubs and festivals. Again, this shows that well-targeted, well-chosen tax measures are just as important and effective, if not more so, than subsidies.
The strengthening the capacity of IFCIC, the Film and Cultural Industries Financing Institute, enables us to improve the financial strength of our cultural industries businesses and the digital transformation of their business. IFCIC is also involved in the area of art galleries - we will create a fund to support art galleries that contribute to the creative fabric of our country - and in the area of bookshops and books. So it’s a very important and relevant tool.
In the press sector, which concerns many of you, you know the structural difficulties the press is experiencing with the destruction of a large number of jobs. Of the 6,000 jobs lost in the last 10 years in the newspaper industry, almost 1,500 were lost in the last two years. The work was therefore urgent to enableadapt our support methods for the press sector : the reform of distribution, the adoption of a reduced VAT rate for digital formats as announced by Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault on Friday. I had announced it to you last July, it was a fight that I personally and strongly carried, and so I am very happy to see that the VAT on the online press will now be at reduced ratesas for the paper press. It is the same logic that prevails in the field of books, where we have the same VAT for the digital book as for the paper press. We are in discussion and sometimes in confrontation with Brussels on this subject. But now we see that Germany has rallied to the French arguments. Germany, which was previously opposed to this proposal, will now defend the same position as France on technological neutrality in tax matters.
In the music sector, I continue my policy of supporting creation and young talent, of supporting small labels that are the ferment of diversity. Music is the experience of concerts, these moments of privileged encounter with the public: I therefore asked that the "SMAC plan" be maintained and continued at the same level of financial commitment. This will make it possible to find ways for current music venues that are established throughout the territory. In 2014, the work of reforming support for the sector will obviously be continued with particular attention to the export of musicwith the Export Bureau for example and, following the report entrusted to Christian Phéline, to a better remuneration for artists and better sharing of music revenues in the digital age.
Some of these reforms are legislated.
In legislative matters, 2013 was a great year for the audiovisual, for thepublic broadcasting especially with a very important legislative act voted by parliamentarians, whom I welcome and thank for being here today. We have profoundly renovated the legal framework to give more independence to public broadcasting, through a method of appointing chairs to the APF and through a method of appointing members of the APFeven quite revolutionary and very democratic since all the commissioners of cultural affairs of the National Assembly and the Senate will have to reach a three-fifths majority in order to be able to choose the future members of the CSA. This is obviously a great democratic step forward. I also ensured that important reforms were made to the relations between broadcasters and producers. This was the continuation of Laurent Vallet’s work. I have also given the CSA the opportunity to assess the economic context in terms of spectrum allocations. The maintenance of daytime advertising on France Télévisions which makes it possible to have readability on the financing of the public audiovisual service. All this has made it possible to lay the foundations of a strong modernization of the regulation of the audiovisual sector with the strengthening of the capacities of the CSA to address all the essential issues facing the digital age.
Other consultations were initiated with all elected officials and associations and professionals. These are consultations that will lead to laws in 2014: heritage law and the essential issue of creation, in all its aspects, including digital.
The heritage law. We celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Malraux Act in 2013. 50 years of sometimes disorderly accumulation of texts concerning heritage law. It was therefore time to have a great law on heritage that would also allow the architectural creation that we too often forget: we always consider that heritage is necessarily the past and we forget the dimension of creation that is entirely consistent with the protection of heritage.
Because there is a real French passion for heritage, we too often forget that our heritage law is not as effective and rational as we think. Some of our monuments, some of our most emblematic sites - the Mont Saint-Michel, the Châteaux de la Loire - are not protected by solid texts. The 38 - soon to be 40 - UNESCO World Heritage sites do not benefit in French law from special protection mechanisms. That was the purpose of this law: protect monuments and sites that were not protected and simplify an overly complex protection system - I am thinking, for example, of the multiplication of all these labels which end up causing confusion. Many elected officials are now engaged in classification processes under the title of Unesco World Heritage, but once the classification is obtained, what happens? That’s where the difficulties start because there’s a big void.
