Ladies and gentlemen
Dear friends,
Thank you dear Didier for your welcome. I wanted to choose the Villette for this ceremony of wishes because this site is emblematic of everything we believe in and everything that makes the cultural strength of France: here, culture is lived in music, circus, theatre, cinema, dance, exhibitions, in madness and in Micro-Foods. Here, culture rubs shoulders with science and industry, with biodiversity, with animals on the educational farm. It draws on the treasures of Egyptian heritage and the audacity of contemporary architects. Here, we walk, we run, we play, we love, we eat, we drink, we find our happiness at the bookstore or simply by contemplating the canal.
Here, “art and life are one”. This sentence is from a work of street art artist Miss.Tic that I chose for the Ministry’s greeting card. It is with these few words of a resolutely free artist, who knew how to poetize the walls of our cities, to remind us of the consubstantiality of culture to our lives, that I wanted to bring us together in this new year that is beginning.
“Art and life are one and the same.” Far from wishful thinking, this is a mantra for me to never forget. As a little girl, in the face of war and exile, culture saved my life. In all the other stages of my life, it continued to enchant her. In the diversity of our functions and tasks, our origins and our daily lives, culture connects us all to the heart. In this room, we all vibrated for music, received as a blow to the heart, the power of a canvas or the strength of an idea, laughed and cried in the magic of the dark rooms. We woke up with voices that became familiar on the radio and slept with our favorite shows on television. We snuggled in a book we can’t let go or in the majesty of a cathedral. Artists, authors, artisans, architects, journalists… You are at the heart of our daily life, and when life becomes narrow, when everything becomes heavy and anxiety rises, your voices are beacons to guide us through the night.
Let us also not forget the strength of laughter! Laughter has the power to renew our oxygen, strengthen our immune system, stimulate our energy. Laughter is even more contagious than Covid, but it allows a maximum reduction in social distancing! Yes, laughing together allows us to feel closer to each other, to transcend barriers. I was able to experience it during the first 6 years of my professional life alongside the artists of Clowns sans frontières, all over the world. Humour is also a weapon against hegemony of all kinds, intolerance, obscurantism. From Rabelais to Charlie Hebdo in France, laughter has always been synonymous with humanism. Humour, derision and impertinence are the hallmarks of the vitality of our democracy.
As soon as I was appointed Minister of Culture, a few days after my appointment, I was questioned by Pierre Guillois and Olivier Martin Salvan in Les Molières: on their cardboard pieces this question appeared: "In these gloomy times, why not consider laughter a great national cause?" And this injunction: "Please and urgently create a national theatre dedicated to comedy!" That was a great challenge for me! From consultations to consultations, a path is emerging to respond to them. My thinking is advancing—
It is not quite ready, but in the meantime, I wanted to invite Pierre Guillois and Olivier Martin Salvan to intervene, in complete freedom, in this ceremony of wishes, at my peril. Everything is improvised. Thank you to them for agreeing to «dynamite» this exercise!
Thank you also to the bands who came to welcome you and give breath to this ceremony: Boula Matari of the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris and the brass ensemble of the Hauts-de-France interfederation that I met in Avesnes-sur-Helpe and Gommegnies on one of my trips.
In 2023, we will need anticipation, fighting spirit, structuring action plans, but we will also need the poetry of the unexpected, audacity and creativity. “Life is not waiting for storms to pass, it is learning to dance in the rain.” This quote from Seneca has always guided my commitments. Yes, the storms are numerous, the sky is darkening, bad winds blow on our democracy. War rages at the gates of the European Union. This war is also a cultural war and a war of information. It directly impacts our lives, from the price of gas and electricity to the European values we defend. But the storms of past years have shown that we all have great resilience.
At the peak of the pandemic, you have held out, you have been able to imagine new links with the public, new ways of working, new solidarity. The State has been fully at your side, deploying the most protective safety nets possible, supporting you in the emergency as well as in the recovery.
The recovery plan showed us – if need be – the strength of European solidarity. Faced with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this solidarity has redoubled its efforts – soon we will announce a new fund to support Ukrainian cinema, created at our instigation with eight European countries. Beyond the moments of crisis, we are thinking more and more about culture in Europe and this gives rise to wonderful projects: the Season France-Portugal which ended recently; the German culture pass, which has just started in Germany in cooperation with France; the Year Picasso that we organize with Spain and so many others. I am thinking in particular of the issue of information, with the upcoming initiative of the European Media Freedom Act, which aims to defend press freedom and the right of Europeans to access reliable, verified, professional and independent information. Issues that we will find in the Estates General of the right to information.
