4 projects New sponsors supported: making art as society is made

Whatever your age, origins or place of life, it is possible to take hold of a subject that touches us and materialize it in the form of a work of art thanks to the support of experienced mediators and professional artists. It is the “New Sponsors” citizen initiative that has been reversing perspectives and creating links throughout France and Europe for more than 30 years. As part of its “Mediations and Cultural Democracy” programme, the Citizen Art axis has just supported 4 of these projects, around the just and ecological transition.

When citizens commission artists

The New Patrons action allows groups of citizens to be accompanied in commissioning a work that responds to their specific context. They come together to bring out a work in response to a situation and needs, raising social or societal issues: rural desertification, revitalization of social ties, ecological transition, search for the identity of a community or a territory…

Based on the request made and accompanied by a mediator, the artist selected by the commissioners explores new perspectives, proposes new imaginaries, and constructs alternative narratives. Whether it is lasting or ephemeral, large or small, participatory or contemplative, the work will find the form best suited to the commission, formulated in a democratic way while respecting the artist’s freedom of invention and creation.

Developed since the early 1990s, the artistic protocol of the Nouveaux commanditaires has enabled the creation of more than 500 works in France and around the world, in a wide variety of contexts and various disciplines: visual arts, design, theatre, literature, cinema, music, architecture, science and comics.

The water cycle in karst areas

In the Haut-Jura, a village councillor and a group of three speleologists accompanied by the Regional Nature Park, wanted to raise awareness of a particular geological context: the Karst, these large fractured limestone massifs in which water circulates deep down and forms an underground network. The water cycle in karst environments has become a major environmental issue, little known and poorly understood by the public, although it is the subject of observations and studies. Supported by the mediator Valérie Cudel, this group of sponsors has shaped a project intended to inform about the changes to come, to raise awareness among the younger generations about the common good that is water and to open up to possible solutions for sharing.

The investigation carried out by the Disnovation.org collective follows the water that infiltrates the rock, disappears and resurfaces elsewhere; It goes back in time to the depths of geology and retraces anecdotes and collective stories related to water in the form of a narrative video essay. The karst landscapes constitute a sentinel zone where a series of current and future water-related tensions can be observed in the social, agricultural, ecological and health fields. The artists wish to cross-reference the resulting study with stories of local and global social inventions to open up avenues of reflection and envisage the water commons in the present and the future.

Encouraging emerging orders

The Foundation has also decided to support the initiation of new commissions, a decisive work that includes mediation activity, from the first contacts with the patrons to the delivery of the artistic study. During this phase, the mediator analyzes the context of the potential commission, helps to form a group, to draw up its specifications, to negotiate with the decision-makers, to place the commission in a social and political context, to study the cultural discipline of intervention most appropriate to their needs and to choose the artist or creator to whom to entrust the commission.

Reception centre and SAO (support and orientation service) / Montpellier /Occitanie

The team at the Day Care Centre, a place of information and guidance for homeless people, wants to offer the centre’s beneficiaries a more welcoming and pleasant place and improve their experience of this place they visit every day.

The Vrille basin, Saint Amand en Puisaye / Burgundy

Residents, members of the fishing association Gaule Poyardine, founders of the Rain Festival and an ornithologist wish to commission a work to enhance the water landscapes that shape the identity of the Puisaye and to make known the good practices of resource use in relation to the current climate metamorphosis.

The heritage of the barns, Le Crêt de Chazay / Auvergne Rhône Alpes

In the heart of the Belledonne massif, many ruined barns bear witness to the decline of livestock farming and the development of the forest. The inhabitants of the rural communes of Les Adrets et Huitières wish to think about new uses to give meaning to this rural heritage in a local context marked by social and cultural divides and the need for intergenerational links.

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Photo credits: Disnovation.org / François de Singly