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Posts Tagged ‘France’

Architects Who Reuse Buildings

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on February 6, 2024| 6 Comments »

Photo: Philippe Ruault.
By adding a double-height conservatory at a family home in Floirac, Bordeaux, the architects “doubled the floor area their clients expected, while staying within a very limited budget,” the Guardian reports.

It’s generally considered cheaper and more efficient to tear down a building and build new than to renovate or reuse. Two acclaimed French architects have found the opposite, and their insights are timely. More people are realizing that standard construction practices are unnecessarily wasteful — and damaging to the planet.

Rowan Moore describes the architects’ approach at the Guardian. “The French architects Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal are famous for their belief in keeping existing buildings whenever possible, no matter how unpromising or unloved they may be. They follow, in effect, an architectural version of the Hippocratic oath – ‘first, don’t demolish.’ It’s a message that has never been more pertinent, as it dawns on the construction industry that constant demolition and rebuilding is an environmentally devastating activity.

“The husband-and-wife team have been putting this idea into practice for decades. … Keeping the already-there is not, though, their only concern, nor is it to do with sustainability alone. They like to use words such as ‘generosity,’ ‘kindness’ and, above all, ‘freedom,’ which means that they are always looking to find and create spaces additional to those asked for in a brief, ‘with no utility, no function,’ as Vassal puts it, ‘in which the user will feel the possibility to be inventive for themselves.’ …

“ ‘We really feel enclosed in a brief,’ says Lacaton, ‘that has so many rules, so many recommendations and impositions.’ … They strive against an attitude that ‘in architecture everything must be quantified… everything should be uniform.’ …

“In the early 1990s, they designed a new family house in their home city of Bordeaux, where they doubled the floor area their clients expected, while staying within a very limited budget. Their secret was to erect a double-height conservatory built like a simple greenhouse, which gave a sense of generosity and freedom to the rest of the house, a two-story structure with also basic construction. …

“[They have] a fondness for adapting humble and disregarded ways of building. ‘We found we were conditioned by our education as architects,’ says Lacaton, ‘to say that one way of constructing is the right one and the other one is not good. We discovered that we could use any tool, any material, anything if it’s used in an intelligent way.’ They also developed the idea of reusing the already-there, as with a seaside house in Gironde, south-west France. which was built among 46 pine trees, along with arbutuses and mimosas, without cutting any down. With the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, a 1930s building remodeled as a centre of contemporary art in two phases, in 2001 and 2012, they took pleasure in making only minimal alterations to its damaged interior. …

“Where they differ from other architects is in their attitude to control. In the John Soane museum, every detail and experience is minutely managed and directed. Contemporary practitioners often photograph their works unpopulated, at the precise moment between completion and inhabitation, where the perfection of their idea is most immaculate. For Lacaton and Vassal, it’s important to know when to stop, when to leave it to residents to occupy and embellish their homes. They enjoy and photograph the different things that people do to their spaces.

“Their way is humane and intelligent. It’s also invaluable. In Britain and elsewhere, there’s a desperate need to create more homes without incurring unacceptable bills for carbon emissions and energy consumption. Reuse is an obvious answer.”

More at the Guardian, here.

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Do Not Toss That Cimabue

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 25, 2024| 2 Comments »

Photo: Philippe Lopez/AFP/Getty Images.
This valuable painting, called “The Mocking of Christ,” is by the 13th century Florentine artist Cimabue. It came close to being thrown away when a house in France was getting cleared out.

When the consignment guy comes to help with your lifetime downsizing, he naturally hopes to uncover some neglected item that turns out to be extremely valuable. That would have been OK with me, but the process went more in the opposite direction. Things I always thought were valuable, we couldn’t even give away for free.

Still, one always enjoys someone else’s discovery, like the one in today’s story. …

“Scott Reyburn reports at the New York Times, “A medieval painting that hung for years near the kitchen of an older Frenchwoman before being recognized as a work by the Italian artist Cimabue was auctioned [in October] in France for $26.8 million.

“The work was bought by the London-based dealer Fabrizio Moretti against competition from at least six other bidders.

” ‘I bought it on behalf of two collectors,’ Mr. Moretti said in an interview immediately after the auction. ‘It’s one of the most important old master discoveries in the last 15 years. Cimabue is the beginning of everything. He started modern art. When I held the picture in my hands, I almost cried.’ …

“The 10-inch-high poplar panel was discovered in June during a valuation of the contents of the house of an older Frenchwoman near Compiègne, north of Paris. Thought by the family to be an icon, the painting hung on a wall next to the kitchen.

“ ‘I had a rare emotion with this little painting, almost indescribable,’ said Philomène Wolf of [auction house] Actéon, who had made the discovery. ‘In our profession, we know that this emotion was the result of a great master.’ …

“Actéon consulted Eric Turquin, the Paris-based art expert on old masters, who collaborated on the sale of the painting. … Mr. Turquin said his research identified the Compiègne panel as ‘the only small-scale work of devotion to have been recently added to the catalog of authentic works by Cimabue.’ It was described as being in ‘excellent general condition.’

“ ‘This was an easy sale,’ Mr. Turquin said, comparing the auction of the Cimabue to the canceled public sale in June of the ‘Judith and Holofernes’ attributed to Caravaggio. ‘I was pleased at 10 million and tremendously happy at 15 million,’ he said of the Cimabue sale. ‘The price was more than I could have dreamed, and there was a contemporary art gallery bidding, which was new for us.’

“According to Mr. Turquin, ‘The Mocking of Christ’ was part of the same late-13th-century altarpiece that once included Cimabue’s similarly sized ‘Flagellation of Christ,’ now in the Frick Collection in New York, and the ‘Madonna and Child Enthroned Between Two Angels,’ now in the National Gallery in London.

“The Frick acquired its Cimabue in 1950. The ‘Madonna and Child’ was scheduled to be auctioned at Sotheby’s in 2000, but was sold to the National Gallery by private treaty for about 7.2 million pounds, about $10.8 million. …

“Traces of the original framing, the style and technique of the gold ornamentation and the pattern of wormholes on the back of the Cimabue panel ‘confirm that these panels made up the left side of the same diptych,’ Mr. Turquin said in a pre-auction statement.