If our cultural ecosystem remains strong today, it is not only because of the “whatever it costs” and this European solidarity. It is also thanks to your strength of imagination, your agility, your faith in your professions. Within the constraints of the health crisis, there have been deep pains, grief and anger, but there have also been magnificent experiences that are sources of inspiration to irrigate cultural life differently.
The crisis is always a field of innovation, of reinvention. And you have proven this time and again. Our common strength is there. We have all the assets to face fear: listening to others, weaving projects as close as possible to the human, the spirit of cooperation and partnership, the commitment of passionate teams, ambition and panache! In 2023, I hope we will redouble our daring together so that tomorrow does not sacrifice yesterday, but does not look like it.
My first wish for this new year is that we can, collectively, rebuild the link to audiences, from the youngest to the oldest. The good attendance figures for museums, monuments, theatres, festivals and cinemas in the second half of 2022 are encouraging. The good audiences of the public broadcaster also! Certainly, some of the pre-Covid audience has not returned: between 10 and 25% depending on the case. But the reasons to believe in the future are there. The cultural offer is rich in quality and diversity. The public is probably more demanding but its appetite for culture is alive and well! With the collective addiction to screens, the motivation to leave home is obviously more difficult to motivate, to titillate, to awaken, but the desire for culture «in the flesh», to live emotions shoulder to shoulder in a room, remains much stronger in France than in our European neighbours, where attendance has fallen even more. With the development of telework, the organization of daily life has evolved. And with inflation, every household looks closely at its expenses and has to make trade-offs for its exits. You know that. You yourselves, whatever your position, are faced with it too. And many of you are exploring new pricing or offering new experiences to the public. I was in Nantes last week and the Orchestre national des Pays de la Loire explained to me, for example, the success of the monthly concerts at 12:30 pm with a price of 5 euros for students. Archiplein! Without losing anything of quality and artistic requirement. One example among many. Let’s continue, together, throughout the territory, to experiment to reach new audiences.
And let’s not forget disabled audiences. In particular, I wanted to salute all the venues that organize, like the Opéra-Comique, “RELAX” sessions, inclusive, that allow people with mental disabilities to attend the shows in the most welcoming conditions possible.
My top priority, as you know, is youth. The latest decennial study on French cultural practices shows that the generational divide between baby boomers and the youngest, whose digital uses have become the majority.
Our main lever for action – but not the only one – is the Culture pass. Today, more than 2.3 million young people are registered, which is colossal! These young people have boosted attendance at bookstores, concerts and cinemas. Thanks to the Collective Culture pass that we launched a year ago for the 4th/3rd year in high school and for high school students from the second to the final year, school trips multiply and come first to support the live show. From September 2023, this collective pass will be extended to the 6th and 5th. The new pass formula has become more participatory, more editorialized, closer to young people and their desire for commitment. We have created the network of “Ambassadors” of the Culture Pass and with them, courses are organized, experiments are tested, and different modes of mobilization are developed. You are today nearly 20,000 cultural actors partners of the pass. I can only invite you to seize all the potential of this tool, designed for youth, with youth, to encourage them, not only to click and choose cultural outings, but also to practice them-even music, drawing or any other artistic passion, to speak out, to commit, to be true protagonists of our cultural life.
Alongside the Culture Pass, we will continue to have a strong ambition for arts education from an early age. The appropriations of the Ministry of Culture for the EAC have more than doubled since 2017 and they now reach 104 million euros.
Not to mention the efforts made by the Ministry of National Education, with whom we work hand in hand, including on new experiments such as the innovative schools in Marseille, where 70% of the projects submitted fall under arts education. Many of you are carrying innovative projects, which we are proud to support, whether it is heritage education or archaeology with the project “Un chantier, une école” led by our DRACs, whether it is “Ma classe au cinéma”, coordinated by the CNC, from kindergarten to grade 12, from the residencies of authors in schools with the National Book Centre, to the new «Colos Chaillot» designed by Rachid Ouramdane that reinvent the summer camps. I hope with all my heart that we will also be able to generalize the fifteen minutes of reading to the school, a simple but revolutionary idea imagined by the association Silence we read then deployed on a larger scale in some rectorates, as in Britain. This daily reading time is the best remedy for screen addiction. A great way to promote concentration, improve vocabulary, develop imagination. For reading as for Arts Education in the broad sense, the communities are committed to our side and I would like to salute the first cohort of cities labeled 100% EAC, a label managed by DRACs and rectors. We are already 79 territories certified.
