Hello everyone,
I am very pleased to see you again today. A little less than a year ago, it was in the department, rue de Valois, that we met in the presence of my colleague from Education nationale, Jean-Michel Blanquer.
The solemn resettlement of your High Council was an important moment: it was one of the first realizations of our common ambitions for the EAC, only a few weeks after our arrival in Government.
I want to thank the Jean Vilar House for welcoming us this morning.
Jean Vilar… what better home to talk about arts education and cultural rights than being “disruptive” at the time to say that theatre was as important as water, gas and electricity. Today, together with you, we know how fundamental and founding public service culture is. The challenge is for everyone, starting with all children, to have access to it.
I would like to say a word about the last few months, because they have been marked by many advances, and a word about our future prospects…
A word about the past year, first
Your High Council has taken important steps in recent months:
A new mission letter has been delivered to Emmanuel Ethis for five years: I want to thank him once again for his constant, determined and passionate commitment;
Your High Council is now supported by a General Secretariat and a Mission Officer, to reinforce the team that has been working alongside Emmanuel for several years and whom I want to thank.
You will soon benefit from two offices provided by the National Institute of Art History, and I would like to thank Éric De Chassey. That’s where our next meeting is going to be when we get back.
And then we wanted, with Emmanuel, to have an annual calendar with more regular meetings: we will schedule four plenary sessions a year from now on.
These are the important “organizational” steps.
The High Council has, of course, made some progress on the background work over the last twelve months.
Operational regional conventions for the generalization of the EAC have begun to be implemented: this is a great satisfaction, we must continue – I will come back to this.
I would also like to talk about the steps we have taken in the department since last July.
The High Council is directly involved in the work we carry out, notably through Emmanuel who attends the regular meetings we hold with the National Education. He can attest to the unprecedented links that have developed between our two departments.
We set a goal with Jean-Michel Blanquer that we called “100% BEC”. I’d like to talk to you about that.
«100%», it sets a clear mathematical course; it sets above all the ambition to take into account each child, whatever his social or geographical origin. And this is new. Culture does not “compensate for a lack” or provide a “soul supplement”, it is constitutive of everyone and structuring for our society: it obliges us.
“100%” means no longer thinking in silos or categories of people, but rather thinking about a social project in which everyone has a place, together.
"100%" is the ambition that the 13 million young people in our country will leave school with a significant and structuring experience in the field of arts and culture, "so that future generations will retain the intoxication of the possible" - in the words of Olivier Py.
By “structuring”, we mean several things:
Whether the project is long-term: an outing to the museum or the show are indispensable initiatives, but they are not enough;
It is then necessary that each child knows during his journey an encounter with an artist: a course, an exchange, a workshop of artistic practice.
Finally, he must have the experience of his own sensitivity through artistic practice.
To make concrete progress, we chose to focus our efforts on a first project, which overlaps these different objectives: the generalization of artistic practice, starting with music.
We have already taken several actions since last July:
First of all, there was the very first “Back to Music” in schools, which sparked a real enthusiasm, I had visited several institutions and I can attest to that; the initiative will therefore be renewed in September and we expect even greater mobilization;
We then launched a plan for all children’s access to learning and practicing choral singing:
We support the development of a choir by school by 2019, against one for four today, with an intermediate stage of one in two at the start of the school year;
And we will launch a dedicated optional teaching at the beginning of the school year: a 2-hour “choral option” will be offered in the 7,000 colleges;
Finally, to close the year as well as it had begun, we launched with Jean-Michel BLANQUER the very first «Fête de la musique à l'école», on June 21, with a specific mobilization of drac and rectors throughout the territory: Again, it was a real success, with projects throughout France.
So much for the first joint actions with the National Education.
There will be others, especially on reading and image education.
For my part, I have also taken several measures:
To complete the «choral plan», I launched a plan for the development of instrumental practice. I announced the strengthening, sometimes the doubling, of grants from a whole series of operators and associations that already carry projects to enable them to accelerate their deployment and train thousands of additional children – Orchestra at school, Demos, Pocket Concerts, Comic Opera (which we saw some of the children last night in this beautiful Thyeste), Rural Music Centres, etc.
I have also made arrangements for information and media education, which is now at the heart of our children’s cultural education: I doubled the budget of the Ministry in this field this year and accompanied the development of associations of professionals especially who work in this field;
We are also building the Culture Pass: it will be tested in the fall in five departments.