“Cimabue pioneered a more fluent and naturalistic style of figure painting in Italy. … The Florence painter takes up the first biography in Giorgio Vasari’s hugely influential Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, published in 1550. Vasari describes how Cimabue emancipated himself from the ‘stiff manner’ of Byzantine artists and was ‘the first cause of the revival of painting’ before Giotto ‘overshadowed his renown.’ ”

More at the Times, here. If you enjoy this kind of story, see also the Guardian take on a neglected Botticelli, here.

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Building a Medieval Castle

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on November 24, 2023| 8 Comments »

Photo: Cristina Baussan for NPR.
Visitors walk near the construction of Guédelon Castle, dreamed up as an exercise in “experimental archaeology” 25 years ago.

The Plimoth Patuxet Museums in Massachusetts used to be called Plimouth Plantation, and at Thanksgiving lucky visitors got to share in whatever version of the First Thanksgiving was in vogue at the time. Today the history involves the indigenous people in a much more balanced way. But a visit to the site is still a step into another century, a century without cellphones.

Not unlike a visit to a certain castle in France.

Eleanor Beardsley reports at National Public Radio, “Deep in a forest of France’s Burgundy region, a group of enthusiasts is building a medieval castle the old-fashioned way — that is, with tools and methods from the late 13th century.

“Some of those working here are heritage trade craftspeople, others are ardent history buffs, but all say they share a deep respect for nature and the planet, and a desire to return to simpler times.

” ‘This is a place you experience with all your senses,’ says Sarah Preston, communications director and guide of these grounds known as Guédelon Castle. ‘As soon as we walk onto the site you smell the woodsmoke. There’s something so evocative about these sights and sounds.’ …

“Once beyond the entrance barn doors, visitors plunge into a bygone age. There are no mechanical sounds, no motor engines — and cellphones must be turned off. The idea to build Guédelon was born in 1995 among three friends, residents of the area, who are also history buffs and nature lovers. One of the three owned a nearby 17th century château and was involved in work to restore different castles in the area.

” ‘But we thought, how amazing would it be to actually build a castle from scratch?’ Maryline Martin, CEO and a co-founder of Guédelon, told public radio station France Culture last year.

“After finding and purchasing the original 27 acres of land in a forest near a centuries-old abandoned quarry and water (necessary ingredients for any medieval construction site), the co-founders got a construction permit and, in 1997, laid the first stones. …

“Martin said Guédelon is an example of experimental archaeology — which is a way to research how people did things in the past by trying to imitate them. … The builders use the examples of other medieval castles in the area, as well as descriptions in old manuscripts and books.

“The workers are all dressed in medieval clothing, except for sturdy contemporary footwear and sometimes helmets mandated for a modern construction site. The smell of fire and a clanking sound are coming from a nearby blacksmith’s shop. That’s where 20-year-old Matisse Lacroix is forging the tools needed to build the castle. Sparks fly as he pulls a cord that operates a large bellows.

“Lacroix says the furnace temperature is around 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, ‘so the iron is soft and malleable and I can make these nails.’ He bends and shapes pieces of iron into nails. …

“During NPR’s visit, a group of fourth-graders are at the site. They watch Lacroix pound the glowing red rods. The craftsmen stop their work to explain what they’re doing to visitors as well as train young craftsmen in heritage skills. …

“That learning aspect of Guédelon is one reason its construction is taking so long. The owners say the project is meant to discover and pass along skills and knowledge from a 13th century work site. Workers stop their tasks several times a day to answer questions from visitors — as part of the job. There are six turrets completed as well as a protective wall and inner living castle with a chapel. …

“Preston said they initially financed their work through donations and some European Union funding. Now the château is financed through more than 300,000 visitors a year (paying between 12 and 15 euros each). …

“There are all kinds of projects to recreate the kind of village that would have existed beside a castle like this 800 years ago. A garden grows plants indigenous to the area in the Middle Ages.

” ‘We grow only medieval plants,’ says Antoine Quellen, who works in the garden two days a week. ‘So that means we don’t have tomatoes, we don’t have potatoes, because those came from South America much later.’ He says people ate a lot of grains back then. The indigenous plants are hardier and help preserve the land and soil, as they have a kind of genetic memory of place in their germ cells, he says. …

“Half a dozen stone masons work near the quarry. Tendra Schrauwen, a 29-year-old from Belgium, says Guédelon is one of the few places in the world you can practice this craft using traditional methods and old tools.

” ‘Our job is to cut stones in perfect geometrical shapes,’ he says. ‘For window, doors, chimneys, staircases, stone by stone.’ He says it’s all about teamwork. ‘The stones are very heavy. It’s very dangerous, you can damage your body. So the most important thing is to work in a team.’ …

“To lift the tons of wood and stone needed to finish the castle’s outer walls, two men walk inside a contraption that looks much like a giant hamster wheel. It’s a kind of medieval crane with a central axle and ropes. Known as a treadmill crane, it can pivot and raise or lower materials, depending on which way the workers walk inside it. The only modern addition at Guédelon is a safety brake.”

More at NPR, here. No paywall. Great photos.

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Mealworms to the Rescue

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on October 31, 2023| 4 Comments »

Photo: Suzanne and John’s Mom.
Cattle at Codman Farms, Lincoln, Mass. “Cows are often described as climate change criminals,” says Grist, “because of how much planet-warming methane they burp.” But, Grist adds, raising ruminants can also lead to deforestation, making alternatives to meat doubly important.

The other day at dinner, my husband regaled Sally and me with the latest on Europe’s use of mealworms as alternative proteins. The idea of eating mealworms — straight, no chaser — was not appealing to me even though I know they often sneak into the packaged nut and grain products we buy at the store. Which is why I freeze those products for 24 hours. I suppose I eat frozen mealworms that way, but it’s inevitable.

Grist magazine reported recently on the damage that livestock agribusinesses do to the planet when they cut down trees to graze more animals.

Max Graham says, “To feed the world’s growing appetite for meat, corporations and ranchers are chopping down more forests and trampling more carbon-sequestering grasslands to make room for pastures and fields of hay. … The greenhouse gases unleashed by this deforestation and land degradation mean food systems account for one-third of the world’s human-generated climate pollution.”

At Nature magazine I learned that alternative proteins are gaining traction in France, of all unlikely places. The focus is not on eating insects straight.

