The art centre’s support for research takes some very diverse forms.

It can take place by collaborating with academic research centres or creating working groups to support artists’ exhibition and performance projects. Le Grand Café is particularly interested in these open artistic practices as they allow it to go beyond the traditional fields of creative action.

Le Grand Café is a site dedicated to artistic experimentation and the renewal of forms and aesthetics. Because of this, it works alongside the École Européenne Supérieure d’Art de Bretagne in the field of action research; notably through the B.O.A.T. – Boat Of Artistic Research Trip, a platform that unites different participants in the professional creative network: artists, postgraduate students, exhibition curators, scientists, businesses, etc.

Since 2015, Le Grand Café also supports researchers in art history through the residency structure Substrat.

More generally, the art centre sometimes depends upon researchers for the conception of exhibition projects within the framework of its group exhibition programme, such as the exhibition Les Enfants d’abord !.