Culture, engine of transformation of territories – Liberation

Faced with the climate emergency, the social and economic upheavals that shake our society, the question is legitimate: what role can culture play in the transformation of our territories? This question, far from harmless, invites us to deeply rethink the relationship between artistic creation and territorial development.

Artists are not simple producers of works. They are the sensitive sensors of our time, those who question, jostle the established standards and open doors to other possible imagination. It is precisely this ability to question the present and to project alternative future that make culture an essential lever for transformation.

In Center-Val de Loire, we have chosen a territorial development where culture occupies a central place. Not as a simple ornament or a marketing argument, but as the spine of a social project. At a time when culture undergoes budget cuts, we take the opposite view by resolutely deciding to support it-not only for the artists themselves, but also for what it tells of the world around us and the challenges that we must collectively meet. Our region, heiress of a considerable heritage – from Léonardo da Vinci to George Sand, from the Loire Valley classified at Unesco to our remarkable castles and gardens – draws from this historical wealth to nourish its contemporary vision.

Weaving links between arts, sciences, cultures and gastronomy is essential to renew our relationship with the territory and create a space where everyone can participate in collective reflection. It is in this spirit that we have created, since 2019, opportunities for meeting and exchange between residents, artists and local actors. This approach, which we have baptized « New rebirths »is embodied through various cultural events that animate the territory.

These moments of sharing are not simple entertainment. They constitute a real social laboratory where the answers to our time in dialogue and creation are invented in dialogue and creation: how to sustainably transform our territories? How to reinvent public space? How to build a more inclusive and united future?

The candidacy of Bourges as the European capital of culture 2,028 is part of this approach. It is not an end in itself, but an accelerator for this territorial transformation already engaged. It makes it possible to catalyze energies, to federate the actors and to amplify the initiatives which make the Center-Val de Loire a territory of experimentation and innovation.

The stake is high: it is a question of showing that culture can be a powerful lever of ecological and social transformation. That far from a superfluous luxury, on the contrary, it is a fundamental tool to rethink our relationship to the world, to the other and to our environment.