Rachael Pells writes at Nature about “the world’s largest vertical insect farm — home to at least 3 trillion mealworm beetles (Tenebrio molitor). The company’s chief executive and co-founder, Antoine Hubert, says that the beetles have a good life, as far as being an insect goes. Each of their stacked plastic trays is kept at an optimal 60% humidity and a balmy 25–27 °C. Nutrition, growth and moisture levels are all recorded for analysis, and human visitors are allowed to inspect the trays only from a distance — to prevent contamination of this prized ecosystem.

“The beetles are raised in this way from larvae to adult, at which point they meet a quick death in steam before being harvested into oil, protein and fertilizer.

“Insects have come under the spotlight over the past few years, as scientists seek alternative sources of protein to feed the rapidly expanding global population. A direct nutritional comparison shows that edible insect species have greater protein potential than do conventional meat products — 100 grams of mealworm larvae produces 25 g of protein, whereas 100 g of beef contains 20 g of protein. Insects also have a high food-conversion ratio when compared with livestock.

“To produce the same amount of protein, for example, crickets require around six times less feed than do cattle, four times less than sheep, and half that of pigs and chickens. But various attempts by companies to market insects as a mainstream food source in Europe and North America have fallen flat and largely been dismissed as a fad. And some researchers have concerns about the effects on the environment, ranging from whether escaped insects might disrupt local ecosystems to the impact of insect ‘factories.’ So why farm insects at all?

” ‘The world is facing a huge food sustainability crisis,’ explains Huber, an environmental engineer. ‘Insect protein is one very realistic and obvious solution to mitigating some of those challenges,’ he says.

“With the global population expected to reach almost 10 billion by 2050, United Nations forecasters have warned that food production will also need to increase by as much as 70%.

“However, because mealworm burgers are, at the moment, unlikely to sell out in your local supermarket, Ÿnsect grows insects for animal feed. This is given to fish, pigs and poultry, taking the pressure off conventional agricultural land use.

“The use of vertical farming has grown rapidly over the past few years, spurred on, in part, by advances in LED lighting, the cost of which fell by 94% between 2008 and 2015. Several start-ups (including Infarm in Berlin and Aerofarms in Newark, New Jersey) use the system to produce vegetables such as lettuce for human consumption. And the global market of the vertical-farming industry is expected to grow from US$3.7 billion in 2021 to $10.5 billion in 2026.

“Meanwhile, sales of plant-based alternatives to meat that are designed to reduce the demand for cattle farming — an industry responsible for 65% of all livestock emissions — seem to be stalling. When meat-substitute company Beyond Meat in El Segundo, California, went public on the stock market in 2019, its share price rose by 163%. But after the initial excitement, sales slowed, and they have remained about the same since 2020.”

As with most innovations, there are caveats. Get the details at Nature, here. And for a report on livestock and deforestation, check out Grist, here. No paywalls for either one.

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Master Art Thief

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 11, 2023| 9 Comments »

Photo: Jef-Infojef/Wikimedia.
Stéphane Breitwieser stole art between 1995 and 2001. Here he is in the “salon du livre de Colmar,” Haut-Rhin, France.

Today’s true story interests me partly as fan of mysteries, partly as a mom. Did the art thief’s mother kid herself about what her son was up to? How clear-eyed are mothers in general when it comes to a child’s malfeasance?

The New York Times reviews Michael Finkel’s book about “the most successful and prolific art thief who has ever lived.”

Alex Marzano-Lesnevich writes, “At first, Stéphane Breitwieser, the subject of Michael Finkel’s The Art Thief, appears to be having an enviable amount of fun. Twenty-five years old and living with his girlfriend, Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus, in a small set of upstairs rooms in his mother’s home in a ‘hardscrabble’ manufacturing suburb in eastern France, Breitwieser is unburdened by such quotidian concerns as a job, making rent or planning for the future.

“He fancies himself a purer sort of soul, so devoted to beauty he must, in Finkel’s words, ‘gorge on it.’ Over the course of a dizzying 200 pages that are also an effective advertisement for Swiss Army knives (Breitwieser’s only tool), he removes artwork after artwork from museums — a.k.a. ‘prisons for art.’ … He piled all $2 billion worth of artifacts he amassed over eight years into that same attic in his mother Mireille Stengel’s ‘nondescript’ stucco house.

“Finkel includes satisfying evidence of this astounding loot in a color insert that shows a crammed jumble of ‘ethereal’ ivory carvings, shining silver goblets, unctuous oil paintings and more.

All this Breitwieser secreted away in the couple’s lair not to be fenced for money, but for the pair alone to enjoy waking up to in the morning:

“Like George Petel’s 1627 sculpture ‘Adam and Eve’ on the bedside table, next to a 19th-century blown-glass vase and a blue and gold tobacco box ‘commissioned by Napoleon himself.’

“Finkel’s account, based largely on interviews with Breitwieser, is of a romantic hero who disdains practical details as much as security ones, and who is ‘crushed’ when Stengel deigns to buy Ikea furniture. ‘I am like the opposite of everyone,’ he declares … ‘born in the wrong century.’ That Finkel aligns the reader’s sympathies with the point of view of the criminal makes for a heady rush of freudenfreude.

“The romanticized portrait of a complicated male subject is a formula Finkel has found success with before: His best-selling previous book, The Stranger in the Woods, about the Maine hermit Christopher Thomas Knight, was similarly expanded from an article in GQ. Yet despite this book’s slim size, Finkel’s efforts to fill its pages eventually strain, padding them with generic musings on why people make art and head-scratching lines like, ‘Yellow is the hue least harmonious to a banana.’ …

“By the end, we’re left with signs that what we’ve been offered is only a rough sketch, not the more complicated truth. Finkel portrays Breitwieser as a pure aesthete motivated solely by aesthetic passion, but later he’s also arrested for simple shoplifting. [And] in a shocking turn the author brushes past, Kleinklaus says under oath that Breitwieser hit her after learning she’d hid an abortion. ‘He scared me,’ she tells a courtroom; to a detective, she says, ‘I was just an object to him.’

“Finally, did Stengel really never suspect what her son was up to in her home? Was her frenzied ‘attic purge’ — during which she hurled silver pieces into a canal and burned paintings in a forest — really the ‘ultimate expression of maternal love’ Breitwieser interprets it to be? (She herself tells the police, ‘I wanted to hurt my son, to punish him.’) It is by far the most shocking act in the book, but — as with the characters of Stengel and Kleinklaus — Finkel leaves it frustratingly opaque.” More at the Times, here.

