Research days

This event brought together professionals in arts education and outreach from various regions and countries, as part of Camping 2026, to explore the theme of consent: How do professionals devise dance practices that incorporate touch and interaction with others whilst remaining mindful of each individual’s boundaries and collective frameworks? How do artists and outreach practitioners address the concept of consent with children and young people? How do these considerations shape arts and cultural education initiatives and projects? To enrich discussion and exchange of ideas, the day’s programme featured accounts of personal experiences, practical examples, lectures and round-table discussions.

Aimed at teaching staff, this workshop explores the intersection between a social issue – gender – and dance education. What tools are available to address the concerns of male and female dancers? How should physical contact be approached in movement teaching? How can we prevent gender-based and sexual violence and harassment, as well as LGBTQI+ phobia?

Cultural rights, as set out in the 2007 Fribourg Declaration, form the basis of mediation practices: taking multiple identities into account, valuing everyone’s knowledge, encouraging participation, and contributing to citizens’ education and training… Through the sharing and discussion of experiences from various European countries, the aim is to understand how mediation practices implement (or challenge) cultural rights, but also how these rights challenge and reshape the intentions and approaches of mediators and artists. What, in particular, can dance contribute in terms of cultural rights? And how do cultural rights specifically challenge dance?

European countries agree on the importance of artistic and cultural experiences for young people in developing their creativity, critical thinking and sense of citizenship. How are these values put into practice in different countries? During this study day, we will highlight a number of examples in order to explore whether arts and cultural education is context-specific or universal in nature. The morning will be devoted to a discussion on the training of arts and culture education practitioners, and the afternoon to sharing projects aimed at young audiences. A day of testimonials and debates amongst professionals from different European countries to inspire and reflect on dance outreach practices.

Events organised in partnership with the CCN in Caen, Normandy; La Manufacture CDCN Nouvelle-Aquitaine; and Musique et danse en Loire-Atlantique

The body, movement and dance can challenge social and cultural norms. Movement, potential transgressions and unexpected discoveries, as well as misunderstandings, resistance and obstacles, are inherent in arts and cultural education and outreach initiatives. Dance brings to light, within these programmes, the discrepancies between values, content and the conditions under which they are realised. How, then, can a focus on these discrepancies inform the design of such programmes? Does it enable us to overcome our own obstacles to a genuine acceptance of otherness and of each other’s cultures, so that we can build an intimate relationship with art together? Reflecting on these gaps, questioning our ways of working through a sensitive and political approach, and embarking on this journey together as much as for ourselves: this is the framework for the experience offered during these two days of study.

The third day in the “practices” cycle offers an approach to outreach as a situated practice, which creates relational schemas based on a context (sites, audiences, aesthetics, an institutional context…). It examines outreach practices through the spatial, temporal and bodily notion of “adopting a position”.

Adopting a position means situating yourself in terms of a context. Inside, alongside, on, around, below, against, with… It also means making choices and making them perceptible for others. This implies a freedom of subjects that authorises them to choose where they want to be in a collective, how they want to be with the collective and what place they offer to others. Adopting a position also means positioning and re-positioning yourself, and implies self-reflexions that makes practices living and mobile.

In the context of Camping, several sites and schools have been invited to create a space for exchanges about outreach practices based on different French and international contexts.

Transmitting, raising awareness, sharing, educating, training, many verbs bring to life the work of artists and mediators. The ways to encounter need to be invented, thought about and put into question continually according to the knowhow that is put into use, the audiences being addressed and the contexts in which encounters occur. During the 20th century, contributions from the educational sciences, cognitive science and psychology deeply transformed the understanding of the subject and the act of learning. In this context, the point is to question our educational actions and to invent tomorrow’s practices. 

This research day will mean being able to examine the current challenges in education so as to show up the various ways in which mediators and artists act.

A talk, workshops and feedback on experiences will punctuate this research day. 

This research day will mean being able to probe questions about pedagogical practices developed for the transmission of dance. Are they specific to the knowhow which is being transmitted or also linked to objectives which are given to the act of transmission? What does dance transmit: a technique, a practice, a research process, a conception of the world, or a sensitivity to choreographic works? What is the role of the verbal and the non-verbal in the transmission of such dance knowhow? Through the practice and analysis of transmissions by dancers and mediators as well as through a reflection workshop, a mapping of the practices of dance transmission will be co-drafted during the entire day.

Observing the pedagogies in use in artistic and cultural education schemes, putting into perspective the means of transmission whatever the fields of knowledge and questioning each person’s posture are the objectives allotted to this moment of exchanges.

Audiences are curious, committed, participatory, singular, wilful, sensitive. Audiences are critical, predictable, unpredictable, indifferent, contradictory, heteroclite. It is also possible to designate audiences, spectators, spect-actors, enthusiasts, inhabitants, individuals, people, citizens…

We would like this research day to fous on the notion of an “audience”. With this in mind, we have invited researchers, philosophers, sociologists and professionals in the performing arts, so as to cross different viewpoints. Approaching and sharing this question from different angles, which can be philosophical, political, economic, or else aesthetic, will allow us to present our approaches in terms of our practices. This day will also provide the opportunity to examine the particularity of a dance audience, and to think together about all our outreach actions.

At a time when projects for participatory choreographic creations are multiplying, a practice workshop and a viewing workshop before and after the performance are propaedeutic tools for the understanding of works, in which artistic and cultural education pathways aim at developing a critical mindset. The CN D is offering an exchange about the causalities and/or correlations between practising and viewing, and between outreach and audience development projects. The personal, social, political and educational impacts of dance outreach will also be dealt with.