It was also necessary to be able to identify the present heritage to be able to better protect and enhance it tomorrow. Architectural quality had to be included in heritage law. Allow museums' works to come out without compromising their security. Make the archives more accessible to the French. The 2009 law created incommunicable categories of archives, extended the time it takes for archives to be released, which does not go in the direction of a trusted society. Making them accessible is a major democratic issue.
With this heritage law, these are locks that we will blow for a modern, simplified, efficient and closer to the French.
The creation act will open a national debate on the contribution of creation to our democracy. This is unprecedented. The freedom of creation, which is again one of the essential missions for which the State must be the guarantor, will thus be strongly affirmed in the law. The bill seeks to strengthen the public service of culture in favour of artistic creation. It reflects the Government’s strong commitment to artistic employment, social protection and the training of professionals in the creative and arts education sectors. In the live entertainment sector, 150,000 people work across the country.
With this bill, France must also be included in this change in favour of cultural exception in the digital age. And to understand developments related to the digital revolution. So there will be, and it is in the continuity of the work that was started with the presentation by Pierre Lescure of his report last year - Pierre Lescure that I congratulate him on his election as president of the future Cannes Film Festival - with provisions on improving the legal offer, on remuneration for creators and artists (particularly in the music sector), on copyright, both to ensure its protection in the digital world and to adapt it to the reality of usage. This bill will therefore focus on the fight against piracy (graduated response, but also fight against commercial piracy), but also on the notion of the public domain, which must be better valued and protected in order to facilitate access to its works.
Bringing ministry action and our public cultural policies into the 21stth century is about modernizing and adapting our tools, but it is also about open them to the terms of creation today and tomorrow, to the new ways of disseminating the cultural offer but especially to practices and innovative uses.
So what are these innovative uses? I am thinking for example of the practices of transformative works: mash-up, remix, etc. I launched last fall theDigital Fall which made it possible to draw up tracks for a strong digital usage policy, which allows through the organization of a mash-up and a hackaton to show the energy and creativity of young people in particular, these innovative uses that capture works in the public domain. This new digital policy, which was launched in 2013, will be implemented throughout this year, in particular in the public domain work.
Digital technology has transformed the way art and cultural offerings are distributed and accessed. It has revolutionized usage. My ambition is to accompany our fellow citizens so that they, each in their own way, constitute a “digital capital”, a digital cultural capital that allows as many people as possible to find their bearings in the multiplicity of the cultural offer, to master the innovative tools and to exploit with discernment all the possibilities. There must be no digital fetish. Technology itself is nothing if you don’t use it and use it for something. So that’s my goal: to show that digital is relevant when it allows us to expand our own cultural capital. The digital revolution must be a creative and civic revolution.
In this perspective, because they have always played a major role in the access of all audiences to knowledge and the arts and are our most effective weapon against the social divide, it is important for 2014 to accelerate the transformation of libraries to these new uses.
I talked a lot about bookstores in 2013, 2014 will be the year of libraries.
Meeting the new needs means, for libraries, allowing an opening when all audiences are available, even though I am fully aware of the ambition that the subject of opening hours can represent for our local communities. Responding to new uses, and this is my wish for 2014, is to see libraries evolve towards a local digital public service. To enable everyone to better "circulate" in the digital world, that is to say to be oriented, trained, educated in the abundance of information and knowledge. Our libraries must be open to these new uses, to all these audiences, open to as many people as possible for as long as possible. It is in that sense as well and so that the BPI, the Public Information Library, can be a pilot tool in these new library uses that I asked Christine Carrier to take the lead. Its mission will be to work in this direction with the libraries of all.
Bringing our public cultural policy into the 21st centuryth This century also means making room for new talents, new writings and aesthetic changes for a renewal of audiences and creation.
That is what led to the vast nomination movement that I was able to lead in 2013. And it was absolutely vital! There have been more than 50 nominations in the performing arts field that have made it possible, with determination and conviction, to make the resolute choice of renewal and openness. The theatre, in particular, badly needed it! I am particularly proud of the record of this year of nominations, and I invite those who have been able to take a critical look at the results of these nominations, to look at the faces and to see behind these faces the aesthetics, the works, the ambitions, the projects of those who embody this nomination movement. This new generation, which will continue to work with the elders to bring about the renewal of which, decades after decades, the creation, dissemination and training in live performance are always proud. So I wanted to open the doors.