To skip the firewall, see what Wikipedia has to say about the art thief, here. You may also enjoy The Art Forger, a novel about the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum that was fun. I wrote about it here.

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The Painting That Wasn’t a Fake

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on May 10, 2023| 11 Comments »

Photo: Daguerre Val de Loire via the Guardian.
The family thought their painting was a fake, but it turned out to be an authentic work by Pieter Bruegel the Younger, “L’Avocat du village” (“The Village Lawyer”). It sold at auction for $850,000.

It can sometimes happen in families as younger generations come along, new people marry into the family — and those who know the history of a painting on the wall die off — that the importance of a work becomes something no one takes seriously.

I remember the husband of a babysitter John had when he was three scoffing about a painting his wife said was a Turner. I believed the babysitter was better informed. Today I wonder where that painting is.

Jonathan Edwards reports at the Washington Post about a similar situation.

“Malo de Lussac entered the tiny, dimly lit TV room in October, expecting the unremarkable as he assessed the value of the art and artifacts in his new client’s home in northern France. Then, a painting caked in dust and almost entirely hidden by a door caught the auctioneer’s eye.

“Pay it no mind, his client told de Lussac. Yes, the family had long called it ‘The Bruegel,’ but it was an affectionate dig at a painting that was clearly a fake.

“Turns out, the family joke was a hidden masterpiece, a genuine work of Pieter Bruegel the Younger, a 17th-century Flemish artist. Painted more than 400 years ago, ‘L’Avocat du village’ — or ‘The Village Lawyer’ — sold [in March] at auction in Paris for the equivalent of about $850,000 — the result of a discovery that de Lussac described as one of the most thrilling of his career.

“ ‘I was very, very surprised,’ de Lussac said.

“His coup started out as a workaday assignment: Travel from Paris to a client’s home in northern France to estimate how much their artwork and artifacts would sell for at auction. Because of the home’s size, he’d blocked out the entire day to accomplish the job.

“For the first hour, everything went as expected. After a half-hour of chatting and building a rapport with the owner over coffee, they started touring the house by surveying the living room. They then moved to the kitchen. Everything fell within de Lussac’s expectations: furniture, china, some ‘interesting’ but relatively unimportant paintings.

“They moved on to a TV room, where his client directed his attention to some 19th-century paintings they thought would be of the most interest. … Then de Lussac spotted part of a painting covered in dust and mostly obscured by a door. He shut it to get a look at the entire work. The brushstrokes, the colors, the canvas material: It all rang true with de Lussac’s knowledge of Bruegel the Younger. Born in Brussels around 1564, Bruegel was the eldest son of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, one of the most prominent artists of the Flemish Renaissance in Flanders, a Dutch-speaking region of what is now Belgium. …

“ ‘My heart was beating so hard,’ de Lussac said.

“The owners broke the bad news: The painting had long been regarded as a knockoff by the family. Their forebears had purchased it in the late 1800s, and it spent the next century bouncing to different houses as younger generations inherited the work. …

“But acting on his hunch, de Lussac pressed the current owner. Everything he observed jibed with what he knew of Bruegel the Younger, who had painted several works depicting the same scene of a Spanish official collecting taxes from Flemish peasants.

“The owners were skeptical but willing to let de Lussac send the painting to a Bruegel expert in Germany. In December, they got word: It was genuine.

“[DeLussac] said that he believes the original buyer purchased it as a genuine Bruegel, and that knowledge of its authenticity was lost to time.”

More at the Post, here. At the Guardian, there is an earlier version of the story without a firewall, here.

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Tracing a WWI Soldier

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 5, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Images: Brett Hawkes photos; Ally Rzesa illustration.

When do people get interested in researching family history? Some people never. Others — like my cousin who has made his genealogy hobby an obsession — very young. In today’s article, a 71-year-old from Massachusetts got the bug when he started going through the photos his grandfather took in France.

Travel writer Christopher Muther reports for the Boston Globe about Brett Hawkes and the stacks of old photos he used to re-create his grandfather’s journeys in WWI.

“For the better part of a century, the boxes and their mostly-forgotten contents collected dust while occupying real estate in attics throughout Massachusetts.

“But for Brett Hawkes … they inspired a once-in-a-lifetime journey that spanned 600 miles across the French countryside.

“Hawkes received the boxes of old photos and letters when his mother passed away in 2013. He said he glanced at them occasionally, but otherwise, they remained stored away, collecting another decade of dust. He came upon them again in the winter of 2022 while cleaning his office, but this time, the more he studied them, the more he was drawn to what he saw.

The pictures, taken in 1917 on the frontlines of the war in France, showed soldiers fighting in trenches, bombed buildings, and previously idyllic fields transformed into hastily-dug cemeteries.

“But his grandfather also took pictures of everyday life in the small towns where he was stationed. There are pictures of friends he made, soldiers playing football in a snowy field, and peaceful streets.

“ ‘I stared at these old photos and thought, “Oh my God, look at these churches bombed to the ground.” I started wondering what they look like now,’ Hawkes said. ‘I happened to find a photo he took of a famous chateau, and I Googled it and saw it was all renovated.’

“That’s when the idea for his trip took root. He devised a plan to find the locations of as many of the photos as possible — thankfully, his grandfather had labeled the towns where pictures were taken — and re-create his grandfather’s 1917 route in France. …

“Alton Hawkes entered the war just months after America’s entry and was sent for further training in Abainville before being stationed in the villages of Warmaise, Chepoix, and Broyes, about 70 miles north of Paris.

“Brett said his grandfather, who studied engineering, was also an avid amateur photographer and collector, which made reconstructing the route easier. He also had letters that his grandfather had written home to his family, outlining some of his more benign activities.

“ ‘What boggled my mind was that he took these photographs of the destruction and fighting that would be classified today,’ he said. ‘The more I learned, the more I became emotionally involved. It’s part of the reason why Ancestry.com and 23andMe are so popular. People want to feel an emotional connection with the past.’

“Hawkes has two skills that made the trip possible. The first was years of cycling experience. When he was 16, his neck was broken in a severe car accident. As a result, the right side of his body was paralyzed. Over time he regained the use of his body, but the former athlete continued walking with a limp. While he could no longer run or play sports, he could cycle, which remains his passion.

“His other skill is the ability to speak French and a general love of French culture. He brushed up on his French before the trip, but he spoke no English for three weeks on the road.

