500 days before the very first edition of the Paralympic Summer Games in France, a historic first, the ambition carried by the Ministry of Culture and Paris 2024 is immense, at the height of these exceptional athletes.

As part of the Cultural Olympiad, the Ministry of Culture and the Organizing Committee of the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris launched a joint national call for projects last October entitled «Inspiration, Creation and Handicap». This call for projects is part of a strong desire to change the way people view disability through the prism of art.


Aimed at forging links between art, sport and disability, this call for projects has attracted considerable interest from cultural stakeholders, with more than 500 proposals submitted. The jury composed of representatives from Paris 2024, the Ministry of Culture and qualified personalities, including Hamid Allouache, dancer and referent disability and diversity, and Cathy Bouvard, director of Ateliers Médicis, selected 15 projects according to the following criteria: the artistic quality of the project, the strength of the application, the accessibility of the project and its suitability for the Olympic and Paralympic values. The projects are carried by actors all over France and characterized by a variety of artistic proposals: theatre, visual arts, dance, music, circus, documentary, photography.... The subject of disability is dealt with in a variety of ways: artists with physical or mental disabilities, works focusing on the issue of disability, etc.

To support this call for projects, Paris 2024 and the Ministry of Culture respectively contributed a grant of 180,000 euros.

Throughout France, artists with disabilities are the source of great cultural projects. In the mirror, associations, cultural institutions and sports venues mobilize on a daily basis so that the great emotions of culture and sport are accessible to all audiences.

With this call for projects, we wanted to highlight and support these initiatives that are the pillars of a more inclusive society. Congratulations to the winners, but also to the many candidates, for their talent, creativity and commitment!” Rima Abdul Malak, Minister of Culture

' This call for projects is part of the desire to make the Cultural Olympiad an inclusive, creative and rooted event in our territories. Paris 2024 and the Ministry of Culture have awarded 15 winners who, through their respective disciplines, are helping to change the way people think about disability. » Dominique Hervieu, Director of Culture at Paris 2024.

The selected projects are:

  • ATHOMiques Dream Builders – Compagnie Lézards Bleus and the ATHOM association (Antoine Le Menestrel); Apt
  • Dedalus – National Centre for Adapted Creation (Madeleine Louarn, Frédéric Vossier); Morlaix
  • Dis_contact – Théâtre de la Ville (Saša Asentić); Paris
  • Unlikely Duos – Traction Company (Claire Durand-Drouin); Vicq-sur-Breuilh
  • Guyan'expo Inclusive – Association of Parents and Friends of Hearing Impaired in Guyana (Tristan Vassaux); Cayenne
  • History(s) of the Paralympism - The Pantheon; Paris
  • Le Cameraman – Lardux Films (Marion Lary, Etienne Eyraud); Montreuil
  • Le Village des Sourds – Compagnie Productions du Sillon (Léonore Confino, Catherine Schaub); Paris
  • Far in the sea - Compagnie de l'Oiseau-Mouche (Léonor Baudouin, Lisa Guez); Marcq-en-Barœul
  • Mr Patate – BaNCALE Company (Karim Randé); Frouzins
  • _ p/ rc___ – Shonen Company (Eric Minh Cuong Castaing); Marseille
  • Medieval Péplum - Tsen Productions (Olivier Martin Salvan); Rennes
  • On my two legs – Lumento (Olivier Lambert); Le Pré Saint-Gervais
  • TactiJO 2024 – Créanog (Laurent Nogues, Gaëlle Dupré, Hoëlle Corvest, Christian Bessigneul); Paris
  • Triptych. Archaeology, photography and parasport explore disability – Institut national de recherches archéologiques et Musée Départemental Arles Antique (Marguerite Bornhauser); Arles

The jury of the call for projects "Inspiration, creation and disability" brought together:

  • Dominique Hervieu, Director of Culture, Paris 2024;
  • Ludivine Munos, disability reference, Paris 2024;
  • Alexandre Dion, accessibility reference, Paris 2024
  • Isabelle Delamont, Head of the Creative and Dissemination Support Department, DGCA, Ministry of Culture;
  • Thierry Jopeck, Senior Official for Disability and Inclusion, Ministry of Culture
  • François Laurent, Ministerial Delegate to the Olympic and Paralympic Games, Ministry of Culture
  • Cathy Bouvard, Director of Ateliers Médicis;
  • Hamid Allouache, dancer, referent disability and diversity.

