Show that the after is convincing, desirable, possible … – Liberation
As a glaciologistI traveled the poles in all their corners. My specialty is monitoring the impact of climate change on polar caps using data taken from the field and satellite images. So how can we explain that one day, Sébastien Minchin, the director of the Museum of Natural History of Bourges, this small town in the center, far from the snow -capped peaks and the polar oceans, saw fit to contact me to offer to become godmother of Bourges candidacy for the European capital of culture ?
At first, I was convinced that Bourges was looking for a local spokesperson, fed on goat cheeses and Berry lenses. However, my investigation shows me that the team that is formed around the candidacy has no idea of my Berruyères origins … It must be believed that their instinct will have been sufficient to find the only glaciologist ever carried by the region.
Their reflection is already very advanced and their ambition for this new cultural proposal, it is a vision taking into account an environmental context in full change. The « territories of the future ». For the team, for the mayor, it goes without saying that this candidacy must show the path of the afterwards and rethink the impact of culture, both in the design of projects, but also in its narrative vectors of transition. And that’s what they are looking for through my journey.
This vision convinces me immediately because it corresponds perfectly to my convictions. Because this artistic and cultural work, which I have not yet explored, seems to me to be the perfect keystone which will allow the acceleration of this transition. My journey led me, after ten years of research, to join a UNESCO Center for Climate Change Education in order to meet my need to get involved to accelerate the ecological transition. This work, based on solid scientific data, of quality and validated by my community, allowed us to advance in climate awareness and understanding the issues within schoolsMinistries of Education. On the other hand, after years of return on the impact of our work, I understand that an education leading to real changes in behavior cannot work without two other components: emotion and vision.
Emotion is a lever. My own commitment to the poles was not born from my work as a scientist, he was born from the emotion that I felt in front of The disappearance of glaciers that I knew by heart. And then vision is telling a story is giving visibility to a future that seems uncertain. It is to show that the after is convincing, desirable, and possible. How to imagine better vector than art and culture to meet these two needs?
Today, I have the great pleasure of having joined the collective in charge of the low carbon mission and ecological transitions from Bourges 2028 with David Irle, Hermann Lugan and Anne Pursin, to choreographed this ambition. And thus use the incredible opportunity to see my hometown rethink the whole of its tourist, cultural, artistic proposal and the functioning of its territory to set in motion and offer, both for 2028, but also and above all for the after, a renewal. A city on a human scale, which by the force of its ideas and its convictions, launched this slightly crazy bet to project itself into a future full of meaning.