“ ‘Being able to speak French helped form bonds and broke down barriers with the people I met,’ he said. …

“Those meetings with residents are what made his trip a success. He would roll into small farming towns and seek out cafes where he would strike up conversations with locals. If the town was too small for a cafe, he knocked on the doors of houses that his grandfather had photographed, or he would seek out the mayor of a town he was visiting for assistance in finding buildings or bridges.

“ ‘I’m an older guy. I wasn’t threatening. I couldn’t punch myself out of a paper bag,’ he said. ‘I think that helped a lot.’

“When word spread through these tiny towns of the American retracing his grandfather’s WWI route, strangers would show up at bed and breakfasts where Hawkes was staying with information about locations in the photographs and stories about the war that had been handed down. …

“ ‘I started to really go through a transition. It became more than a vacation, it became a passion. It was an incredible experience. It’s hard to explain, but that’s really what happened. I went through a transformation.’

“He found the field where the French government awarded his grandfather the Croix de Guerre for his bravery in battle. In one photo, his grandfather stood on a pile of rubble that had once been a church. Hawkes found the location with a new church in its place. It was the same with historic buildings that had been repaired or rebuilt. Just like his grandfather, the younger Hawkes was there to document it all.

“ ‘He guided me from heaven,’ Hawkes said.”

More at the Globe, here.

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Dancers Go Goofy

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 21, 2023| 8 Comments »

Photo: Holger Rudolph.
A performance of “La Grande Phrase” by French company Campagnie Didier Théron. The idea is to share the fun of dance and draw in new audiences.

I love reading about serious artists reaching out through humor. But what is going on in the picture above? One kid is watching the playful performance and wearing a big smile. Everyone else is looking in another direction with solemnity. Bad choice of illustration?

Celina Lei reports at Australia’s ArtsHub that the “French dance company Campagnie Didier Théron will soon land in Adelaide to upend expectations of dancers’ bodies with a dash of humor.

” ‘Dance!’ Usually when kids hear this cue,” she writes, “they immediately start wiggling their bottoms and shuffling their feet – circling, hopping and swinging their arms.

“But often as we grow, we grow more hesitant, our movements become more restricted and choreographed in fear of embarrassing ourselves. So what if to dance is to be silly?

“Wearing colorful inflated suits and roaming across streets, parks and city centers, La Grande Phrase (The Big Phrase) is a dance-work series by Montpellier-based Campagnie Didier Théron that explores ways to upend stereotypes of what a dancer should look like or do.

“The self-taught dancer and choreographer Didier Théron tells ArtsHub that the work was born from a journey of experimentation and collaboration with international artists and dance companies, allowing dancers the freedom of movement while wearing suits inflated with air. …

“Théron points to the German artist and choreographer Oskar Schlemmer (1888-1943), as well as Venus figurines of the European Paleolithic period, as inspirations for these dramatic bodily forms. The movement of dance and the flow of air within the suits further activate these forms.

“After touring in cities around Europe and taking out the 2013 Grand Prize of Setouchi Triennale in Japan, the company will bring three dancers to WOMADelaide (SA) this March where ‘any space shared with the audience becomes a performance space.’

“In the same way that contemporary visual artists are continually challenging the notion of a hushed, white-cube gallery, dance with a splash of humor can provide multiple access points for different audiences.

“From the time of Charlie Chaplin, who pulled off every sequence with full comic relief, to more recent contemporary experimentations such as the UK’s New Art Club combining dance with stand-up comedy, there are plenty of examples where humor can support choreographic expression.

“Théron says: ‘This project always surprises me in the reactions of the people and how they receive it. The first time we performed it outside was in a suburb of Montpellier. It was not easy to have a cultural artistic project in this area, but we crossed this line with these characters and everybody was laughing or smiling.’

“Taking this performance [onto] the streets also offers the dancers greater freedom, and the audiences more opportunities to interact, adds Théron. …

“Roving performances were also something that had a great impact on Théron as a child, from the very first time he encountered a ritualistic dance parade in his grandparents’ village in the centre of France.

“He says: ‘That was the first dance I saw and members of my family were also dancing (only men at the time), but it was very powerful and filled with a deep joy. This performance allowed me to reconnect with this memory.’ …

“What the company hopes to bring to the audience is an invitation to think about dance and dancers’ bodies ‘beyond the norm,’ and perhaps at some point share the joy of movement.

‘There is something in being this character that [gives] us permission to do many things. I think it’s a real positive body and filled with possibilities that we can experiment with all the time,’ concludes Théron.”

More at ArtsHub, here. No firewall. Funny pictures.

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“Culture Pass” for French Teens

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 4, 2021| 8 Comments »

Photo: Guillaume Armspach.
France’s Culture Pass is bringing more young people into the store, L’Emile’s owner said.

France is experimenting with giving free money to kids to spend on culture. Most are buying media they already like, not high art, but maybe that’s OK.

Aurelien Breeden presents the controversy at the New York Times. “When the French government launched a smartphone app that gives 300 euros (about $348) to every 18-year-old in the country for cultural purchases like books and music, or exhibition and performance tickets, most young people’s impulse wasn’t to buy Proust’s greatest works or to line up and see Molière.

“Instead, France’s teenagers flocked to manga.

“ ‘It’s a really good initiative,’ said Juliette Sega, who lives in a small town in southeastern France and has used €40 (about $47) to buy Japanese comic books and ‘The Maze Runner,’ a dystopian novel. …

“As of this month, books represented over 75 percent of all purchases made through the app since it was introduced nationwide in May — and roughly two-thirds of those books were manga, according to the organization that runs the app, called the Culture Pass.

“The French news media has written of a ‘manga rush,‘ fueled by a ‘manga pass‘ — observations that came via a slightly distorted lens, since the app arrived just as theaters, cinemas and music festivals, emerging from pandemic-related restrictions, had less to offer. And manga were already wildly popular in France.

“But the focus on comic books reveals a subtle tension at the heart of the Culture Pass’s design, between the almost total freedom it affords it young users — including to buy the mass media they already love — and its architects’ aim of guiding users toward lesser-known and more highbrow arts. …

“Teenagers can buy physical goods from bookstores, record shops and arts supply or instrument stores. They can purchase tickets to movie showings, plays, concerts or museum exhibits. And they can sign up for dance, painting or drawing classes.

