It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
As a representative of an organization, in partnership with other organisations
Name of the organisation(s): La Fenêtre Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: MAURY Last name of representative: Gaëlle Gender: Female Nationality: France Function: Director Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: 27 rue Frédéric Peyson Town: Montpellier Postal code: 34000 Country: France Direct Tel:+33 4 67 64 23 90 E-mail:gaelle@la-fenetre.com Website:https://www.la-fenetre.com
Name of the organisation(s): Réseau des médiathèques de Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole Type of organisation: Other public institution First name of representative: David-Jonathan Last name of representative: Benrubi Gender: Male Nationality: France Function: Director Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: 218 boulevard de l'Aéroport International Town: Montpellier Postal code: 34000 Country: France Direct Tel:+33 4 67 34 87 00 E-mail:dj.benrubi@montpellier3m.fr Website:https://mediatheques.montpellier3m.fr/
GraphiMs aims to foster, on a scale of a territory of 450 000 people, a new global culture (knowledge, sensibility, values) based on high quality graphic design standards. Dedicated to maps and cartography, the 2023 edition is but a rocket’s first stage, with a budget draft of 60K€. Relying on the joint forces of one of France most important public libraries networks (14 locations, including a major special collections department, and a staff of 250 employees - a network that has recently innovated in becoming the first ever French “public libraries and science literacy network”), and of a small but highly agile and acknowledged non-profit arts organisation dedicated to architecture and graphic design, as well as benefiting from the moral sponsorship of “Le Signe : centre national du graphisme”, GraphiMs looks forward, from 2024 and on, to extending its range in two directions : European institutions such as Polish Graphic Design foundation (Warsow), Graphic Days (Torino), Graphic Matters (Breda) have already expressed their willingness to cooperate with GraphiMs, while on a local scale, a variety of public and private actors are eager to contribute. All these actors share a strong belief that graphic design culture is necessary for a population to adress sustainibility and adaptation issues.
graphic design
unexpected partnerships
critical messages
ideas with emotions
climate visual narratives and education
How promoting graphic design within the scope of cultural practices and values shared by the citizens of Montpellier’s area may contribute to « prioritising the needs of all life forms and of the planet by ensuring that human activity does not exceed planetary boundaries »? To whom is familiar to graphic design, the answer is obvious: graphic design is, above all, a medium able to help to modify human habits, based on the ability to transmit clever messages through images that convey both emotions and ideas, with a strong requirement for quality. Thus, fostering a culture of graphic design in a territory that has so far prioritised other artistic fields is a way to achieve a better promotion of the very individual and collective competences that will allow the community to re-evaluate its activity with regards to natural boundaries (as well as to other issues). The art and science of designing, reading, criticizing, debating a poster, a map, an interactive device, so many other designed forms, unexpected images such as the well known “Reading Climate Stripes” (temperature levels printed on Reading Football Club’s shirts), are necessary to the ambition of transforming our ways of thinking and perspectives.
While it has been proved that climatoscepticists weight more than scientists in the social medias, a good graphic design culture may help local climate change ambassadors to enter the media arena with renewed strengths, renewed visual narratives, in order to face both cynicism (and misinformation) and eco-anxiety through climate change education.
New Bauhaus’ urge for a better “quality of experience and style, beyond functionality” (that is : including functionality) could as well be a call for more high-quality graphic design.
In games and videogames, websites, posters, books, TV shows and serials, Graphic design is everywhere, we see it everywhere, both in public and private space, in physical word as well as on the web, but do we really know how to look ? Not all visual productions aim to show us messages and forms derived from an equal aesthetic or moral expectation, not all forms will back our common language and visual culture with values consistent with standards such as GreenComp, not all will provide the inhabitants with a variety of interactions, emotions, opportunities to question our common sense and sense of belonging, and therefore the way we live, we share resources, we acknowledge the very boundaries that urge us to incorporate sustainability in the scope our daily decisions. With the help of local, French and European graphic designers, and thanks to unexpected partners who will give us the key to spaces and people that sometimes remain out of reach of many cultural policies (museums, arts galleries, theatres...), GraphiMs will provide some of these opportunities.