This process of appointment will continue with the same openness, transparency in procedures and the same requirement, whether they are large national institutions or institutions certified in the heritage sector or in the creative and performing arts sector. Each time, the process is simple: the candidates present their project to the directors general of the ministry concerned and their teams, be it Michel Orier for the live show, Vincent Berjot for the heritage, Laurence Franceschini for all creative industries and audiovisual and Jean-François Collin, Secretary General. Applications are submitted with projects that are compared. Pre-selection is established, parity. No systematism in favour of the appointment of women. But I see that by putting in place transparent procedures, we have gone from 15% - 20% of women candidates at the head of cultural institutions to more than 50% women candidates. That is my greatest pride.
Anchored in the XXIth century, open to changes in the world of culture and armed with adapted and renovated tools, the Ministry of Culture and Communication is back.
It is fully aware of the stakes of today’s world and the budgetary requirements in our context of balanced public accounts that I wanted, through my political choices and the projects I have undertaken since my arrival, to give full meaning to the missions of this fine ministry.
Far from the chimeras that had finally smothered it, great monuments designed to fill a void of thought, far from the renunciations to fight the rents, Far from the hypocrisies which in recent years have raised a curtain of smoke covering more or less modestly the lack of attention paid not only to today’s world but also to what, in my opinion, remains and must remain the objective of any public policy of culture: public service of culture.
The public service mission is at the heart of my ministry. To give all our fellow citizens access to culture. To give everyone the opportunity to be real actors in the cultural life of our country.
Culture is not an occupation to waste time when you have nothing better to do. Culture is essential, culture is an internal, social upheaval. Culture is always subversive. We must encourage the emergence of these spaces of freedom, cultural spaces.
These spaces must be accessible to all. We must implement innovative policies for people with disabilities, for people in the social field. Because culture is a factor of inclusion, of citizenship but also a weapon against discrimination and exclusion. This does not mean that we are giving culture its own civic or educational objective. What is at stake is that everyone has the right to make this encounter with art that allows us to build our space of inner freedom.
The public service of culture is also the youth policy. I made it my priority when I came here.
The youth are the higher schools of the Ministry of Culture and Communication that are under my responsibility, whether they are schools of art, decorative arts, architecture, photography, live performance, music, dance, heritage or cinema. We must strengthen the network of our schools. This is how we ensure the success of our students, the promotion of our courses of excellence and their international visibility. When I talk about training excellence, it is because our students from these schools have a rate of integration into professional life and quite remarkable careers.
We have to do thearts and cultural education our priority. I’ll repeat it as long as I’m here. The path to equal opportunities for all requires ambitious policies in arts and cultural education. Together with the Ministries of Education, Youth and Sports of the University, we ensure this. Together we built the common foundations of a new school.
For the first time, in the law on the recasting of the school, the arts education pathway is written into the common knowledge base. It has to be accessible to everyone. For students who drop out of school, access to artistic practices, meeting with artists, with works can be an essential element, trigger, to regain confidence in them and in the school.
This policy is of course done with local authorities. I have decided, resolutely, to support these communities, especially those that have been able to take advantage of the reform of school rhythms to develop quality actions, particularly on extracurricular arts and cultural time. The appropriations of the Ministry of Culture and Communication have therefore been increased by 25% in this area to fund an additional 1,000 projects each year in arts education.
On September 16, at the Louvre, I mobilized all actors around arts education, and I thank them for attending. The Louvre will develop a major project to include arts education, the reception of students, classes and teachers in the Richelieu wing, that is to say in the heart of the world’s largest museum. I am also thinking of our major national theatres, which are firmly committed to arts and cultural education. I am thinking of the Philharmonie de Paris, which will be an essential place because arts education is at the heart of the project’s design and success. And I am thinking of Radio France, which has developed an innovative and ambitious youth reception project for the reopening of the Maison de la radio this autumn.