The Cultural Olympiad

From the beginning of the Games, culture became one of the three pillars of Olympism, with sport and education. In Paris 2024, culture is concretized by the Cultural Olympiad, a cultural program that explores the link between art, sport and Olympic values. From now until the Games, Paris 2024 encourages artists, companies, associations, communities and the sports movement to play a role in the cultural programming of the Games throughout France. Today, more than 1000 projects have already been submitted (shows, performances, exhibitions, workshops, participatory projects, sporting and cultural initiatives, etc.) throughout France. 

Paris 2024

The mission of the Organising Committee of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games is to respect the host city contract signed between the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the French National Olympic and Sports Committee (CNOSF) and the City of Paris, to plan, organize, finance and deliver the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games. The Olympic and Paralympic Games are the world’s first sporting event with unparalleled media impact. They bring together 10,500 Olympic athletes and 4,400 Paralympic athletes from 206 and 182 delegations on five continents, respectively. They are watched by more than 13 million viewers and 4 billion viewers worldwide through more than 100,000 hours of TV broadcast. They constitute, among all the world sporting, economic or cultural events, an unparalleled event, whose power multiplies the impacts. Created in January 2018, Paris 2024 is chaired by Tony Estanguet, three-time Olympic champion and IOC member. It is administered by a Board of Directors (CA), which brings together all the founding members of the project: the CNOSF, the City of Paris, the State, the Île-de-France Region, the CPSF, the Metropolis of Greater Paris, the Departmental Council of Seine Saint-Denis, representatives of local authorities concerned by the Games, civil society and social partners.

The Ministry of Culture:

The Ministry of Culture has a national ambition for cultural programming associated with the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris and coordinates the State’s action in this context. National cultural operators, Regional Cultural Affairs Directorates (DRAC) in Metropolitan France and Cultural Affairs Directorates (DAC) in the French Overseas Territories were mobilized for the Cultural Olympiad in order to on the whole territory and in a participatory spirit, projects that explore in an original and original way the exchanges and the links between culture and sport.

Details of selected projects

 

  • Dream builders ATHOMiques – Compagnie Lézards Bleus and the ATHOM association (Antoine Le Menestrel); Apt

This project was born from the encounter between climber-choreographer-dancer Antoine Le Menestrel and the athletes who make up the Climbing section of the ATHOM association, teenagers and adults with mental disabilities. From their meeting was born the idea of transcending disciplines and paths by proposing a collective creation at the crossroads of climbing and dance.

 

  • Dedalus – National Centre for Adapted Creation (Madeleine Louarn, Frédéric Vossier); Morlaix

 

A promotion of students of the Théâtre national de Bretagne, in conjunction with the Centre National pour la Création Adapté, meets, as part of its learning, the practice of the artist with a disability to propose a new way of considering the work of students, and their relationship to creation. The challenge of this creation will be to link the demands of a fiction with the putting into play of this unprecedented encounter.

 

  • Dis_contact – City Theatre (Saša Asentić); Paris

Saša Asentić, a Serbian choreographer and designer of artistic and cultural projects, offers disabled artists the opportunity to work together with other artists, from Pina Bausch’s Kontakthof to create choreographies inspired by their artistic concerns and practices, and performances related to the themes of access and care.

 

  • Unlikely duos – Traction Company (Claire Durand-Drouin); Vicq-sur-Breuilh

The company Traction offers the general public to attend a singular and inclusive show: for one hour, dancers, virtuoso circassians and interpreters with disabilities will evolve in the form of twelve duets. These choreographed and unusual assemblies will evoke the raw beauty of bodies and the poetry of their language. In addition to the performances and to create these unlikely duos, the artists will offer rehearsal workshops in medico-social structures, associations and school.

 

  • Guyan'expo inclusive – Association of Parents and Friends of the Hearing Impaired of Guyana (Tristan Vassaux); Cayenne

«Guyan'expo inclusive» is an exhibition adapted to an audience with a sensory disability in French Guiana. For the first time, the Guyanese heritage is accessible to all, with content translated into French Sign Language, an audiodescription and explanatory plates in Braille. On the program: discover the masks of the ball dressed-masked of Guyana, musical instruments of Kali'na and Wayãpi, or pangi of Bushinengé.

 

  • History(s) of Paralympism - The Pantheon; Paris

The National Monuments Centre offers an exhibition dedicated to the history of Paralympism, which will focus on tracing its history and its struggles from its beginnings, around the rehabilitation of the wounded of war, to a «sportivization» very advanced and record ratings of the recent Paralympiades.