Moreover, it should be noted that graphic design, above all other artistic disciplines, is one that combines, and fructifies with other fields of creation: graphic design is almost necessary to and often enriched by music, fiction, science, heritage special collections, cooking, children’s literature, games, digital literacy or culture, movies… On the one hand, these pairs (“graphic design & science”…) tend to cover a great part of our society’s culture (a part wandered by paths that actually convey to a hub, that is: to public library), and on the other hand, they sound like echoes to the very transdisciplinarity that Bauhaus demanded, as the condition for culture to be both plural, and total.
For its first edition (2023), GraphiMs will take place in five public libraries and at La Fenêtre, centre d’art. This is no accidental choice. Not only these six locations are fully accessible to disabled persons, but the Réseau des médiathèques et de la culture scientifique de Montpellier Méditerrannée Métropole is one of the very few (three, allegedly) French networks of local libraries that features a special unit dedicated to all sorts of handicap. Furthermore, as regards the social and economic assets of their communities, the libraries selected for GraphiMs’s first edition are willingly located in very different areas, but share common high level views, skills and values on inclusion matters.
For instance, the médiathèque Jean-Jacques Rousseau, located in the poor suburban district of La Mosson, is very busy with children and immigrant families, whereas the médiathèque La Gare, in the middle class township of Pignan, welcomes on Saturdays families from various social categories, when the very important médiathèque centrale Emile Zola, one of the major French local public libraries, calls on a demanding public with high expectations as regards to cultural proposals. Although this variety is assumed to be one of its strengths, it is in the spirit of GraphiMs to think distinguished proposals as various dimensions of a unique initiative. Some things multiplicate better than they add to one another.
The 2023 edition expects to welcome 6000 visitors.
While this application form is being filled, for GraphiMs to apply to New Bauhaus, a group of ten bus and train drivers from TAM, Montpellier Public Transport System, is about to meet with ROVO, a team of two graphic designers from the Toulouse area, in order to co-elaborate a sensitive map of our territory, compiling some information these men and women only can provide, thanks to their daily professional experience, a map that will allow the public to understand how they perceive the territory that we inhabit, and through which they convey us, questioning our common perception of space.
It is unfortunately not common that professionals such as bus drivers are, not only taken into account in cultural targeting policies, but given the opportunity, alongside with creators, to stand on the other side of the game, that is, to take part in the renovation program of values and shared forms.
The 2023 train and bus drivers’ map of Montpellier is nothing but an instance of GraphiMs core resolution that each edition of the festival must comply with this obligation: use the variety of partners and stakeholders as a condition to bring a variety of people and communities on the other side of the game, and make the cultural field as common, inter-related or shared as culture needs to be. We strongly believe that, more than other disciplines (literature, theatre, plastic art, etc), graphic design, a discipline that has long been assumed as the place of a nearly 50/50 co-authorized creation by an artist and a sponsor, is a discipline that lowers the boundaries between creators and non-creators, and that is the one to achieve this inclusive initiative.
Furthermore, the initiative capitalises on public libraries’ skills and projects in the field of participation. Whereas museums and great events exist in people’s long term agenda (going out often requires monthly anticipation), libraries and the workshops and activities they propose belong to people’s daily life and pathways.
