Achieve 100% BEC in School
Arts and Cultural Education (ACS) promotes artistic and cultural practice and fosters the desire for culture in all children and adolescents, regardless of their situation and place of life.
It thus constitutes a long-term lever to guarantee to everyone, at all ages and in all territories, respect for their cultural rights and the full opportunity to participate in artistic and cultural life.
Arts and culture also enrich and diversify learning. They promote personal growth, the ability to think and make choices for yourself. They contribute to the expression of each in its singularity.
Arts and cultural education is therefore a powerful instrument in the service of equal opportunities: it is for this reason that the President of the Republic has made its generalization a priority objective.
To reach the latter, the presence of arts and culture in the school is fundamental. The school route is a common denominator for the vast majority of an age group, and the EAC on this school time constitutes a real base. This is why, by 2022, each student will have to benefit from a quality BEC action every year.
Reaching such an ambitious goal requires the mobilization of multiple actors:
- the artists,
- cultural, educational and associative actors,
- the services of the State, the local authorities...
The close cooperation of the ministries in charge of Culture and National Education, in connection - for agricultural education - with the Ministry of Agriculture, structures the framework in which these partnerships develop in all the territories.
The need for this joint action has been reaffirmed several times since the early 2000s. It has already borne fruit. A joint survey of the statistical services of the two departments has shown that:
- 3 out of 4 students today participate in at least one BEC action during their school year;
- more than 3 out of 4 schools and 9 out of 10 colleges have a partnership with a cultural structure.
The aim is now to guarantee the same experience, with the same level of demand and quality, each year, to the 25% of students who are not yet involved today.
Beyond this quantified horizon, it is a question of making the artistic and cultural education process more legible, understandable and legitimate for all those who benefit from it. It is necessary that pupils and families become familiar with these proposals, perceive better how they come to enrich concretely the educational journey of each child, of each young person.
To address this double challenge, the Ministry of National Education and Youth and the Ministry of Culture have defined priorities and principles of action, recalled in their joint roadmap for the period 2020-2021.
Fundamental principles unchanged
The generalization of the EAC is based on the principles expressed by the Charter of Arts and Cultural Education drafted by the High Council for Arts and Cultural Education in 2016.
Thus, the three pillars that define the EAC remain more relevant than ever:
- the meeting of works, artists and cultural professionals encourages a sensitive and embodied discovery of the artistic register, an openness to the diversity of aesthetic universes, forms of expression and creation, and stimulates creativity;
- cultural or artistic practice offers a privileged space for expression and listening, creates bonds and promotes collective dynamics while strengthening the self-confidence of children and youth. Still heavily dependent on the social and geographical context for family time, its development in school is a true requirement of republican equality;
- the acquisition of knowledge reconciling sensitive experience and the exercise of reason contributes to a humanistic formation, allowing for personal as well as social and civic fulfilment.
Space for exploration and experimentation, arts and cultural education encourages a project approach, designed in close coordination with the teachings, but always co-constructed between educational and cultural partners, with the concern to propose to the pupils coherent and plural routes.
Five concrete priorities: Sing, read, watch, express yourself and develop your critical mind.
The two departments have chosen to work around five priorities that correspond to the daily realities of the personal and academic journey of children and young people:
- Sing, with the development of choirs in all schools and colleges, to encourage a practice that combines the development of sensitivity, expression, collective work and many pedagogical issues.
- Share the pleasure of reading through all the diversity of experiences of reading and literary creation, summon curiosity for stories and the imagination to renew the relationship to the language and the written word and promote the mastery of the latter.
- Watch and arouse curiosity to the richness and diversity of our heritage as well as the works of creation, to learn to look at and understand all the forms of images that surround us.
- Expressing oneself, developing one’s eloquence to learn to assert oneself in all its singularity, and especially through theatrical practice.
- Develop critical thinking skills and its ability to decipher a world with multiple sources of information, avoiding the trap of manipulation, either through a critical approach to the media and all alternative sources of information or through the construction of a solid scientific and technical culture.
Fostering a common BEC culture
Finally, it is necessary that the actors of this interdepartmental policy, however diverse they may be, share a culture, perspectives, methods, a common language, so that the EAC becomes a familiar reality for a whole age group.
In this spirit, special attention will be paid to the issues of:
- vocational, initial and continuing training, to share a pedagogical vision placing at the heart of a multidisciplinary project approach the sensitive child and its creativity and methods of team work.
The presence of BEC training in the INSPE and of higher education institutions culture is at the heart of the challenges of generalization and sustainability of a quality EAC.
The in-service training of actors who meet audiences, teachers, artists and speakers, to enable them to develop common practices together, facilitates the implementation of projects and their fluidity, for the benefit of students.
Thus,Resource centres for arts and cultural education (PREAC), piloted at the national level by Canope, and accompanied at the territorial level by the DRAC, already provide each year, with the support of the two ministries, the training of about 2500 EAC actors, including a majority of teachers.
- Dissemination of resources: a substantial number of tools, including digital platforms, exist today to make quality cultural resources available: History of the Arts, Edutheca, Vox – my interactive choir, cinema.lesite.tv., Educ'Arte…
The ministries in charge of Culture and National Education have started a joint work to allow a rationalization, a better visibility of the existing, and the development of new tools.
The creation of Lumni, a common platform for public broadcasters, testifies to this approach, which simplifies access to the resource without impoverishing it.
- research in arts and cultural education to enable a critical and constantly renewed vision, able to respond to the evolutions of our society.
To bring these initiatives together, a new National Institute of Arts and Cultural Education (INSEAC) opened its doors in Guingamp in the fall of 2021, which will contribute to their development. It is the result of a project shared by the Ministry of Culture with the Ministries of National Education, Youth and Sport, Higher Education, Research and Innovation, and implemented in close collaboration with the communities in its territory. INSEAC is a good example of the determination shared by all the holders of the EAC policy.