The Prefect of the Pays de la Loire region,
Ladies and gentlemen parliamentarians,
Ladies and gentlemen elected,
Dear Nicolas MARC, Director of BIS
Mr Director General of SACEM,
Mr Director General of SACD,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Dear friends,
I am very pleased to be here with you today.
I would like to begin by wishing you a very happy New Year: all my best wishes for happiness, health and success for yourself and your loved ones.
This year 2018, I expect a lot.
2017 was a pivotal year: with the impetus of a new ambition, of a method, the definition of priority projects.
The year ahead must be one of concretization and collective momentum.
I’ve heard some concerns, including the “Public Action 2022” transformation process.
I am telling you today, actors of the live show: there will be no savings between us.
No savings of means.
Your shows, your plays, your choreographies, your concerts are not economic jobs.
These are valuable resources for our culture, for our country, for our society.
Your creations, your prowess are a source of pride for France.
As Minister of Culture, I made a commitment that creation would be strengthened in budget 2018.
No savings of means between us, then.
No project savings either.
Because the challenge that brings us together calls creators to be, more than ever, at the heart of the City.
This challenge is the fight against cultural segregation.
Against the barriers which exclude millions of people in France from the practice of an art, which exclude them from certain cultural professions, which exclude them from works, places, rooms frequented by others.
These barriers are sometimes financial, sometimes social, sometimes geographical, sometimes psychological.
No one can be satisfied with this situation.
You have this fight in mind every day, I know. Because there is nothing more terrible for a show than not finding your audience. Its audiences. All audiences.
This fight, we will fight together.
Art and culture must be at the heart of the recasting of our republican pact.
To this end, I would like a new order of action, built with local and regional authorities.
They are major actors in supporting the performing arts – the many elected representatives in this room, whom I salute and remind through their presence – and they are privileged partners for the Ministry.
I quickly established a dialogue with them to define a new framework for contractualisation. A framework that is both:
- More flexible: that is, it adapts to the needs of the territories and projects, not the other way around.
- More dynamic: that is, it no longer freezes our interventions, but leaves room for adjustments, for the reassessment of needs.
- More solidarity, finally: which provides a component adapted for the most fragile populations and territories.
We worked on a joint statement. I can tell you that all the elected associations of the Council of Local Authorities for Cultural Development, the CCTDC, have signed this declaration. We will be releasing it very soon.
I hope that together we can open a new sequence for the creation, made of experiments, of cross-projects; marked by a decompartmentalization between art and the other fields of society.
I want to support all those who innovate, who dare, who step outside the box. Those who try different adventures, who would not have found the support of the Ministry of Culture a few years ago: today, we make a place for them.
I want to support all those who are mobilizing to meet citizens who would otherwise never see your shows: those who go to hospitals, prisons, retirement homes…
I want to support projects that involve the public, that involve them in the construction of the show, that encourage amateur practice. That support cultural rights.
I want to support all those who mobilize with the new generations, so that the show is a universal opportunity: those who intervene in schools, who welcome children to their rehearsals, who mount projects with them.
I want to support all those who will play in territories where shows are too rare: in rural areas, in neighbourhoods, in inner cities in disrepair.
To reach all audiences, we must not only encourage them to go through our doors, we must go to them, in the places they are familiar to them, in public places, in associative homes, libraries, multi-purpose rooms.
I am going to launch a major plan of support for the homeless in the coming weeks: so that troops, artists, productions go on the roads of France.
I am asking every DRAC, starting this year, to release part of their budget to promote all these projects, to allow these experiments, to give carte blanche to artists and creators to conduct projects with forgotten territories or audiences.
I would also like to say a word about an audience that calls for a special mobilization: migrants.
In front of you, in front of the responsible and committed professionals that you are, I am making an appeal tonight.
Let us offer migrants a welcome worthy of the name.
Many of you are already mobilizing.
The cultural world has a duty to act.
Everyone, at their level, must take their share.
It is our honour, that of our culture, that of our Republic that depends on it.
I call everyone to act: not out of angelism, not out of complacency, but out of humanity, out of a spirit of responsibility.
Take action to give these people the right to live normally, alongside procedures, procedures and queues.
To take action to give them bearings, after unimaginable journeys, after being torn from their native land.
