The Brèche aux Cornes primary school in the Gouëdic valley in Saint-Brieuc (France) is developing an artistic and cultural education project on environmental change, based on Changing Natures, with two classes of Year 3.
The story of this project goes back to 2022, when Yolaine Coutentin, head of the Archives and Heritage department at the town of Saint-Brieuc, met the "Changing Natures" team at the ANR Collabora forum on "Digital contribution, cultures and knowledge".
Back in Saint-Brieuc, Yolaine has actively contributed to the Changing Natures platform, in particular using documents from the municipal archives. To find out more about her work, follow this link.
Then, with Estelle Cunin, a heritage mediator in Saint-Brieuc specialised in projects for children, and two teachers from the Brèche aux Cornes primary school, Céline Ricard Toulgoat and Laure-Annaëlle Canévet (replaced in 2023 by Caroline Thoraval), the idea of an artistic and cultural education project took shape.
The four professionals came up with a magnificent project that enabled pupils in two classes of Year 3 to discover the history of the valley in which their school is located, to observe its present state and then to imagine its future. The aim of this work is to contribute to the "Changing Natures" participative collection on environmental change.
From 3 to 7 December 2023, the pupils discovered games about the history of the places they live in every day: the Gouëdic valley and the Parc des Promenades. Using archive photos and old postcards, the pupils were able to create a participatory timeline.
On 14 and 15 December 2023, the pupils took part in six workshops run by city departments and the local energy and climate agency. Various themes relating to environmental change were tackled in a fun and active way: bird biodiversity, waste sorting, climate change, urbanization, light pollution, transport, air quality and mental and environmental health.
On 8 February 2024, Aurélia Desplain, coordinator of "Changing Natures" at the Museum in Paris, came to present the Museum and the collection being built on the Changing Natures platform.
Starting on 12 March 2024, students will go on field trips to the same places as the historical photos, take photos from the same vantage points, and go on historical and environmental tours. They will then be encouraged to think about the future of the places they have studied, through writing workshops with the writer Perrine Morlière, and drawing workshops with the painter Gwen Guéguan.
At the end of the school year, the children's work will be showcased and published online on the Changing Natures platform.
As a pilot artistic and cultural education project for Changing Natures, the approach taken at the Brèche aux Cornes school is a great source of inspiration for the development aimed at schoolchildren, which is currently being built in Paris in 2024!
A huge thank you to the teams who invented this exciting project, and we are now working on the possibilities of seeing it spread to many more schools!
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