Festival of the Word
Workshops funded by the Foundation, produced at the festival at La Charité-sur-Loire (May 26-30 2010)
Conceived by the Marc Lecarpentier, former editor of the culture magazine Télérama, and the town-hall of the Burgundy town of La Charité-sur-Loire, the festival is a celebration of the written and spoken word via a variety of artistic expressions – theatre, exhibitions, workshops, lectures and concerts. A cultural event set in a remote rural environment, the festival encourages the participation of parts of the population with little prior exposure to the arts. It also helps beak down boundaries by involving young and old, students and the disabled, social centres and schools, in the creation of original projects. After just five years of operation, the event has now reached an impressive cruising speed. For this the sixth edition, taking place at La Charité from May 26 to 30, the whole town has been mobilised. From lectures by Jacques Bonnaffé to performances by Jean-Louis Trintignant on the subject of Desnos, Prévert and Vian, the schedule is as demanding as it is diverse. This year the festival president is the linguist Alain Rey and guest-of-honour is Malek Chabel.
The Carla Bruni-Sarkozy Foundation, working with the association Mot-et-MOTS which runs the event, has sponsored three workshops. These were launched in February and will be re-created at the festival. The target audience is children of primary and middle school age, and the aim is to get them involved in arts workshops. A good example is the one run by the actress Valérie Furiosi with a group of nine year-olds at the Les Remparts primary school in conjunction with pupils from the Edouard Seguin institute for the disabled. The workshops backed by the Foundation are: Roald Dahl in images. The artist Géraldine Lavillaugouet offers three classes from a primary school at Pouilly-sur-Loire the chance to illustrate the colourful and surreal world of the famous children’s author. After imbibing the words of Charlie and the Chocolate factory, the budding artists put them in pictorial form using various media. The tree that hides the forest: At the meeting-point between theatre and the plastic arts, 10 year-olds at the Les Remparts school and the Edouard Mouron institute for the disabled invite you to take a poetic amble through their ‘word forest’, where on branches or stuck to tree trunks you will hear the stories of Lewis Caroll or Jean-Pierre Siméon. Words of today and yesterday: The writer Xavier Georgin conducts two workshops in parallel: the first on ‘words of yesterday’ with a group of residents from the Henri Dunant centre; and the second on ‘words of today’ with teenagers from the La Pepinière social centre. Using themes such as food, jobs, love and swearing, participants draw up a list of words and help define them via their own personal experiences. The workshop turns into a kind of crossroads where all generations can share in the pleasure of words.