Take action to give them a chance to put down roots.
Act, then. Together and now.
You all have the power.
To remind these people that the dream exists, to offer them moments of grace, by reserving a place for them to attend your shows.
You can restore their dignity and voice by offering them a workshop of theatre, circus, dance. Putting a microphone or musical instrument in their hands.
You can fight the stereotypes that strike them, act for their right to consideration, by telling their story in your shows; by making them a place in your programming.
Commit. I’m counting on you.
The other side of everything I’ve just described, of all these new projects, is the evolution of the framework within which they’re operating.
For new ideas to flourish, an environment in motion is needed.
That’s my third message: we’re not going to do the processing economy.
To succeed in supporting creation and emergence, we must change our ways of doing things.
For cultural policy, the status quo is not an option.
We have to change our approach, our priorities, our modes of action. We have to break some taboos, remove some of the constraints.
The new cultural policy is one that stops opposing public policy and artists' policy.
I have heard the concerns about this.
But we will not pursue a policy of access and dissemination to the detriment of creation.
It is a “cross-fertilization”, to use Jack RALITE’s lovely word, which you have often seen here and for which I have a thought.
All the ambition I just described for audiences does not exist without the creators, without the professionals you are.
It is you, and you alone, who can touch the spectators, conquer new ones.
When we believe in your shows, in what they bring to the world, we fight first to make them possible, and then we fight to make them accessible to everyone.
So I don’t choose between the two: I will fight for professionals as I will fight for audiences.
I want a new impetus for creation.
And to do that, you have to give it time.
I want to give artists time for research, by developing residencies, the presence of artists permanently in places.
It is also the best way to promote meetings with the public: by opening access to rehearsals, by organizing meetings outside of performances.
To give new impetus to creation, we must also modernize our system of public aid.
You know its limits, you are the first to suffer.
Today, too often, requests for assistance are a combatant. You have to go through multiple windows, create endless files, wait and start again.
Under the current system, moreover, the share of aid that ultimately goes to the artistic project is insufficient.
And today, in the eyes of many, the Ministry of Culture appears more as censor than as facilitator.
All this must change: for you, for us.
We must build a system of aid that is simpler, more fluid and fairer.
A system that makes room for new creation, for unpublished, unclassifiable proposals, for experiments.
A system that evaluates each project for its artistic, territorial, and social interest, before looking at whether it ticks a particular criterion.
No artist or contractor must return their application file to their home, simply because their project does not fit in any “box”.
We will not build this new system without you. We need your diagnosis and suggestions.
That is the purpose of the consultation currently being conducted by the department’s Direction générale de la création artistique.
Finally, to give new impetus to creation, we must improve the situation of those who live through it.
We must respond to the impoverishment of your professions.
We must support sustainable employment in the show. This is the purpose of FONPEPS, National Fund for sustainable employment in the show. Entertainment companies must mobilize it as soon as possible.
Regarding the specific unemployment insurance scheme for the intermittent, the President of the Republic has undertaken to preserve it during the campaign. I want to reaffirm this commitment. The agreement signed in 2016 is a good, fair and balanced agreement.
To support creation is to fight for the purchasing power of artists. This is what I did this fall to guarantee artists-authors compensation as part of the reform of the CSG.
You can count on me to lead and win the battles, to make the voices of cultural professionals heard in the overall reforms led by the government.
A word about the Maison commune de la musique, finally. Consultations on the report of Roch-Olivier MAISTRE are ending. I will read the remarks and I will announce my decisions.
The new cultural policy is also one that ceases to oppose public and private supply.
I struggle with the idea that there would be a “legitimate” culture on the one hand – the one that the state recognizes and supports; and on the other hand, there would be a culture where the state is disinterested or discredited – that is not the case.
There is already cooperation between the public and the private, particularly in theatre.
This is an important subject, which is before us, and on which I want to reflect.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Dear friends,
The ambitions that I carry for the living spectacle, and through what you represent, the ambitions that I carry for the country.
You bring freedom to life: freedom of creation, freedom of speech and expression. In your commitment to the public, you are fighting for equality. You are artisans of brotherhood. France needs you more than ever.
Thank you for what you offer, thank you for your commitment.
Best wishes for 2018.