“Noël Corbin, a Culture Ministry official who oversees the project, said the pass gave France’s newly minted adults a way of looking up nearby cultural offerings — the app has a geolocation feature — and encouraged them to indulge their cultural passions.

“But it also uses incentives to push teenagers toward new, more challenging art forms, he said. … Those include recommendation lists curated by Culture Pass staff members and by popular artists and celebrities, as well as access to V.I.P. events, like a live-streamed concert at the Soulages Museum in southern France and a behind-the-scenes look at the Avignon theater festival. …

“Jean-Michel Tobelem, an associate professor at the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne who specializes in the economics of culture, said that it was a laudable effort but that it would largely benefit the mainstream media. …

“There is nothing wrong with pop music or blockbusters, he stressed, acknowledging that ‘you can enter Korean culture through K-Pop and then discover that there is a whole cinema, a literature, painters and composers that go with it.’ But Tobelem said that he was unconvinced that the no-strings-attached approach of the Culture Pass would do that. …

“Naza Chiffert, who runs two independent bookstores in Paris, said the Culture Pass had already had a positive impact on her business. ‘Getting young people who read but who are more used to Amazon or big-box stores to come to us isn’t easy,’ she said, but now she has teenagers in her stores every day.

“Still, some worry that the pass will be a financial windfall for people from privileged backgrounds while doing little to help others expand their cultural horizons. …

“Opponents accuse Macron of throwing cash at young people to court their vote before next year’s presidential election and choosing an unregulated approach instead of funding existing cash-strapped outreach programs, like those run by youth community centers, that broaden access to culture in a more structured way.

“France’s Culture Ministry counters that it plans to introduce the pass to middle-school students, first in a teacher-managed classroom setting, and gradually increasing amounts of autonomy and money, until students reach 18. It also says the pass enables cultural institutions to reach young audiences, which are usually hard to attract, directly on their smartphones. …

“Gabriel Tiné, an 18-year-old osteopathy student in Paris, has spent over €200 from his pass at Citeaux Sphère, a Parisian record store, where he and a friend were thumbing through vinyls on a recent afternoon. … Tiné said he liked the idea, especially the ability to splurge on musical instruments or art classes.

“ ‘I wouldn’t say no to attending a jazz concert or something like that,’ Tiné said, although he added that the app hadn’t enticed him to buy those tickets.”

More at the Times, here.

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French Seniors Delighted by a Cabaret

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 13, 2020| 2 Comments »

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Photo: Dmitry Kostyukov for the New York Times.
The cast of “Cabaret Under the Balconies,” kept away from their theater by Covid-19, performs at a safe distance for nursing home residents in France.

What hath Zoom wrought? Despite its glitches, Zoom has solved a lot of problems in the coronavirus era and has even introduced new ideas for future activities. Yesterday, for example, one brother and I watched another brother give a lecture on immunology research to a conference — a thing we could never before have imagined doing. Although we hardly understood a word, we both found the experience of watching our kid brother explain obscure transformations of molecules — and gracefully answer all sorts of technical questions — completely delightful.

In today’s story, a theater group in France tapped Zoom to conduct remote rehearsals before performing in front of a live audience.

Laura Cappelle reports at the New York Times, “When circumstances close theaters’ doors, you can count on some performers to find a window to open. Last week in [a] city in eastern France, the residents and staff of a nursing home watched from a safe distance — some from windows and balconies — as five actors appeared in the building’s courtyard in front of a makeshift red curtain. ‘It feels like it’s been such a long time,’ they sang, in a cover of Joe Dassin’s wistful chanson ‘Salut.’ ‘Far from home, I’ve been thinking about you.’

“ ‘Cabaret Under the Balconies’ [was] the first professional theater performance in France since lockdown was imposed on March 17. …

“The relief of the cast was palpable as they performed at the facility, the Ehpad Bois de Menuse. … The 45-minute show was designed to respect social distancing among the cast members as well as between them and the audience, Bréban explained in an introduction.

“Except for one real-life couple, who were allowed to kiss, none of the performers touched. … Bréban, who also performed in the show, capitalized on the actors’ individual strengths, from Antonin Maurel’s clownish energy to Cléo Sénia’s burlesque background.

“Their approach appeared to resonate with the audience, limited to 40 people. (The show was performed twice so that most of the 90 residents could see it.) Many of them were in wheelchairs, yet could be seen nodding or tapping their feet to the beat. In the courtyard, one woman got up, swung her arms and danced with a masked worker from the home. Another teared up as Léa Lopez, a young performer with a lush voice, sang ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow.’

“Valérie Gonthier, a nursing assistant who stayed by the woman’s side as she cried, said in an interview afterward that music often stirred up emotions for residents who experienced memory loss. The Ehpad has a choir, but French nursing homes don’t typically have the funds to bring in professional performances; Gonthier couldn’t remember anything like last week’s show in the 26 years she has been with the institution. …

“Nicolas Royer, the theater’s director since January, said he disagreed with many French arts administrators who had interpreted government regulations to mean that performances were impossible. He didn’t furlough any employees, instead asking the costume department to make surgical-style masks, welcoming doctors from a nearby hospital in the theater’s guest apartments and hosting training sessions for city workers dealing with the crisis.

“In April, Royer got a call from Bréban, an experienced actress and emerging director who was going stir crazy in her Paris home: She told Royer she was down for anything he dreamed up. …

“The cast of ‘Cabaret Under the Balconies’ rehearsed over Zoom for seven days and, after the relaxing of lockdown in France in May, met in Chalon-sur-Saône for one week of in-person rehearsals — with strict rules. Bréban booked cast members with no health conditions. Daily temperature checks and frequent use of sanitizing gel were mandated, and everyone was offered a coronavirus test.

“By far the most onerous directive for the performers was to maintain a distance from one another of roughly one meter at all times. … ‘We were confident that we were within labor regulations, with an audience that was already confined and highly protected,’ Royer said. …

“The last time I went to the theater, two and a half months ago, Isabelle Huppert headlined Ivo van Hove’s staging of ‘The Glass Menagerie.’ For all the star appeal of that night at the Théâtre de l’Odéon, ‘Cabaret Under the Balconies’ was the more memorable event — a sincere attempt to go back to basics, in the right place, at the right time.”

More at the New York Times, here.

