For the Spring of Rurality, a flowering of proposals to complement the cultural supply within the countryside | EUROtoday

For weeks, within the countryside, native elected officers and cultural professionals have been invited to phosphorus as a part of the Spring of Rurality. This main nationwide session on cultural choices in rural areas, launched on the finish of January by Rachida Dati, should ship its ends in April. Since her appointment, the brand new Minister of Culture has repeated it many times: entry to tradition in rural areas would be the precedence of her motion. “It is the unthought of cultural policies, not to say the blind spot since Paris”she argued once more, on February 29, on France Culture.

The imbalance, it’s true, is obvious: solely 5% of the roughly 367 labeled buildings are positioned in rural areas. “But these territories are not white areas, they all have historical monuments, places for public reading, numerous associations, amateur activities…”insists Isabelle Chardonnier, regional director of cultural affairs in Brittany, recalling that, in her area, 84% of libraries-media libraries are put in in municipalities with lower than 5,000 inhabitants.

“The absence of place does not mean an absence of cultural activity”provides Claire Delfosse, professor on the Rural Studies Laboratory on the University of Lyon, welcoming “strong associative dynamics, an important point of support for going much further”.

On the aspect of rural mayors, we welcome the session as “an opportunity to seize”already in symbolic issues, “to highlight the cultural dynamism of our countryside while rurality is still often associated with a cultural desert”, based on Lionella Gallard, mayor of Cheverny (Loir-et-Cher). Caution is however required concerning precise retailers. “It is not a question of waving the red rags of financial inequality to make a cultural policy”, reacted the Association of Rural Mayors of France (AMRF) in a letter addressed to Mr.^me Dati on the finish of January, asking amongst different issues “that a real territorialized diagnosis of ministerial action be carried out so that everyone, DRAC [direction régionale des affaires culturelles] by DRAC, can measure the way in which the distribution of credits is organized”and claiming to be attentive “that concrete operational levers, in line with the France ruralities plan, are put on the table at the end of the consultation”.

From Ariège to Puy-de-Dôme, all mayors specific the identical expectations. Starting with strengthening native cultural engineering capacities by making efficient the systematic appointment of a rurality referent inside every DRAC: a single level of contact to information and facilitate hyperlinks between all stakeholders. Lack of advisors particular within the DRACs, lack of enough human sources in small municipalities, “projects fall by the wayside or waste time”regrets Sébastien Gouttebel, mayor of Murol (Puy-de-Dôme), vice-president of the AMRF, who discovered the minister “listening” throughout his go to to Puy-de-Dôme.

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