GraphiMs is co-piloted by Réseau des médiathèques de Montpellier Méditerrannée Métropole (the local government's network of 14 public libraries) and La Fenêtre, an independent non-profit Arts organisation. So far, the scheme is officially backed and branded by Le Signe : centre national du graphisme, French main actor in the field of graphic design promotion and manager of the Biennale Internationale de Chaumont. It has also brought the attention of Centre National des Arts Plastiques, which has promoted our initiative in the mark of its annual national gathering, le Salon graphique, hosted in november 2022 in Montpellier, in the médiathèque centrale Emile Zola. We confidently expect GraphiMs’ second edition, in 2024, to gain its further official support with the label « Graphisme en France ». Due to schedule issues, the 2023 edition has not yet been sponsored by the Ministère de la culture, but it is expected that the Direction Régionale des Affaires culturelles d’Occitanie will support the initiative from 2024 on, when the first edition has proved successful.
Above all, GraphiMs has been elected part of Montpellier and Sète strategy, in the mark of its 2028 European Capital of Culture (ECOC) application.
In this context, a moral approval from New Bauhaus would bring an additional contribution to the deep-rooting of the initiative, both at a local and at a European levels.
GraphiMs capitalises both on La Fenêtre’s expertise in the field of small scale professionally designed exhibitions, and on a variety of skills and profiles from Réseau des médiathèques brought together in a project team, with special referent members and dedicated groups for
• each of six exhibitions, requiring scientific, artistic and museographic skills
• the educational program, requiring educational skills and knowledge in the field of children’s culture
• events, conferences and communication,
• collections and special collections, involving skills in media history and heritage policies
Of course, skills in the field of graphic design are strongly solicited throughout the initiative. The festival’s identity has been created by a nationally acknowledged graphic designer.
Both head managers of La Fenêtre and Réseau des médiathèques de Montpellier Méditerrannée Métropole are personally involved in the project team. The have benefited from the high expertise of Le Signe : centre national du graphisme’s head manager in the field of contemporary graphic design.
It is relevant that GraphiMs’ core structure is based on the jointing of two institutions of different dimensions, legal standings, highlights and focuses, that otherwise would not work together, nor know each other, and that this jointing at the very heart of the initiative will facilitate the bringing in and participation to GraphiMs of other types of stakeholders or partners, such as, in the 2023 edition, TAM, the Montpellier public transport system.
The initiative also stands out by hybridizing a mean of cultural policies such as a great event (or festival) and skills, approaches and public units more acquainted with day-to-day public services.
Other networks of public libraries could be inspired by GraphiMs, in terms of building, on a 50/50 bid, a shared initiative with a small, agile and specialised Arts organisation. Small is beautiful but big is widespread.
In addition, it is likely, thanks to the mentoring of a prestigious internationality acknowledged institution, Le Signe, as well as to the interest of various European design schools or museums, that GraphiMs shall eventually prove to be a singular model for entwining various levels of public action.
Many other cultural actors may find interest in the way GraphiMs get so-called out-of-the-cultural-field people involved in co-elaborated forms, such as the bus and train driver’s sensitive map of Montpellier.
The GraphiMs initiative, as well as its first (2023) edition have been co-designed by a group of eleven professionals, sharing a common interest for inclusion matters, but belonging from different fields of expertise, each one of them being keen to spotlighting a peculiars focus. How would children been involved ? How would we have the local government’s management of communication team take interest in less conventional/standardized forms of graphic design ? How would special collections, dating from the Middle Ages onto the XXth century, both conveying a sense of belonging and the means of an understanding of the past, would be summoned to dialogue with contemporary forms and messages ? How would the dimension and geographical variety of the relevant territory for GraphiMs would be taken into account ? How would we engage both with great and renown European graphic designers and with local professionals, and be careful not to assume a top-down proposal that would demotivate local actors ?
In order to secure its long-term rootedness, it has also been a crucial point to invent a gradual implementation of the project, the first edition being enough solid and meaningful to validate the initiative both in the cultural landscape of Occitanie and in the national scope of graphic design community.
“Can the design of a climate change message change someone’s beliefs? Absolutely, and with a surprisingly powerful correlation.” Members of GraphiMs’ team do share this assertion from Dr Rebecca Green, from the University of Sidney (1).