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Refugee Artists Return to Their Crafts

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 10, 2020| 2 Comments »

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Photo: Christie’s
Alireza Hosseini, a refugee from Afghanistan, says of his 2019 painting “Embrace God”: “I was a man who did not know a god. I went to a sage and he told me to imagine two chairs: one for me, the other for God.” (Story at the Guardian,)

It can be discouraging being a refugee if your new countrymen see you more as a concept than an individual. That is why a program in France, though struggling itself, has been determined to do something that opens minds.

PBS NewsHour‘s “Arts Canvas” recently posted a report by Jeffrey Brown on letting refugees tell their stories through their art.

“JEFFREY BROWN: Portraits of migration, the troubles faced along the way, the trauma of making a new home.

“ABDUL SABOOR: I’m from Afghanistan, but, sometimes, I say from nowhere.

“BROWN: Photographer Abdul Saboor experienced it himself. In Afghanistan, he says, he worked in transportation for the U.S. Army, but fled when the Taliban began threatening him and his family. During a harrowing two-year journey, part of it spent in an abandoned train station in Serbia, he began taking pictures with a donated camera.

“SABOOR: When I show to the people, I say, that’s not normal, how we lived there.

“BROWN: His photographs became a bridge to overcome language and other barriers and raise awareness about the plight of refugees, which he continues to do in Paris. … Saboor is one of some 200 refugee artists from more than 40 countries now getting support from the Agency of Artists in Exile.

“On our visit to its makeshift building off the Seine River, an Ethiopian man belted out a traditional song with accompaniment from this phone. Across the hall, a Yemeni woman used her vast trail of official asylum-seeking papers, accumulated over two years of navigating France’s legal process, to create an art installation. … And a Kurdish actor who fled Turkey practiced a monologue about his first days in Paris. …

“Judith Depaule is director of the studio, which opened in 2017 with funding from the French Ministry of Culture.

“JUDITH DEPAULE: In the beginning, you are, like, in the state of shock. … because nobody wants you there. It’s difficult. You have to do a lot of papers. … It’s like a panic. …

“BROWN: President Emmanuel Macron has sought to criminalize illegal border crossings, while tightening restrictions on asylum, even as far-right parties in the country call for more.

“But France also has a long tradition of being a sanctuary for artists, including Pablo Picasso and James Baldwin. The idea here was to give artists a place to connect with one another, to work on and exhibit their crafts, and to help with all the practical challenges of living as a refugee.

“ARAM TASTEKIN (through translator): First of all, they helped us find a place to live. Secondly, they helped us get a work visa, find a lawyer. Some people needed psychologists, things like that.

“BROWN: Kurdish actor and drama teacher Aram Tastekin fled Turkey in late 2017. So, why did you leave Turkey?

“TASTEKIN (through translator): Because it’s complicated living there. I’m a conscientious objector. I am anti-military. I’m an artist who tries to make art and theater in the Kurdish language, to protect the Kurdish language. But when we make Kurdish art or theater, they always say it is terrorist propaganda. And that really hurts. How can a language be terrorist propaganda?

“BROWN: In 2018, graffiti artist and painter Ahlam Jarban fled her native Yemen amid its years-long civil war. She says she faced added persecution for her family’s Somali and Ethiopian roots and for her wanting to be an artist as a woman. She left everyone and everything behind, and says she still doesn’t know if it was the right decision.

“AHLAM JARBAN: Because, all of us, we are we are without our families. So we feel lonely. We feel — there is a lot of problem. But when we are together, when we speak, when we share this story, it makes us a little less stressed, make us little — keep fighting. So it is good to have this place. …

“BROWN: To further make its case and showcase its artists, the agency recently presented its third annual month-long festival titled Visions of Exile. …

“JARBAN: When they see our artwork, they don’t see it as a refugee. This see it as artist, and artist make this thing. We do all this journey to be something. We have hope, and we are human before we come.” More here.

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Crows Picking Up Cigarette Butts

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 1, 2018| 11 Comments »

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Photo: Arco Images GmbH/Alamy
Crows at a park in France have been trained to pick up cigarette butts and trash. 

You may have already heard about crows in France that are improving the environment. The stories were all over the news in August. I include two articles here — the first from the Guardian and the second from USA Today.

” ‘The goal is not just to clear up, because the visitors are generally careful to keep things clean’ but also to show that ‘nature itself can teach us to take care of the environment.’ said Nicolas de Villiers of the Puy du Fou park, in the western Vendee region.

“Rooks, a member of the crow family of birds that also includes the carrion crow, jackdaw and raven, are considered to be ‘particularly intelligent’ and in the right circumstances ‘like to communicate with humans and establish a relationship through play,’ Villiers said.

“The birds will be encouraged to spruce up the park through the use of a small box that delivers a nugget of bird food each time the rook deposits a cigarette end or small piece of rubbish.” More from the Guardian.

And from USA Today, “Crows have been trained to collect other items in a similar way. In 2008 a man created a ‘crow vending machine’ — a box that would dispense a peanut every time a crow found a coin and put it in the machine’s slot. The inventor, Josh Klein, surmised at the time that if a crow can be trained to collect coins it can be trained to help improve human lives, such as picking up trash or sorting electronics.

” ‘Don’t hate the crows,’ Klein told NPR in 2008. ‘Just let them save you.’ ”

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Village of 800 Welcomes Refugees

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on July 2, 2018| 4 Comments »

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Photo: UNHCR/Benjamin Loyseau
Primary school teacher Sylviane Zins with a class of refugee children. “They are motivated students who really want to learn,” she says. The tiny village of Thal-Marmoutier, France, has set a welcoming example for all.

There are now an estimated 258 million people living in a country other than their country of birth — an increase of 49% since 2000 — according to figures released by UN DESA on December 18, 2017. Violence and famine are often the reasons migrants try to get their children to someplace safer.

Fortunately, even in countries whose governments are hostile to migrants, some citizens follow their hearts and provide comfort. Others are following religious traditions like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which exhort believers to welcome the stranger.

Céline Schmitt and Kamilia Lahrichi filed a report in April from Thal-Marmoutier, France, for the UN Refugee Agency.

“On a winter’s day, a group of refugees newly arrived from Africa walks through the falling snow in a village in eastern France. Some of the 800 residents of the peaceful Alsatian commune of Thal-Marmoutier, moved by their ordeal, gather to welcome them and help them take their first steps towards a new life.