 

  • The Cameraman – Lardux Films (Marion Lary, Etienne Eyraud); Montreuil

In turn, in front of and behind the camera, Etienne Eyraud and Marion Lary co-write a four-handed film about Etienne’s life. Born with Down’s syndrome, Etienne has been passionate since her 15th birthday about making and editing videos while participating in sports swimming and karate competitions. Now thirty years old, he dreams of working in the audiovisual sector. How can we fulfil this wish and work for a more inclusive society?

 

  • The Village of the Deaf – Compagnie Productions du Sillon (Léonore Confino, Catherine Schaub); Paris

Fourteen-year-old Yuma, deaf, lives in Okionuk, a village lost in the north of the globe. There, the inhabitants have a treasure: their language. But Youma sees her polar paradise crumble when a merchant arrives to sell useless and indispensable items. The villagers have no money, the merchant offers them to pay in words. And the language disappears, little by little. Youma and her interpreter, Gurven, came to alert us: they are the only ones who have retained a language of resistance, sign language.

  • Far into the sea - Compagnie de l'Oiseau-Mouche (Léonor Baudouin, Lisa Guez); Marcq-en-Barœul

Far into the sea is the next creation of the company l'Oiseau-Mouche, freely adapted from Andersen’s Little Mermaid and directed by Lisa Guez. For love give everything, for love lose everything. The little mermaid at the bottom of the ocean burns an impossible flame for the prince she saved from the sinking. Consumed by the obsession of her face, she sacrifices her voice to a witch to have legs and a chance to be loved by the prince. Propelled into a world she does not know, uprooted, unable to communicate and reveal to the person she loves her story and her identity, the girl must find the way to the young man’s heart or she will be turned into foam.”

  • Mr Potato - BaNCALE Company (Karim Randé) Cowards

“The show won’t happen, I lost my prosthesis!”  How do we react when the circassian is in a handicap situation and the technical element of cancellation is a part of the said circassian? Accompanied by an exceptional musician who can play all the instruments on stage, the poetry of a wobbly body on his crutches mixes with the force of acrobatics, the fluidity of the Cyr wheel on one leg or the prowess of the Chinese mast with a prosthesis, improving the grip and allowing impossible figures without it!

 

  •  _ p/ rc___ – Shonen Company (Eric Minh Cuong Castaing); Marseille

Shonen invites the public to a large park with new standards, where specific dances are born, associating children with motor disorders and dancers. Around them, together with them, are telepresence robots, piloted by other children or young adults in situations of physical impediment. The bodies meet. The dancers do both prosthetics of the so-called prevented bodies, but also slides, rides alive. Spectators are invited to explore the stage as closely as possible to these interdependent dances. What is (being) accessible?

 

  • Medieval plum - Tsen Productions (Olivier Martin Salvan); Rennes

Medieval Péplum is a contemporary work that questions the colorful madness and spirit of the Middle Ages. A multidisciplinary show where theatre, visual arts, dance and music are woven around fifteen actors including seven from the Catalyse troupe of the National Centre for Adapted Creation, which recreates a world of bright colors in which the borders between the comic, the tragic and the spiritual overlap.

 

  • On both my legs – Lumento (Olivier Lambert); Le Pré Saint-Gervais

This documentary film tells the crazy dream of Jérôme Bernard, triple amputee at the age of nine: create an accessible sports blade - in cost and use - to allow all lower limb amputees to easily resume physical activity.

 

  • TactiJO 2024 – Créanog (Laurent Nogues, Gaëlle Dupré, Hoëlle Corvest, Christian Bessigneul); Paris

For the first time, the Olympic and Paralympic Games will be recounted through touch, through the production of a high-relief tactile work, allowing us to share our universal cultural and sports heritage with people with visual impairments.

 

  • Triptych. Archaeology, photography and parasport explore disability: Institut national de recherches archéologiques et Musée Départemental Arles Antique (Marguerite Bornhauser); Arles

The Inrap and the Musée Départemental Arles Antique (MDAA) invite personalities of distant universes to an unprecedented meeting: Valérie Delattre, archaeoanthropologist at the Inrap, specialist in disability archaeology, Marguerite Bornhauser, visual photographer and, and Pauline Déroulède, Paralympic athlete. This unique team will talk about body and movement. From these exchanges, Marguerite Bornhauser will create an original artistic creation, which will be presented to the public during the Rencontres photographiques d'Arles in 2024.