Since I am talking about communities, I would like to make a second wish for 2023: that this year will allow us to consolidate and renew the relationship of the State with the elected representatives of the territories. Cultural policy can only be ambitious if it remains a shared responsibility between the State and local authorities. I want here to pay tribute to all the elected representatives who have a strong cultural vision for their city, their commune, their community of communes, their department or their region, who maintain or even develop their cultural budgets, and facilitate the emergence of new projects. From Marciac to Pau, from Montpellier to Le Havre, from Cannes to Saint-Dizier, from Oloron-Sainte-Marie to Troyes, via Reims, Lille, Nice and many others, I have met in recent months elected officials of all political sensibilities who are fully committed to culture. When others cut access to museums or libraries or cut grants. These choices, even when presented in terms of budgetary constraints, are in fact always political choices. Unfortunately, these choices are increasingly reducing access to culture or limiting creative freedom.
It is with each and every one of you that we can together convince these communities that culture cannot be an adjustment variable. Let us work together, with our DRACs, with our DACs in the Overseas Territories, who are our territorial relays, to propose meaningful projects to them, but also to listen to their expectations and concerns. I am thinking of the Micro-Funds, which will soon be 400 across the country. I am thinking of the exhibition Arts of Islam, which was held by the Louvre and the RMN-Grand Palais in 18 cities, each time associating local museum collections. I am thinking of the Trestles de France, our only travelling National Drama Centre. I am thinking of the Heritage Lotto, whose success has not wavered. Already 745 endangered sites have been saved! It is also important to mention a less well-known but very important mechanism: the Heritage Incentive Fund, shared with the Regional Councils, to support small municipalities with low resources and contribute to the restoration work of historic monuments.
I am thinking of the «cultural summer» that allowed us to irrigate the territory of projects as close as possible to the inhabitants: a bicycle tour of the Ensemble correspondances in Normandy for example. Or the Cultural Olympiad, which will keep sports and culture alive until the summer of 2024 and which we started last June.
I am thinking of the New Worlds order, which enabled 264 projects to be deployed throughout France, in monuments, in sites protected by the Conservatoire du Littoral, in public spaces, universities and even EHPAD. This unprecedented commission was designed to give artists the freedom to propose projects located in specific locations, both in metropolitan France and overseas. An Act II of these New Worlds will see the light of day in September 2023.
To go further in the territorial implementation of major cultural projects, we also have a formidable lever, the France 2030 plan. It offers us a new ambition, with 130 winners outside Paris for 37 million euros. Soon we will also develop facilities for filming and production and post-production, but also training in film and audiovisual professions. Through a new call for projects, we will also support territorial hubs of the cultural and creative industries in two priority areas: crafts, design and fashion on the one hand, and sound and image technologies on the other. The attractiveness of our territories is at stake, as is the cultural sovereignty of France.
To give our partnerships with communities new flexibility, we have also just created a territorial innovation fund. It will allow to experiment new cultural initiatives in the rural territories and the political districts of the city, in systematic link with local elected officials. I would like to take this opportunity to greet all the parliamentarians here today, and to express my gratitude to them for their commitment to culture and the always relevant exchanges we have to better adapt our policies to the reality of each territory.
I would so like to stop hearing that the policy of the Ministry of Culture is concentrated in Paris! At each of my 60 trips across France over the past few months, I have never ceased to hear this reproach. But it is false! You know this and you are the first witnesses and actors.
The department supports an exceptional network of performing arts and visual arts venues, I could list all the monuments managed by the CMN, all the museums supported in the regions, all the projects funded by the department, I would need hours.
Our major public establishments are based in Paris, but they all have a territorial policy. Let’s not forget the many tours of the Comédie Française, for example, across the country and its web TV that has reached more than 1.5 million people, because digital can also make live beautiful emotions. The BNF, another example, manages the Jean Vilar library in Avignon and will soon open a new pole in Amiens. I would also like to remind you of our ambition to be close to the public broadcasting sector, which has enabled France 3 and France Bleu to join forces to create a major digital medium for local life. In addition, our press aid helps support the pluralism of regional media with new and recently strengthened aid for the ultramarine press.
Unfortunately, the perception of a cultural divide between the capital and the rest of the country, between large cities and small towns, persists for many of our fellow citizens. It is our collective responsibility to do everything we can to remedy this, both in speech and in action. This is a crucial issue for the future of our democracy because it is on this feeling of abandonment that the far right prospers.
