Chronicle in 10 or 12 texts english version

Chronicle original txt before Translation here

Since yesterday (on http://www.marionnettesenprison.com) and today (here), I will put one text every day online (or every two or three days) – Chronicle in 10 or 12 texts; chronicle about a change since a first European project. Logbook about a feeling…written after the facts…

The puppet in the service of the humans

1/ To begin: the project

8 days. I will come back to these 8 days spent in Annequin. 8 days that we had prepared, analysed, planned for a long time and patiently.

8 days are like a life you know. For these who do not have time anymore, for the others, for these who have too much time, 8 days are an immediate eternity. But before explaining these 8 days, it is necessary to go back on their genesis. We did not have time to narrate it before. It is necessary for me to keep chronicle in reverse order. After “D-8”, the “D+something” will follow. We had imagined the Workshop "la marionette au service des hommes" in February 2012. As part of the Lifelong Learning Programme, we had notice a plan: the GRUNDTVIG Workshops. Registering our project as a part of this plan in February 2012, we had the idea of using our knowledge on the European scale and not resting on our laurels. At this moment I did not knew how much a project setting up will be the start of a detonations succession. I could not imagine the changes that it will lead; the look and scale changes, the paradigm modification; I did not know.

Today, we have half-opened the European door. After few days of silence, I want to return on these deflagrations.

The first one, the European transparency

Before the organization came the writing and study of our project. I have to admit that in terms of projects, believe me or not, we have just carried out the projects that we wanted. And we always tried to do our best. In more than twenty years (my career path) of French-French speaking practice, I never was confronted to this experience where the criteria defined in advance exceed the corporations and the subjective judgments. These criteria allow a contents evaluation and not on the network evaluation or on a subjective feeling of excellence. There are a lot of judgments and corporations in the French performing arts sector. How many dossiers did we proposed in 20 years, excellent but not entering in the frame? How many dossiers were rejected without giving the reasons of their rejections...?

We have discovered that with the European system, the evaluators of our dossier used the same tools for us and for all the others. So we were first, arriving with 97 points on table which accounts 100. In the reading of the evaluators, I recognized the validation of the path that we choose to create this Workshop project. But, do not get lost, what matters is not really the notation of our project but also the fact that if we had made a mistake, we had the tools to improve it and make adjustment.

In the first approach after to have completed it online, I have discovered a respect of the provided work that I did not find in the French procedures. Some of our long years partners (homage to the DPIR, direction of international and regional partnerships) have started to develop their practices but in the cultural sector particularly the opacity of the procedures can be easily compared to the “arbitrary decisions of the prince” with the current battles on the naming at the head of "big houses" and the fact that the directors of these houses, name them "my house " rather than " house of the people and the culture ". Suddenly in this open and transparent procedure, I discovered a small and centred France where relations are more used than quality and the identical rule for everyone.

Everything in the selection procedure and our project monitoring introduced me the ideal relation between the "decision-maker" and the "maker" and not a relation deformed by egotism.

8 days, which change the association Les Mille et une Vies; since our project selection, the exchanges with the French Agency of Lifelong Learning get closer. These exchanges have been really constructive. They had defined a policy; we proposed a project and both met. Here I find again what makes me appreciate to work with the citizenship rather than the culture.

For this first submitted project we even were drawn lots (to benefit from a project control). The drawing lots procedure, the exchanges with the agency and the evaluation after these exchanges and control, everything tended to consolidate us in our look. This procedure corresponds to my first intern explosion: the devil is not in Europe. If I would like to escape the religious metaphors, I would say that Europe is not so dark that some people would present it. Nevertheless Europe becomes the ideal "scapegoat” when it is necessary to find one. With this project, I have discovered, 8 days (and after), this text commits only me, and Europe is only what we will do from it... Europe and its doors wide open to the future...

I will come back tomorrow... Day-1 or -2 depending on the mood...

Fabrice Levy-Hadida