I was quoting these examples, but I also know that each of you is involved in arts and cultural education, which will of course have to be further developed. The ambition must be immense. The ambition must be the generalization of what affects only one in five children today. To generalize and to set oneself a Ambitious target to reach 100% of children by 2017.
The public service of culture for young people also means allowing them, as in cinema, to have special access to discover cinema in theatres. It is in theatres that we learn to love cinema and the cinema must remain the meeting place with films. On 1 January, the reduction in VAT on admission to cinemas made it possible to launch the single price of 4 euros for children under 14 implemented since 1 January for all FNCF members. This helps break down walls between these young people, their families since they will come as a family, and culture.
2014 will be the year of two important new initiatives for young people: Fine season in the live performance that will aim to make visible the creation directed at children and youth. I also asked the national institutions and the DRAC, in connection with the subsidized scenes, to make me proposals for theatre and theatres a adapted rate offer for young people and programming towards youth, early childhood. The dream goal is to encourage children to take their parents to the theatre!
Television finally plays an essential role in this public service of culture.
France Télévisions is a valuable and invaluable tool at the service of our fellow citizens. I also want to salute ARTE, TV5 and France Média Monde. So I asked France Télévisions to offer me, and this is what will be done this spring 2014, an offer for France 4, so that France 4 becomes the youth channel in all its dimensions, that is, the chain of children, young audiences, new writings, young writings. The new grid will be introduced in March and it will be a tremendous space of trust for children, for youth, for their families. A space of audacity and innovation to attract audiences concerned about the quality of what we offer them. I also asked that consideration be given to proposals to renew theregional ambition and proximity to public television through the France 3 network.
We talk a lot about the link between television and its audience. This link is measured - and it is normal - in quantitative terms. And it is this quantitative measure that is made public of course, commented on, and which then serves a little leverage. Qualitative approaches, satisfaction studies are used by professionals, but deserve to be completed and more shared with the public and the press. I have therefore asked the INA, the National Audiovisual Institute, to work with the channels - and I hope that as many channels as possible can be involved in this process, including the private channels - and the professionals to promote more qualitative measures of television audience. Everyone has everything to gain. It is important to know how viewers have enjoyed a particular program, beyond their mere presence in front of the television set. And I think we also need to work with groups of viewers on whether they’re satisfied or not, the curiosity, the surprise they may have felt at a particular show.
The public service of culture is to promote the encounter of people with creation and works of art on a daily basis. The public service of culture is to return the works to those to whom they really belong.
And that is the meaning of a policy that I want to emphasize today in terms of restitution of stolen works during the Second World War by the Nazis. The action of the State since twenty years has allowed the restitution of 70 works and I myself proceeded at the beginning of 2013 to the restitution of 7 works to the descendants of their legitimate owners. But time is passing, and we still have in our museums a number of works that we certainly know have been stolen.
So I asked that a new restitution policy is initiated with a new ambition : we ourselves seek the owners of these works and their descendants even in the absence of a request for restitution. Until now, we have been waiting for owners or rights holders to come forward. From now on, it is the services of the Ministry of Culture and Communication, the services of the Museums of France with the compensation commission of the victims of the Shoah who go themselves to seek the genealogy of these works. Out of 145 works whose spoliation is almost certain, the provenance of 28 works is about to be identified by the working group I set up. This is a very promising result, especially given the difficulty of the research work that I would like everyone to consider. We already see the first advances since three works are refundable without delay to their legitimate owners. It is a landscape by the Flemish painter Joos de Momper, Paysage montagneux, a portrait of an 18th century woman and an oil on wood depicting a Virgin with Child. I will return them very soon to the rights holders of their owner at the time of their plunder.
These works carry in them the trace of history. A constitutive history of the history of France. These works have a permanent exhibition in the museums to which they are entrusted. But they do not belong to France. They are deposited in national museums and must be returned to the rightful owners of their rightful owners. They are heartbreaking. By their beauty but also by their history. They bear in themselves the stigma of barbarism and the tragic fate of those to whom they belonged.
