Strengthening the links between artists and society

The health crisis we’ve been experiencing for over a year now has hit the artistic and cultural sector hard, and has thrown a wrench into the careers of thousands of artists. Being, or wanting to be, an artist today is a vocation made up of passion, but also a path strewn with doubts and daily challenges. It seemed obvious to us to support them, to be present alongside them at a time of fragility and precariousness in their living conditions. We don’t want to see a generation of artists sacrificed. After this storm, we are even more determined to strengthen the links between contemporary creation and a society prey to mistrust and fragmentation. Because, since our creation, we have been driven by the conviction that art and culture are essential factors of emancipation and fulfillment, and that artists have a central role to play in the world to come, like the first winners of our new Engaged Citizen Artist Award.

Emergency aid at the heart of the crisis

While the Covid 19 crisis plunged the country into lockdown in the spring of 2020, the shutdown of the world of culture put a brake on the careers of artists but also on their livelihoods. Internships and missions cancelled, loss of student jobs, family support, CROUS aid during the summer, opportunities to participate in exhibitions… ” The crisis has abruptly endangered the future of artists, especially students, who could no longer cope with the needs of daily life,” says Anastassia Makridou-Bretonneau, Head of the Foundation’s Citizen Art axis. “We have responded to the cry of alarm from our partners and put in place emergency support.”

With our support, the PSL University Emergency Aid Fund (Paris Sciences et Lettres) has distributed 183 grants to art school students (CNSAD, ENSAD, La Fémis, Beaux-Arts, CNSMDP and ENSA Paris Malaquais), intended for their food and accommodation costs, but also for the purchase or maintenance of computer and digital equipment. The Support Fund created by Artagon, in which we also took part, made it possible to pay a €200 grant to more than 300 students in great difficulty, enrolled in 52 French public art schools.

With the Cité internationale des Arts, we launched a programme of artist residencies offering them a living and working space, financial support and a conducive artistic environment, for a period of six months in 2020. An initiative continued and reinforced in 2021, with a health and economic situation that weighs on many artists and professionals weakened, some of whom are forced to turn away from their creative practice.

“Through this mobilization, the question of the fragility of the beginning of a career seemed essential to us. The crisis has revealed and accentuated an already existing and structural situation but which was more silent, which could call into question vocations and therefore the capacity of our society to create, to propose new imaginaries for current and future generations,” explains Anastassia Makridou-Bretonneau. “Our Foundation did not only want to be present in the context of the emergency but to see further, by acting in a sustainable way in line with our Citizen Art axis.” This awareness is shared by actors in the field, such as Anna Labouze and Keimis Henni, founders of Artagon: “After the emergency aid was put in place, we asked ourselves what we could do to meet the needs of these young people. The end of studies is a pivotal moment that many dread because it is often synonymous with loneliness. On average, it takes 5 years for an artist who has left school to emerge, and many of them give it up. We imagined an airlock, a resource area, a work and meeting space to accompany them towards autonomy.”

Emergence of a new place in Marseille

Artagon Marseille, a hybrid place of production, transmission and sharing dedicated to creation and emerging cultures, has been welcoming 25 artists in residence since this summer, 25 artists who have just graduated, are retraining or self-taught, as well as 25 cultural project leaders (associations, publishing, media, etc.). “Marseille is attracting more and more artists. On the side of cultural project leaders, there is also a real demand for support ,” said the founders. The opportunity presented itself with the conversion of the former Pernod-Ricard factories into an educational third place, “in real complementarity with our cultural and artistic project. And it was important to us to set up in the northern districts where many things are to be imagined to develop the cultural offer. »

Spread over more than 2000 m2, the place consists of individual and collective workshops, shared offices, as well as production, training, meeting and programming spaces. Residents are accompanied free of charge through individual sessions, professional workshops where they benefit from an outside perspective that will allow them to structure their activity and start their career serenely. “Like an incubator, the objective is to federate and support their professional and artistic integration, taking into account the individualities and variety of profiles so that everyone can find their way.”

