Save the date: Explore heritage with the winners of the Committed Citizen Artist Award!

For the first time, the 5 winners of the Committed Citizen Artist Award will be brought together thanks to the invitation of one of them, Patrick Bouchain, for an original, offbeat, generous and joyful experience during the Grand Voyage, an event organized as part of the European Heritage Days. Another way to experience Heritage during a unique crossing of the Parisian suburbs under the sign of Citizen Art.

The 5 French and Spanish winners together for the first time

In 2020, we created the Engaged Citizen Artist Award to highlight those who are transforming established models with remarkable actions in the face of societal challenges.

The 5 French and Spanish artists rewarded during this first edition will meet again from September 17 to 19 on the occasion of the European Heritage Days.

“This first meeting of the winners of the Engaged Citizen Artist Award is taking place as part of the event Le Grand Voyage, a mobilizing, solidarity-based, original experience, bringing together young people, institutions, associations, thinkers and artists. Organized by one of the winners, Patrick Bouchain, it resonates with our commitment to an art that is a vector of citizenship and emotions that can amaze us individually and collectively, bring us together in joy, but also mobilize us and encourage us to act,” explains Marion Desmares, Citizen Art Program Manager, and continues: “Far from a classic ceremony, it will be an opportunity to meet the public, potential synergies between the winners and exchanges around art, a driver of social transformations.”

Meeting the inhabitants and the youth, Neïl Beloufa, Santiago Cirugeda, Julio Jara, and Cristina Pato will participate and organize a series of events orchestrated by Mélanie Bouteloup, independent curator, during this unprecedented crossing of the Parisian suburbs, from Gennevilliers to Bagneux. As a highlight, we will meet them again on Saturday 18 September under the tent of the World’s Little Circus to reflect together on new forms of education, culture, the environment and living heritage.

These artists, from diverse disciplines and backgrounds, have joined forces with collective adventures that are as original as they are exemplary, on a small or large scale, around issues as varied as the loss of memory, social exclusion, intercultural relations and urban planning.

Le Grand Voyage: revealing the riches and youth of the Parisian suburbs

On the occasion of the European Heritage Days, La Preuve par 7, the Plus Petit Cirque du Monde and the T2G Théâtre de Gennevilliers have imagined a Grand Voyage métropolitain, organised in collaboration with our Foundation, and with the support of the cities of Bagneux, Gennevilliers, Rueil Malmaison and the Métropole du Grand Paris.

Artistic shows and impromptus, guided tours, performances and readings are on the program of this journey made of river navigation, hiking and cycling, and camping with which we are happy to be associated. “Heritage is not only built. It is what we inherit: gastronomic culture, natural environment, gestures learned and transmitted through work or the arts. It is also what we want to preserve in order to pass it on: what we sow, preserve and cultivate today, in the hope that it will be useful to the generations of tomorrow,” explains Fanny Taillandier, programmer of the event, and adds: “We want to consider heritage not as what we bequeath (from the point of view of the elders) but as what we inherit (from the point of view of the youngest) and that we choose to pass on and value because we attach importance to it. importance. »

A foretaste of the Grand Voyage program from September 17 to 19, 2021

• 5 committed citizen artists
• Dozens of teenagers guiding us through the metropolis
• 100 campers by the fire
• Musicians, dancers and circus performers on a barge
• 4 x 25 kilometres surveyed
• Locks, ports and ports of call
• Several mayors of Ile-de-France in hiking boots
• Unidentified floating objects
• Conferences, debates and readings
• A cultural meeting centre dedicated to the heritage of suburban towns

Citizen Art, a driver of social transformation

Convinced, like our partners, that youth and transmission between generations are at the very heart of what we call heritage, we wanted to revisit these European days in the company of young people and artists, to give them a new lease of life, to anchor them in different territories and to imagine on this occasion, a more ecological future, inclusive and fulfilling.

“It is a banality to say that we live in an uncertain world, entered into a kind of permanent and multifaceted crisis. In this context, artists have a decisive role in society. Creative and particularly inspiring figures since the dawn of time, they are able to make the anatomy of the present and to build new imaginaries. But today, as in the past, beyond using the symbolic language of art, some of them carry out initiatives that are rooted in reality,” says Anastassia Makridou-Bretonneau, Head of the Citizen Art axis. “As artist-citizens, they are committed to concrete and demanding actions in the long term. By mobilizing their inventiveness, their different know-how and experiences in the service of others, they give body and voice to other possibilities. »

This event will allow us to see and experience Citizen Art as we have been carrying it since our creation more than 10 years ago: a shared art, creator of meaning and social links, the result of meetings between artists, scientists, teachers, institutions, associations and inhabitants. An art that accompanies each of us, that activates our capacities for reflection and empathy to imagine a sustainable future, counterpoint to the modern fiction of an individual, autonomous life, emancipated from the community, from the body, from the countless living beings to which we owe our existence.

After more than a year of health crisis, it is a real pleasure to meet again at the beginning of the school year to celebrate art and culture, so essential to our lives. In the meantime, we wish you a happy holiday!

Copyrights: Poster © Simon Denise / La Preuve par 7; Artist portraits © Atelier Neïl Beloufa, Willy Vainqueur, Belén González, Isaias Grinolo, Xan Padrón; Portrait Anastassia Makridou-Bretonneau © Judith Sansó