Le Grand Café runs rich and varied projects throughout the year to engage with the broadest of audiences and advance the discovery of present-day art. As a resource space, the art centre actively participates in artistic and cultural education and leads specific actions with all publics. These actions are brought together in the visual workshop ‘Atelier du Regard’. Different variations of the Atelier allow direct contact with artworks and encourage the students to actively participate. Le Grand Café has multiple partnerships with educational structures and looks to introduce new ones every year.
Projects are always designed in close collaboration with the teaching profession to complement the year’s curriculum.
CUSTOM ACTIVITIES
Together with a teacher, the Education Officer designs bespoke sessions to create unique opportunities to engage with artworks: introductory visits, guided tours of the town reflecting the project at the art centre, visits to permanent works in and around Saint-Nazaire, or extensions of the exhibition through classroom sessions.
VISITS FOR TEACHERS
To provide the best possible support for teachers planning their visits, the art centre holds special events reserved for primary and secondary school teachers on the first Monday of each new exhibition. These encounters allow them to discover the new exhibition, to benefit from a guided visit and to define the possible direction of class visits. Education packs are made available to teachers. Visits and interventions are also programmed within the framework of teacher training courses in partnership with academic bodies (the Inspection Académique and the Institut National Supérieur du Professorat et de l’Education or Inspé, formerly IUFM and ESPE).
SPECIFIC ACTIVITIES FOR EVERY LEVEL
Nursery and Primary
The municipality of Saint-Nazaire has a voluntarist approach to artistic and cultural education.
Every year, Le Grand Café holds the Parcours d’Éducation Artistique et Culturelle (PEAC). The workshops in this educational pathway in arts and culture take place from September to June and allow students not just to discover an artistic practice, but also to express their creativity and explore their imagination.
Secondary
The art centre organises an occasional project ‘Plasticien au collège’. The ‘artist in secondary’ is part of the departmental artistic and cultural education plan: Grandir avec la culture. The ambition of ‘Grow up with culture’ is to guarantee an equal access to artistic and cultural education across the whole of the region. The objective of ‘Plasticien au collège’ is to encourage a class to encounter an artist, their creative universe and their work. The students are invited to produce an artwork, which lets them participate in an artistic process and confront the field of creation.
Sixth Form
Le Grand Café has had a special partnership with the Lycée Aristide Briand in Saint-Nazaire since 2011. Students taking the establishment’s Visual Arts option are asked to create the first draft of a publication entitled DÉVIATION, in connection with exhibitions visited during the year.
