The Avignon Creative Villa, an approach integrating culture and education – Liberation
In Avignon, The creative villa proposes to confront scientific, educational and artistic knowledge to create new knowledge. An event that Release is a partner.
Urban University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) actively participates in the revival of the Latin district where it has been established for over fifty-five years. Emblematic district of the French -speaking Metropolis of the Americas, the Montreal Latin district has a rich student past – it was thus designated in 1895 by university students in reference to the Latin district of Paris. Recognized for its cultural effervescence, the district constitutes a real study and work environment for the 40,000 members of the UQAM community, but also a place of life for its resident population and a destination for thousands of visitors.
Like the University of Avignon and its creative villa project, UQAM embodies values of openness and commitment to local communities and supports a learning approach, where the citizen is at the heart of actions. The two universities thus assert themselves as actresses of change and urban development by promoting learning outside their walls, whether formal or informal, within the framework of territorial governance with public authorities and economic, cultural and community partners.
This community of spirit is thus expressed in the animation of the socio-educational cultural course carried by UQAM to relaunch the Latin district and in the development of the programming of the creative villa in the heart of Avignon. Two major projects around which the links are called to tighten in the years to come.
The challenges, which are numerous, require a learning, agile and reflexive posture to support the evolution of social and economic dynamics in the neighborhood. It is in this context that UQAM has planned projects that improve the architectural and urban integration of its own campus for the benefit of its community and the local community, by federating initiatives that come from its community with local actors and by supporting interventions in matters of social and economic dynamics to equip decision -making. UQAM wishes to bring down the partitions both in what relates to buildings and to perceptions, by opening up to its neighborhood and by evolving it towards a learning district: a place where we learn from all ages and where scientific knowledge and experiential knowledge meet with a perspective of mutual enrichment, for the benefit of citizens of all generations.
To do this, the University notably intends to mesh the programming of the institutions present in the territory and to combine audiences – residents, visitors, people in vulnerability, workers, students, etc. – which otherwise would not have had the opportunity to meet. Inspired by the UNESCO global network of learning cities which counts 356 cities distributed in 79 countries, the learning district model focuses on the rediscovery of the history of the Latin district by creating a district of conditions conducive to the establishment of interinstitutional and participative governance on the scale of a district.
These are actions that serve as inspiration to create a house in the learning district in the Latin district, a real third place that will no longer speak of recovery, but a sustainable development model drawing its strength from an integrated culture-education approach.