One issue we’ve talked a lot about with elected officials, one that I know you all care about, is the green transition. This is my third wish for 2023. From the very first day of my appointment, I have placed the decarbonization of culture at the heart of my priorities: a priority that the Prime Minister has addressed in a cross-cutting manner and which is reflected in the Green Transition Roadmap presented by my services in consultation with you. It is not a matter of adding a sustainable development dimension to what we are already doing, but rather of completely rethinking how we work, produce and build. It is to integrate these issues upstream into work operations – as the OPPIC already does. This is a reflection of our investment spending on projects that will improve the energy performance of your buildings and reduce your operating costs over time. We’re seeing that right now. You’re all facing double increases in energy costs. In the short term, we have transversal government devices that you can benefit from. The devices announced by the Ministry of Economy, are accessible to you. Do not hesitate to operate them. Whatever your status, whatever your situation, we checked, there’s at least one device that can help you. But in the long term, the challenge is to start work that will reduce operating costs and improve energy performance. In 2023, this will be the case for the Musée d'Orsay, the Théâtre national de Chaillot, the Ecole nationale supérieure d'art de Limoges and the Ecole d'architecture de Lille. It is to promote the development of green shootings with the Action! plan of the CNC.
This means integrating the ecological transition into all initial and continuing training courses. In particular, I wanted to create in this spirit a prize to promote graduate projects of architecture students in favor of ecology, green architecture. This award will be launched at the end of the month in the presence of the teaching and student communities. And all the winners will meet at the Villa Medici in Rome.
I also want to emphasize, here again, a very important lever that the France 2030 plan allows: the call for Green Alternatives projects whose first wave took place in 2022. I wanted to amplify this ecological ambition with a second edition to the tune of 25 million euros. This call for projects will be out soon, do not hesitate to take it and relay it! This is how we will finance a thousand and one solutions for the decarbonization of culture, without sacrificing anything of the quality of infrastructures and creations of course. Whether it is developing less energy-consuming video games, rethinking the heating system of the capitals or systematically reusing opera sets as do the Lyon and Paris Operas, these projects, which we finance through this call for projects, are all great inspirations for the model change we need to engage.
I would also like to talk to you about our major flagship project for 2023: opening the Cité internationale de la langue française to the public at the Château de Villers-Cotterêts. This site is one of the main cultural sites in France after Notre-Dame de Paris. He is moving at full speed under the leadership of the Centre des monuments nationaux and I would like to take this opportunity to commend the extraordinary work carried out at the head of the CMN by Philippe Bélaval over the past ten years. Dear Philippe, I will have the opportunity, on Wednesday, to express to you our gratitude and all the happiness of knowing you soon to this strategic function of advisor culture at the Elysée!
Dear friends, I invite you all to meet in June for the inauguration of this International City of the French Language within the Château de François I: a new model of cultural establishment, which aims to make alive the richness and diversity of our language, first common good constitutive of the republican pact, but also language of diversity, shared with more than 300 million speakers worldwide. Exhibitions, shows, films, debates, residencies of artists, researchers or entrepreneurs, training sessions or language technology laboratory: this City will be all at once. A cultural, educational, economic and tourist project.
Yes, with Villers-Cotterêts, we will create a new model of cultural place, a place dedicated to the French language in dialogue with regional languages and other languages of the world. A place steeped in history and open to today’s creation.
At this moment of identity strife in our society, this project in Villers-Cotterêts symbolizes in my eyes a universalism open to otherness, which gives all its place to diversity to strengthen our republican model. “A lateral universalism,” wrote philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty in the late 1950s, who would not be “overhanging,” but “moving,” drawing on the diversity of experiences and cultures of each.
I come to my 4th wish for 2023: the hope that this year will allow us to act, in France and beyond, to soothe memories, fight against identity assignations and the culture of «annulment» in other words the « cancel crop ».
Each of your structures is an echo chamber of society. Art schools, conservatories, museums, performance halls, festivals, media, cultural businesses… You are all caught up in the debates that are stirring our society. Our time is marked by social and identity disputes, sometimes expressed in a radical way.
You find yourself regularly in direct contact with the hottest news. Attempted art theft by an activist at the Quai Branly museum, acts of vandalism by radical environmental activists, demonstrations against a show, forums to deprogram an exhibition or a film… The debate continues to polarize, when we need dialogue and a lot of nuance more than ever.
Yes, we will continue to fight with voluntarism against sexual and sexist violence, through training, prevention, listening cells and the conditioning of subsidies, the ministry has been pioneer in this matter. But it is not a question of taking the place of justice to decide directly on the convictions that must apply even before a trial takes place.
Yes, we will redouble our efforts to better represent the diversity of French society on stage, in films, behind the camera, on television; on radio, but there is no question of restricting the freedom of writing or the freedom to interpret a particular role. The space of fiction must remain a space of absolute freedom, within the limits of the law of course.