I assigned him two priorities: that he promote outings and artistic practice, not the sole purchase of cultural goods; and that he promotes diversity and the diversification of uses.
We will therefore provide the mechanisms for these offers to be offered first to young people, and for a minimum share of the €500 reserved for them.
All these policies are based on one principle: partnership.
This is the very meaning of this HCEAC: bringing together institutions, professionals, civil society; bringing together the cultural and educational spheres; national and local actors …
We have not stopped developing these partnerships for a year. With the National Education you have understood this, but also for example with the strengthening of the policy in direction of the early childhood conducted with the ministry in charge of the family, or Culture and Rural Day, June 29, 2018, organized with the Office of the General Commissioner for Equality of Territories, to name but a few.
As I said, our challenge is a societal one: to give substance to Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recalls the right to take part in cultural events.
I want the vision and its concrete implementation to always be linked. The vision is underpinned by the idea dear to Hugo that “every child we teach is a man we win” and that a society that wants for its children curiosity, wonder, encounter with otherness is a society that looks to the future with confidence. The concrete is what we must do together.
A word from our perspective now:
This working session this morning will allow us to decide together on the priority themes to be addressed.
Working groups will be set up.
They must lead to concrete recommendations on the tools and solutions to be preferred for the generalization of arts and cultural education.
Many are already at work in the territories.
It will be a question of identifying and analysing them in order to allow their generalization.
This High Council must be a support body for territorial experiments, dissemination of good practices and evaluation.
The production of reference documents is indeed useful: in 2016 you presented your EAC Charter, the Charter that you members of the HCEAC had concocted and that has become our main tool today. A base of reference and common conviction for the construction of an ambitious artistic and cultural policy.
One of your priorities in the coming months is the development of the regional conventions I mentioned.
The PACA region is already engaged. We must continue.
These are great tools, very concrete. These are not declarations of intent: they identify the educational structures, cultural structures, population pools and the way to cross these actors so that finally all families can see arts education become a reality.
The objective is to generalize these conventions by the end of the year and I want to commend the accompanying work led by Emmanuel Ethis.
In the department, we are working on the same approach at the city level.
Many of them have committed themselves to a generalized approach, mobilizing both their schools and the cultural actors of their territory.
I especially want to salute David Lisnard who implemented this in Cannes, who keeps a real accounting of it… and it works.
So I decided to accompany other cities that wanted to engage in this process, starting with Château Thierry and Château-Arnoult. We are going to help these cities become EAC generalization laboratories with the help of the MEN and more generally the HCEAC, to show that this is possible.
Together with Emmanuel, we have decided on two important developments for your High Council, to support these efforts:
The creation of two new colleges:
a college of territories 100% EAC, with those I just mentioned who, by their example, can train others;
and a “Youth” college so that high school students and students can contribute your reflections. This is an important initiative;
For my department, the coming months will be pivotal.
The back to school must be a strong moment of artistic and cultural return.
I’ll make new announcements at that time. I will continue to wear measures for the development of artistic practice at school and outside school.
We are also developing an important tool, which will be a project of the next semester: a platform for linking educational and cultural actors, to facilitate the implementation of EAC projects. She will also be able to present the trainings. Digital technology must generate encounters: it is not the alpha and omega but can become a powerful tool for democracy when it gives actors the opportunity to set up projects by facilitating their encounters.
It should be able to be highlighted in the new HCEAC site in order to encourage all teachers and cultural actors to take it up.
That’s our business. I’m going to turn it over to you now.
I just want to close with a word on cultural rights: the topic you’re interested in today.
It is a principle, an approach that I fully support.
First of all, I am in favour of the evolution you are proposing for the Charter: the EAC must be a right for all.
I would like to share with you to open this exchange:
From the universal dream our thought is made». Hugo the universalist reminds us how each man carries within him a fragment of humanity. Every man is a culture. That’s where you have to go.
I welcome the fact that this session is open to the public, in addition, to enrich reflection, and to be consistent with the notion of cultural rights that puts at the heart of the model the question of participation in cultural life: allow everyone to be a spectator, but also an actor.
This is all the ambition we share and I am happy that we are together to carry it.
I’ll give you the floor now.