The Déviation programme developed out of the partnership between Le Grand Café and the Visual Arts option at the Lycée Aristide Briand in Saint-Nazaire. It began in 2011, providing evidence, in the form of a publication, of sixth-form students’ contact with the exhibitions on site.

A new approach is devised every time, after a preliminary discussion between the art centre team and the visual arts teacher, to place the students in an active role with regard to the exhibition.

Ways to activate the eye and shake it out of its passivity have included writing, videos, drawings, cycle rides, spoken interventions, role play and photographs.

The students are then responsible for producing the first draft of a publication conveying these experiences. The composition of texts, the selection of images and the construction of a critical discourse are all central to the one complete project: of taking a publication from concept to delivery.

Déviation evokes the idea that a roundabout route can sometimes offer many surprises, and the need to know how to leave preconceptions to one side in the encounter with artistic creation. It is a gesture towards outside experience rather than a repository of knowledge to be consulted.