However, the climate change issue should not be considered apart from other entwined cultural challenges. In the field of educational and cultural initiatives, GraphiMs addresses three of these apparently secondary stakes:
• the issue of empowering individuals with the capability of mastering one’s mind in the public space, that is in a space of increasingly constant distraction (2)
• the issue of empowering groups and individuals with media capability, that is the possibility for them to face and criticize powerful and sometimes ubiquitous messages, brought to them in a time and space of information overload
• the issue of keeping in the public space a certain variety and quality of widespread visual and textual messages, as a counterpoint to the conservative hegemonic propaganda of consumerism
(1) “Graphic design could be holding back action on climate change – here’s how”, in The conversation, 19th of may 2019, on line [https://theconversation.com/graphic-design-could-be-holding-back-action-on-climate-change-heres-how-112953]
(2)Matthew B. Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction, 2015
GraphiMs applies for New Bauhaus at the stage of its first edition. Dedicated to maps and cartography, this 2023 edition is but a rocket’s first stage, with a budget draft of 60K€. Over a five years horizon, GraphiMs is meant to become a recognised European graphic design festival, one of Montpellier 2028 application for ECOC pillars, but most of all a network of various stakeholders, partners, benefiting communities and individuals of all ages, that will together share images and messages, discover great graphic productions from all over Europe, and face – with their eyes, feelings and visual thinking - the great issues of our time.
To achieve this ambitious development, steps have been anticipated.
Step 0, 2022: gathering of stakeholders and partners
• Spring 2022 : La Fenêtre and Réseau des médiathèques engage in a shared initiative
• November 2022 : the initiative has been presented to and heart-fully welcolmed by members of the graphic design community, through “Salon graphique”, a program of Centre national des arts plastiques (https://www.cnap.fr/actualites/graphisme-en-france)
• Autumn 2022 : the initiative is backed and labelled by Montpellier 2028 (https://www.montpellier2028.eu), the official ECOC application team
• January 2023: two-days workshop with Le Signe : centre national du graphisme
Step 1, Spring 2023:
• Co-elaborated test program of exhibits, events and cultural activities, with a local extent limited to six spots
• Audience target: 6000.
Step 2, 2024-2026:
• Local extended development, towards more public libraries, including libraries from neighbour local governments (Sète, Frontignan…)
• International crossroads, with official solicitation of (so far informally solicited) actors such Polish Graphic Design foundation (Warsow), Graphic Days (Torino), Graphic Matters (Breda), Festival indiscipliné de graphisme (Belgium)...
• Audience target : 10 000
Step 3, 2027-2029
• Part of Montpellier ECOC 2028 program
• Exhibitions
GraphiMs clearly addresses the development of most of the 12 competences competences identified by the GreenComp framework, and priorly of those grouped in the aeras of embracing complexity in sustainability and embodying sustainability values :
• embracing the complexity of a problem, through efficient, non simplistic images, is probably the very core of what graphic design aims to do.
• Embodying values, though images that call on both emotional and cognitive emotions, and refer to local and universal, present and inheritated contexts, values that are first common to the sponsor and the creator of the image, and then shared and discussed with the public, is ordinary life for whom is involved in designing or in promoting graphic design culture.
Undoubtedly, showing, exposing, buying, explaining, co-elaborating graphic designed images that address global issues will allow kids, people, professionals, teachers, politicians, families who have come to the libraries for other purposes (listening to stories, playing videogames, participating in a scientific workshop, reading books, studying, discovering rare and special collections, coming to a concert…), will promote the competences that deal with valuing sustainability, developing system and critical thinking, as well as fostering adaptability.
It should be noted that GraphiMs will also, from 2024 and on, cross-benefiting from another long term project of Réseau des médiathèques et de la culture scientifique, “Futurs antérieurs” (“futures in the past”), which aim to preserve and collect as part of our heritage past traces of how future has been forecast or anticipated. This will have GraphiMs adress, also, the competence of futures literacy