Returning works to those to whom they belong is also to restore to all French a heritage that is theirs and must be theirs. I am going to give back to all French people, when threats of privatization were made a few years ago, the Hotel de la Marine next year after DOD leaves. Its most remarkable spaces will be opened to the visit by the National Monuments Centre which will become the owner. The rejection raised by the prospect of a privatization of the Hotel de la Marine, envisaged in 2011, illustrates the special bond that unites our fellow citizens and heritage.
The Hôtel de la Marine embodies the history of France. It was therefore essential and legitimate for it to be part of this heritage, so specific and so conspicuously showcased by the National Monuments Centre, which constitutes our most beautiful buildings.
The public service of culture is about allowing this particular link between the French and heritage to flourish while respecting what is being done.
I would like to commend the work with our partners in the Russian Federation on the resumption of the Russian cultural and cultural center in Paris near the Quai Branly. The project that I discovered when I arrived could rightly raise concerns for our heritage and in particular our Parisian heritage and the banks of the Seine, which are classified by UNESCO. We took over this project with the Russian Federation, which has owned the site since 2011. The architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte presented a project that is, I believe, much more respectful of Parisian heritage and that will, architecturally, be a very beautiful gesture.
Nurturing and encouraging this link between the French and their heritage also means relaunching an ambitious policy of public commissions, inviting artists to intervene in the places of daily life. It goes through the circulation of public collections throughout the national territory, not only in institutional places but also in places not dedicated to art.
I want to focus on the world of work and business. This is a positive policy in the business world. Each of us spends an important part of our lives in the workplace. The presence of art in the workplace can contribute to bringing new values and well-being, innovation and a more collective approach, a real dialogue and sharing for the renewal of the social bond. I believe in the ability of art to question the world as it is, to question contemporary society.
2014 will therefore be the year of “the company at work”, a program to circulate collections in companies and industrial sites. This program will be launched in June.
I’ve asked a number of the department’s institutions to build a bid for companies that can apply. When I talk about businesses, of course I am thinking first of those who work there, the employees, so that they can have access to works of art even though their rhythm of life does not always allow them to free up time to go to museums. The Cluny Museum, the Ecouen Museum around the Renaissance, the Guimet Museum, the Fernand Léger Museum, the National Centre of Contemporary Art, the Mobilier National and the Sèvres-Cité de la Céramique have already answered the call. On the business side, the works councils of the electricity and gas industries, RATP and SNCF are ready to engage.
I now invite regional cultural institutions and private collections, including private collectors, to join the "enterprise at work" operation, which will be renewed every year.
This policy is again implemented with local authorities and private partners and through sponsorship. A cultural patronage which represents in France 500 million euros each year. Significant patronage for culture in our country, which has come a long way, but which cannot replace public investment. This is not the goal of corporate philanthropy, which develops a genuine cultural citizenship within companies. A patronage that accompanies projects everywhere in our territory and this must be done in good intelligence and in a spirit of trust with cultural institutions. But a patronage that will never replace a national policy, an ambitious public policy for culture.
Ladies and gentlemen, these are the objectives I set for the Ministry of Culture and Communication in 2014.
They are very ambitious. Because as I said, we are proud of our cultural heritage and our network of creators. We have a positive, dynamic vision of culture. This pride is not based on a stunted, racorni nationalism, or on any folklorism, but on a vision of openness, dialogue with others, exchange and acceptance, and the intersection of aesthetics that create fertility.
I want proof of that a magnificent initiative that is generating tremendous momentum among our fellow citizens: the commemorations of the First World War. This is 2014, 100 years ago. The Ministry of Culture and Communication, together with the Departmental Archives Services, worked to ensure that during 2014 and the next four years, We make available to all our fellow citizens the service records of the 9 million French soldiers involved in this conflict. Through a dedicated portal, the public will be able to access part of the soldiers' lives in the trenches. To allow some to reconnect with part of their family history and the entire national community to look back on its past and history. A story of which we are the legatees, a story that inspires us to build a confident future, which approaches technological changes with serenity and creativity.
Thank you.