At the end of August 2021, the inauguration of the premises on the occasion of Art-O-Rama, an international contemporary art fair, attracted many professionals. But Artagon is also a public place open to its environment. “We are here to promote the commitment of artists in society, as close as possible to the citizens. Activities and programming are shaped by residents. For the opening, for example, they went door-to-door in the neighborhood and organized events with and for the inhabitants: petanque competitions, cooking workshops, make-up, dance, bingo… »

The reactions have been very positive, both in the artistic and institutional community and from the general public. ” It was not a foregone conclusion for an association like us, which came from Paris! We make sure to consult and encourage discussions. A neighbours’ party with the residents made it possible to identify the desires and needs. Our responsibility and our challenge today are to support these promising initiatives. »

The activities are already taking shape. A film club project, a shared garden, workshops and courses with an enticing programme: design and football, walks, picking and cooking, participatory urban planning to develop the outdoor courtyard of the place, a female hacker space, a micro-publishing fair, meetings with inspiring personalities… And links are forged with school structures, art schools and social structures.

So is Artagon Marseille an innovative place? For Anastassia Makridou-Bretonneau, ” this concept is original in the sense that it responds to different needs, identified for a long time, by providing a structured framework.” “There is not much new as such, but an assembly in the same place of solutions that already exist ” share Anna Labouze and Keimis Henni. “One of our particularities is to mix disciplines (theatre, dance, cinema, design, painting, etc.), profiles between artists and cultural structures and to offer moments of encounter accessible free of charge to the general public.”

For the Foundation, the collective and civic dimension of this project was fundamental. Based on the creation of links with society, Artagon’s actions encourage artists to think about their practice not in an isolated bubble, but in connection with the public, especially young people and teenagers from working-class backgrounds to allow them to become aware of the arts, develop a critical eye and participate in their emancipation through culture. “Contemporary creation still has the reputation of evolving in its own spheres, far from the issues and other actors of society and territories. This is why it is often described as elitist, disconnected, hermetic and out of touch, despite the desire of artists, and especially young people, to get involved, at a time when the question of the social utility of art is being raised,” they conclude.

Supporting artists in exile

Created in 2017, L’atelier des artistes en exil (aa-e), a unique structure in France, aims to support artists of all origins, all disciplines combined, by offering them workspaces and putting them in touch with professionals in order to give them the means to test their practice and restructure themselves. Particularly affected by the health crisis, these fragile artists need appropriate support, as Judith Depaule, Director, explains: “Making a living from one’s art is a challenge in itself, but for a foreign artist, in addition to the issue of mastering the language, the structuring of the French cultural milieu is very difficult to understand: distinction between public and private, Between amateur and professional practice, the status of intermittency… »

In the light of our emergency and solidarity fund, our Foundation supports certification training in mediation which, since September 2021, has benefited a dozen artists. “Deepening the work carried out during the French classes, these workshops allow them to acquire specialized vocabulary and distance to present their work, but also skills to set up a project, to find professional opportunities in artistic mediation. A sector that is also enriched by this diversity of views. Judith Depaule.

At the same time, we encouraged participatory projects carried out by artists in exile with unaccompanied minors. The dance workshops were the subject of two public performances at the Maison des Pratiques Artistiques Amateurs in the centre of Paris. And an intensive summer course gave rise to a first slam-rap part during the 4,3,2,1 festival organized by the association in emblematic Parisian places. A festival whose description reminds us how much we need to meet and share through art: “4,3,2,1… It is a countdown, a post-lockdown impulse, a call to start again, an attempt to reason with time, an incentive to return to life, to reconnect with the essential, to rediscover forgotten taste and smells. »

Photo credits

Front page: Stélios Lazarou, artist-in-residence at Artagon Marseille © Thomas Bader

Class of 2021 Residency @ Cité internationale des Arts

Views of the opening of the doors of Artagon Marseille, 26-29 August 2021 Marie Genin – © Artagon

Glitter workshop by Sœurs Malsaines, residents of Artagon Marseille © Artagon

© Atelier co-co, Artagon Marseille’s resident structure

Portrait Anna Labouze & Keimis Henni © Robin More