Le Bal
How to see the world differently? How to become aware of one’s ability to think, do and act collectively?
Location of impact : France
Grant : 5000€
Project supported in 2020-2021
LE BAL’s Educational platform La Fabrique du Regard exists to use images to increase young people’s visual awareness and make them more conscious of their capacities and of the world around them.
Since September 2008, La Fabrique du Regard has been working with school students, most of them coming from schools in underprivileged Priority Education Areas. All in all, 150 primary and secondary schools are involved, representing 13 education authorities. Four pilot programmes offer participants the chance to reflect on the world and its images. The aim: to train active, concerned observers, conscious that images obey codes and usages and above all form a language, a construct.
Every year, 2,000 young people mainly from under-priviledged Priority Education Areas are taught to come to grips with image issues. From primary through middle school to high school, in close association with their teaching teams and 55 artists and image professionals, they compare bodies of work and points of view, honing their eyes on images’ formal agendas, trying out the different stages of image production and taking part in a collective creative project.
Drawn up in close collaboration with the teaching teams, the programmes are part of the school or extracurricular timeframe and centre around three core concerns: analysis of the image, an understanding of its production, diffusion and reception contexts, and hands-on participation in a group project; a film, a journal, a book, etc. In the course of workshops, encounters with professionals, film and video screenings and visits to exhibitions, the young participants face different points of view, investigate the concept of a visual “document” and sharpen their eyes on the formal aspects of images.
In the interests of a solid programme, La Fabrique draws on the talents of art historian lecturers and every year invites some 50 other contributors – researchers, artists, graphic designers, journalists, picture researchers – to work with young participants on a particular theme: Rethinking History; Systems for Seeing; Image and Memory; Image and Public Space; Matters of Territory. Various professional bodies are also called on – galleries, publishing houses, libraries, daily papers, magazines, press and graphics agencies, photo laboratories and so on – as ways of rendering tangible the different stages in the fabrication of images.
The artworks produced collectively with the guest artists as part of the programmes Regards croisés, Mon journal du monde, Mon Œil ! and l’Image en partage are presented at a public feedback exhibition at LE BAL or at PICS UP!, a dedicated space on the banks of the Seine. This is an opportunity for the participants in the different programmes to discover the work done by La Fabrique du Regard as a whole while reflecting on their own experience.
LE BAL also created a digital platform for image education called ERSILIA designed for young people and their teachers to decipher all types of images in a playful and collaborative way. Together, they analyze images and understand their context of creation, production and distribution in order to grasp the issues at stake, especially today in the digital age. Thanks to ERSILIA, La Fabrique du Regard conducts, in parallel to its workshops, in-depth and tailor-made training courses for the educational and cultural community (adult mentors of young people, teachers, educators, librarians, etc.) to encourage their autonomy and understanding when it comes to image, media and information education.
the organisation carrying the project
LE BAL is an independent platform for exhibitions, publications, ideas and education, centered on the contemporary image in all its forms – photography, video, film and the new media.
Founded in 2010 by Raymond Depardon and Diane Dufour with the support of Mairie de Paris, it is a non-profit organization.
how are donations used
By supporting La Fabrique du Regard, you are contributing to the image education of young people living far from a artistic and cultural scene:
Donations between 50 and 100 euros
Your donation contributes to providing creative workshops with photo and video equipment.
▸ Participate in the exhibition of the creations La Fabrique du Regard’s young people at the end of the year and receive a BAL friends card.
Donations between 100 and 300 euros
Your donation is enabling a class to participate in all workshop cycles.
▸ Participate in the exhibition of the young people’s creations at the end of the year, receive one of their publications and a BAL friends card.
Donations between 300 and 1000 euros
Your donation is helping produce a film by young people aged 6 to 12.
▸ Receive the DVD of their film, participate in the exhibition of their work at the end of the year and receive a BAL patron friends card.
key figures
In 10 years, 22,000 young people have been trained, 3,200 teachers and 500 artists have been involved in 250 different areas in France, from primary to high school, either directly in schools or in structures within the social field.