It is this visceral attachment to freedom of expression that is precisely the strength of our voice in the world, which encourages many threatened creators in their countries to turn to France for refuge.
We must resolutely defend this model and pursue an ambitious policy of welcoming artists from countries at war or censored, Ukrainians, Afghans, Syrians, Iranians, Russian dissidents as well. Thank you very much to all of you for being able to mobilize and unite to create a network of extraordinary solidarity for the reception of these artists. It is France’s honour to stand with those who share our values and who fight to preserve their creative freedom. By opening our doors to them, by welcoming them on our soil, I am convinced that we are strengthening and enriching our universalism.
French society remains undermined by conflicts and issues that challenge it from the inside. The major projects of memory opened by the President of the Republic allow us to look at these issues in the face. This is not the path of denial, nor that of repentance, but the path of recognition. It is our duty not to repeat or reproduce the opposition of our elders and the tragedies of history. The early opening of the archives, the restitution of stolen property during Nazism; the redesign of the permanent galleries of the National Museum of the History of Immigration, the creation of an Institute of France and Algeria following the recommendations of the Stora report, a House of African Worlds; the Memorial to the Victims of Slavery; the future House of Press Drawing; or the Memorial Museum of Terrorism will be as many projects linking culture and memory, past, present and future. And in the months and years to come, you will be involved in all these new initiatives.
I would particularly like to emphasize our relationship with Africa. You all have a role to play in building this new cooperation with the countries of the African continent. Many of you took part in the Africa2020 season, despite the postponements due to the pandemic, or the New Africa France Summit in Montpellier. This “new relational ethic”, to use the subtitle of the report by Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy, can be built by you. Nothing can be decided from above. The meaning of this new chapter in our history with Africa will be written from the human relations that you will weave, the encounters that we can facilitate. 2023 will, I hope, be a year of decisive progress for restitution, but also for the circulation of works and new cultural cooperation.
I am thinking, for example, of the exhibition I was able to see in Cotonou last summer, where the 26 works of Abomey’s treasure returned by France were discussed with contemporary creators, exhibition that is now in Rabat before being hosted in Martinique by the Clément Foundation. I am also thinking of the in-depth work undertaken by the Musée du Quai Branly with the Dakar Museum of Black Civilizations on the Dakar-Djibouti ethnographic mission. Or at the reception by the Angoulême Museum of colleagues from Mozambique, Cameroon and Gabon for periods of immersion in the museum. This is where seeds are planted that will grow new friendships, partnerships of equal value.
Before concluding, there is one last wish that I want to share with you for 2023. It holds in one word: succession. I look at you, I know your commitment to culture, to this sector. I know you are passionate in your duties and I know all that France owes you. But I am worried about a certain crisis of vocations. These jobs that you play with enthusiasm seem to be losing in attractiveness. That’s what I remember in all my travels. You are all talking to me about the tensions on the technical trades, the fear of losing some ancestral know-how or the difficulties in recruiting for certain positions, including management positions.
That is why the development of training and skills is a high priority in the France 2030 plan. I just came back from the conservatory in La Villette, which has just won a €5 million call for projects for France 2030 to develop a conservatory that is at the forefront of new technologies, sound of images and immersive experiences. That is a wonderful example.
That is why I want to implement an ambitious plan for crafts and heritage. This is also why I am so attentive to the situation of our higher arts education institutions. Or the development of FONPEPS, to actively support sustainable employment in live and recorded entertainment.
I would also like to associate many of you with a new mentoring project that I would like to call “la Relève”. It is a question of identifying, in all the departments of France, young professionals representing all the social and geographical diversity of our country, eager to engage in a cultural journey. For four or five years, we will accompany them, coach them and have them “mentored” by great cultural figures. They will spend time in immersion in different structures, yours, others, go through internships abroad. I hope they can also be supported by some of the most committed patrons of culture and equal opportunities. These 100 young people will be the 100 faces of cultural France of tomorrow. They may go on to run a theatre, an art centre, a public institution. And maybe one of them or one of them will be the next Minister of Culture! Help us select and grow them. Let us trust them and start now to prepare them to take up the torch, your torch.
It is time for me to come down from this stage and drink with you to this new year, to our struggles and our hopes.
I will end with a poem, you know my poetic obsessions. Here are the last words of this poem by Robert Desnos:
Although tomorrow morning
Death is closer than today
I’ll be tomorrow morning
Livelier
more alive than today
Let’s stay alive! and live tomorrow!