“For the next four months the 56 women, men and children will be hosted by Franciscan nuns in their convent as a French non-profit organization, France Horizon, helps them put down roots. …

“The mayor of Thal-Marmoutier, Jean-Claude Distel, said the operation had gone smoothly. ‘The refugees have appreciated the welcome they received from the residents and, for our part, we are glad we were able to make a small contribution to their resettlement and provide them with all they need to integrate into the life of the nation.’

“Here are the stories of some of those involved.

“Abdel … is the France Horizon official in charge of the refugees’ reception and accommodation in the village. Abdel lives temporarily in the convent. … A clinical psychologist, he is passionate about assisting people in difficult circumstances, including asylum-seekers. ‘Over time, we realize that the people we welcome are people who have experienced atrocities,’ he says.

“When the group arrived in Thal-Marmoutier, Abdel and his team of seven organized activities, such as cooking workshops and yoga classes, with other local government organizations.

“Today, a medical team working with Strasbourg University Hospital provides health checks for the refugees, under Abdel’s supervision. The new residents take it in turns to see the doctor and make sure they are fit and well.

“Abdel works on raising residents’ awareness of the refugees’ circumstances. ‘I am satisfied and proud to welcome and reassure the refugees and the villagers and explain to them that we shouldn’t have prejudices or stigmatize people we don’t know,’ he says.”

Meanwhile, outside the convent’s schoolroom, “The strains of the traditional song ‘Alouette’ can be heard. … The children sit on the floor while the teacher stands in the middle and mouths the words. This class is a springboard to enrollment in a public class.

“ ‘These are just delightful students,’ says the teacher, Sylviane. ‘They are motivated students who really want to learn. They give their all to learn.’ ”

Then there is Nicolas, social and educational coordinator with France Horizon. “No one understands the refugees’ circumstances better than Nicolas, a refugee himself. … He has been a devoted humanitarian since he helped distributed food to Rwandan refugees seeking refuge in his home country, the Democratic Republic of Congo.

‘It gives me great pleasure to help others to make progress,’ he says. ‘That’s what I enjoy most in life.’

“Nicolas fled the DRC because of the instability there and sought political asylum in France, where his brother lives. He became a French citizen in 2009.

“ ‘Leaving Africa and ending up here is like moving from one planet to the other,’ he says. ‘These refugees have never seen snow and have never lived in Europe.’

“Nicolas is studying for a doctorate in education. ‘For refugees like us … training and education is the only way to move forward.’ ”

More.

Sign at Families Belong Together rally, June 30, 2018, Rhode Island State House.

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More here.

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Short-Story Vending Machine

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 29, 2018| 6 Comments »

Photo: Bookstr
This is a short story vending machine.

What do you do when you have to wait a long time in a line? Or when you are alone in a restaurant and forgot to bring a book? You know perfectly well that your phone is not always interesting.

That’s when you need to pull a short story out of a vending machine.

Laura M. Holson reports at the New York Times, “Short Edition, a French community publisher of short-form literature, has installed more than 30 story dispensers in the United States in the past year to deliver fiction at the push of a button at restaurants and universities, government offices and transportation hubs. …

“Here’s how a dispenser works: It is shaped like a cylinder with three buttons on top indicating a ‘one minute,’ ‘three minute’ or ‘five minute’ story. (That’s how long it takes to read.) When a button is pushed, a short story is printed, unfurled on a long strip of paper.

“The stories are free. They are retrieved from a computer catalog of more than 100,000 original submissions by writers whose work has been evaluated by Short Edition’s judges, and transmitted over a mobile network. Offerings can be tailored to specific interests: children’s fiction, romance, even holiday-themed tales. …

“Short Edition gets stories for its catalog by holding writing contests. It is currently holding one for students and faculty at Penn State called ‘New Beginnings.’ [Scott Varner, executive director of strategic communications for Columbus City Schools in Ohio,] asked if the company might hold a contest for stories about Columbus by local students and they are considering it, he said.

“ ‘It would be great to have 10th graders writing stories for third graders,’ he said. …

“The dispensers cost $9,200 plus an additional $190 per month for content and software. The only thing that needs to be replaced is paper. The printed stories have a double life, shared an average of 2.1 times, said [Short Edition export director Kristan] Leroy.

‘The idea is to make people happy,’ she said. ‘There is too much doom and gloom today.’ …

“[Andrew Nurkin, the deputy director of enrichment and civic engagement at the Free Library of Philadelphia,] has high hopes for his city. ‘We are interested in finding sites to engage audiences who aren’t necessarily coming to the library,’ he said. So much so, the library is considering installing dispensers at the Family Court Building and the Philadelphia International Airport.”

What a great concept! Surely, every motor vehicle office in America should have one. Hmmm. Maybe those stories would have to be longer.

More at the New York Times, here.

PS. The Guardian was two and a half years ahead of the Times on this innovation. I blogged about the roll-out in Europe here.

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Refugee Artisans in France

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on April 3, 2018| 6 Comments »

Photo: UNHCR/Benjamin Loyseau
Ablaye Mar, an embroiderer from Sénégal, collaborates with Sabatina Leccia, a French artist and fashion designer, as part of a refugee program in France called La Fabrique Nomade. 

One of the hardest necessities facing migrants is leaving behind careers that took years to develop. That’s why a program started in France is so inspiring. La Fabrique Nomade gives one group of refugees — artisans — a chance to make a living from what they know best.

Kamilia Lahrichi and Bela Szandelszky write about the initiative for the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR.

“Many hands are at work in Yasir Elamine’s pottery workshop in Paris. They cut, pound, squeeze, stencil and shape. Yasir, a potter from Sudan, and his French students swap ideas and aesthetics. As a refugee, he thought his life as an artist was over. The work of La Fabrique Nomade, a UNHCR-supported NGO, helped change his mind.

“La Fabrique Nomade encourages artisans among refugee and immigrant communities to retain and pass on their traditional crafts, from weaving and embroidery to pottery and woodworking.

“The group promotes their work and showcases it at design fairs. It supports the artists themselves, helping them to make connections in the art and design scene in France. It helps equip them with basic job-seeking skills such as building a portfolio and CV.

“The founder of La Fabrique Nomade, Inès Mesmar, says the goal is not just to enable refugees to use their talents but also to share valuable skills with the local community. For refugees, she says, it is about changing attitudes, ‘to allow them to transmit their knowledge, rather than being people who just receive help and assistance.’ ”

The UNHCR story is here. Check out DW for more detail, here.

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