by Pierre Beccu, director

On the basis of 20 years of experiences and workshops carried out in the school setting, I propose to put the cinematographic language and digital tools at the heart of the circulation of desires and knowledge. Fostering in beings in the process of constituting the perception - reflection - sharing - creation - perception life loop by inventing together tools and gestures for tomorrow, it is to allow them to become fully themselves, and to prepare to build actively into the 21st century.

This concept also makes it possible to break the modern temporality with regard to images (repetitions, loops, frantic rhythms, zapping) by making our own images. In front of their creation, children and young people rediscover the virtues of dilation, slowness, and pause. From then on, fascinated spectators become motivated authors. They want to continue to feel, but they can also partly understand images, images of all kinds, their genesis, their manufacturing, transformation, reception processes, their functions, and their multiple meanings.

Today, the image is the point of intersection, of friction, of rupture or of constitution of being in relation to the world. As a director, I want to pass on my knowledge, without giving lessons, in the spirit of sharing, to help citizens assert their right to exist for what they are, and to respect what we would like them to be. Telling with images and sounds, amateur or professional, is to accomplish an act of curious freedom.

It is also an opportunity to dialogue without pressure with teachers and parents who wonder about the privileged relationship that children or young people have with screens. In a world where the efficiency of digital means can make it possible to franchise imaginaries and dominate consciences, we can on the contrary take control of the tools and containers to allow young people to create themselves in the midst of others. In 2015, the human mind is fueled as much by the virtual representations as by direct contact with reality. And not just in children. From information to pure entertainment (but how now to disentangle), the representations are dominated by the sensational, by the capacity to "put on a show", therefore by the overbidding of excesses. The risk becomes danger and the danger becomes fear if one does not activate a capacity to understand. We have to reinvent a balance, between the status of spectator and that of author and actor of his own life. Not to become all professional artists, but for everyone to take part in the world to be built by interconnecting our stories and our cultures.

We can both be lucid about the issues posed by dangers and domination of all kinds, and remain resolutely optimistic about the use of the creative power of individuals to reduce inequalities.

Through the magic of the experience of friction with others, we will be able to address the following questions with confidence and determination:

• How to continue to secrete the desire to learn in the majority?
• In a digital world where exchanges that are massively visible on screens are essentially commercial, entertaining or obscurantist, what place for life and culture?
• Can culture, as a creative bubbling, fruitful dialogue between eras and generations, take up the digital challenge?
• Is the world perceptible and hearable as reality by and for new generations?
• Is the world relatable and interesting as a source of richness and diversity, by and for new generations? 

The association 6labs makes it possible to act very concretely through practical workshops with children and young people, by bringing together actors from the territories, in France and abroad, around the issue of cultural expression by all and for all, at the service of of citizenship.

Discover the genesis of child mediators. 

http://6labs.fr/lassociation/la-genese/