The art-Enfance-Jeunesse conventioned scene has finally developed its Christmas festival in schools. One way to respond to the closure of artistic and cultural structures, again and again through live performance. A radio station has been set up within La Minoterie to allow art to be broadcast.
In a particular, complicated year, the first confinement saw the vital forces of the Flour mill working on remote workshops but also concrete adaptations in the event of a resumption of activity. Including beyond the early stages of the first deconfinement.
Christmas, in several scenes
His Christmas festival could have been canceled. Especially since the second confinement fell and blocked this desired festive and magical early December at the Flour Mill.
“We relaunched the adventure,” says Christian Duchange, director of the structure. Christmas at the Minoterie took place “in several scenes”.
“It’s the same desire for programming but it is played out differently and elsewhere”. The artists and companies went to play their shows in schools, in Dijon and more widely in Côte-d’Or, obviously according to health rules worked on with the rectorate.
If Christian Duchange regrets that we did not ask ourselves the question earlier of the possibility of exporting shows to schoolchildren, who we know are a less fragile audience than others in the face of Covid, the programming adapted and developed has enabled the Flour Mill to reaffirm “the importance, the place, the strength of culture in all its forms and of art in all its manifestations in our societies. Performing arts is a way of being moved, of building oneself, it is vital for children. And it is missing even more for them. With artists, we also have to do with people, weavers of links, developers of imaginations. ”.
7 shows were offered, for 41 performances, not to mention 27 workshop sessions and readings. At Champollion kindergarten in Dijon, in the Grésilles district, the Ubrique collective revisited the Hansel and Gretel tale for the pleasure of the group of schoolchildren having gone through all the emotions during the performance hour (photos published).
The challenge has been met but one observation tempers it: “We have reached 40% of the number of schoolchildren who can be accommodated at the Flour Mill for this festival”.
Forgetting culture “in the political options taken” notes Christian Duchange, he evokes the feeling of injustice linked to the prolonged closure of places of culture. “Do the scientists have real indicators and all agree on the most sensitive places of contamination?” Asks the director of the Flour Mill, who would like the same indulgence for the cultural sector as had government for the economy. “Because culture also has an economic weight”.
On behalf of the Minoterie, Christian Duchange is a signatory of the summary freedom for the reopening of places of culture, which will be examined by the Council of State on Monday, December 21.
The Invisibles Sonothèque
“Closed but not inactive”. It is according to this leitmotif that the Flour Mill spent a good part of the year 2020. The structure certainly had to resort to teleworking measures, partial unemployment or even technical unemployment, shows had to be deleted, but the reception of artists in residence were able to be maintained. Except that the visibility of the works, offered to the public in the form of previews, was reduced.
The cultural structure then set up a radio studio to launch its Sonothèque des Invisibles. “The actors of the 2020-2021 season – artists, companies, amateur troupes concerned by this new episode of confinement – join the La Minoterie team to compose sound stories, the fruit of their work which remained at the doors of the show. An ephemeral recording studio has been set up in the premises of La Minoterie in order to create a series of podcasts to reach the family audience ”. Christian Duchange adds: “It is somewhere a way of keeping traces of the shows”.
15 recordings of tales, stories, entire shows, songs and interviews “to seduce the ears of the most distant” were made.
In a context where cultural establishments and projects are suffering, the Flour Mill therefore ensures its existence, by exporting the proposals that it supports and that it promotes, to an audience of children but also more broadly family than it hopes. review “as soon as possible”.
Within the structure, the 8 full-time equivalents have been kept thanks to national mechanisms. However, thoughts are expressed by the director for intermittents and artistic companies.
Alix berthier
Photos: Alix Berthier
Find the Sonothèque des Invisibles podcasts by clicking here
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