In Normandy, a hundred cultural action residences ensure an artistic presence in Norman schools.
What is common between the Robert Doisneau primary school in Cherbourg-en-cotentin (50), the Albert Camus secondary school in Tinchebray (61) and the Grieu vocational school in Rouen (76)? A unique experience, at the very least, since these schools, like a hundred others in Normandy, receive artists in residence for cultural action. For the latter, it will be an opportunity to immerse themselves in the institutions that welcome them, build long-term relationships with their students and share their creative vein.
For DRAC Normandie, strengthening the presence of artistic expression at the very heart of schools, thanks to its ' artist residency matches », is an essential mission.
A look back at three iconic projects that will take place during the 2022-2023 school year:
- A photographic project based on the mastery of students' analytical, reflection and personal and collective expression skills.
- A second theatre project focused on the process of creating an artistic work from writing to performance.
- Finally, a final project that aims to promote the cultural openness of students by arousing their interest in contemporary music, contemporary dance, musical composition and video production.
Territory in sight!
Artist Residency Match between Le Point du Jour, art centre and the Robert Doisneau primary school in Cherbourg-en-cotentin (50).
Inaugurated in 2008, The Point du Jour is an art center/ publisher photography-oriented. The exhibitions are of three types: from commissioned residencies, the first ones are about the Norman territory; the second presents the work of contemporary artists; the last ones are dedicated to great photographers of the XXe century.
Romaric Hardy : His work is related to time and occupation issues. If he focuses on working in a given territory and during a specific period, the daily wanderings are the artist’s daily laboratory where he submits to the poetry of discovery and observation.
In response to his work, artist Romaric Hardy will host an artistic research workshop with the classes (3 classes from CP to CM2 and one IME class in inclusion), whose objectives are multiple: to introduce a young audience to the photographic medium; to teach them to read images; to apprehend a neighbourhood by putting a personal look on it. Imagine the future evolutions of a place by translating them by plastic means; organize a restitution outside the walls, to interact with all the components of the neighborhood (places/populations) Involve students in the different stages of creating a public restitution. The restitution will take the form of an outdoor parade followed by a snack. Signs and pennants will be made from the students' productions. During the parade, a shot of each student with their work will be taken (with an identical background). The images will be assembled side by side on a roller whose visual rendering will be a reminder of the parade. This archive object can find its place in the school.
©Romaric Hardy
Pink Machine.
Artist Residency Match Théâtre du Préau – CDN de Normandie Vire and Albert Camus College in Tinchebray (61).
Le Préau, Centre Dramatique National de Normandie-Vire has the mission of artistic creation, the dissemination of its works on the regional and national territory, and the reception in residence of artistic teams. His project focuses on participatory forms and proposals, meetings, investigations, in the theatre as well as in the territory, in order to meet the inhabitants to convince them to open the doors of the theatre.
The Company 1% artistic, based in Hérouville-Saint-Clair was founded in 2018 by Mona Abousaid and Garance Bonotto. Their creations nourish a reflection on gender and pop culture in their intimate and collective dimension. With the tools of self-fiction, documentation and the collection of testimonies, these forms of the theatre of the real approach contemporary mythologies to better make them the object of a political and spectacular reflection.
The artistic team proposes to share their protocols of creation of an artistic work from writing to representation (dramaturgy, rehearsal issues, work of the body and the game, direction, setting in space) with students 4e and 3e exploring three axes: Tell yourself; investigate and reinvent yourself.
- Tell each other by orality, writing and the body, enhancing its tastes and cultures and its relationship to influential icons.
- Investigate by taking the game of research by interviewing other comrades about their own relationships to pop culture and by documenting on figures that are unknown to them, in order to discover all the possible reappropriations.
- Reinvent oneself by approaching the creation of characters, through transformation tools (make-up, costumes) and improvisations on stage, to try to « take for stars » off the beaten track.
This transmission work is directly related to the creation of Pink Machine (Current Creation Winner), experimental cabaret, exploring emotional relationships with female icons in pop culture.
©Arthur Crestani
Individual and identity – Portrait and self-portrait.
Artist Residency Match 106 – REM and the Lycée des métiers Grieu de Rouen (76).
106 – REM is a concert hall dedicated to contemporary music located in Rouen on the Jean de Béthencourt wharf. It offers between 80 and 90 concerts per year and welcomes around 50,000 spectators per year. 106 – REM also accompanies local or national artists throughout the year through five rehearsal studios and a modeling studio.
Charlotte Rousseau of Presque Compagnie is a multidisciplinary artist (choreographer, director, video artist, musician and performer). Her relationship with the 106 is based on her musical artist project «THE POSSIBLE LIVES» a concept project that catalyzes her musical and video work and with which she develops experimental audio-visual projections.
The project focuses on the question of identity in order to highlight all the cultures of origin of the students, the high school being attended essentially by a male audience and welcoming first-coming students who do not always master the French language. On the occasion of this residency, five artists will lead workshops within the establishment with first and final professional classes and CAP in order to initiate collaborations between classes around a unifying project. Workshops in contemporary dance, video creation and musical composition will lead to the production of a video « Individual and Identity – Portrait and Self-Portrait ». In parallel, the 106 team will welcome the students to discover the concert hall, its functioning, its programming and make them autonomous in their practice and their discovery of current music.
©Charlotte Rousseau
' ARTIST RESIDENCY MATCH »
Initiated by DRAC Normandie and in partnership with the Ministry of National Education and the Normandy departments, this annual program meets the objective of generalizing arts and cultural education. In connection with a spectator journey, it allows the reception of artists or cultural professionals for a singular project and aims at the cultural openness of children and youth as well as the discovery of the process of artistic creation. The project is aimed at pupils or students, on their school time and must directly involve at least three classes in order to radiate more widely on the school and the educational community.
