Last February 8th, the mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, officially launched the “Nice 100% Culture at School” plan. This plan aims to offer all students in the primary schools of the City of Nice access to Culture, Art, and Heritage, from a young age and in a permanent manner. This plan will be gradually deployed starting in the 2021-2022 school year to reach, by the 2025-2026 school year, 100% of the schools, 100% of the classes, and 100% of the students in Nice.
Christian Estrosi, mayor of Nice and president of the Nice Côte-d’Azur metropolis, is resolutely committed to an ambitious policy in favor of access to Culture for all students, supported by his deputies Jean-Luc Gagliolo, delegate for Education, and Robert Roux, delegate for Culture.
By launching the “Nice 100% Culture at School” plan, the City of Nice intends, within the framework of the three-year framework agreement it has with the Ministries of National Education and Culture, to offer all students in the city’s primary schools access to Culture, Art, and Heritage, from a young age and in a permanent way.
Thematic Areas for Culture
This plan will be organized around five thematic areas:
• Music Education
• Heritage and Literature Education
• Image Education
• Creation and Visual Arts Education
• Performing Arts Education
It will develop Culture in school for all kindergarteners and elementary students. Each year, it will provide every child in Nice with a minimum of 12 hours of artistic and cultural education per year. The plan will begin in the 2021 school year with a pilot program in 21 schools across all school districts in the city, encompassing 57 classes and 1,000 students. The objective is to reach 100% of Nice’s students by the 2025 school year.
A Focus on Music Education
The music education component is one of the five thematic areas of the “Nice 100% Culture at School” plan, which includes the new program “ Music for All “. This program targets first-graders (CP) to provide them with a musical awakening of 12 hours over six weeks each year from the earliest age.
Kindergartens and other elementary levels can also benefit, as with the other four thematic areas, from music learning through creation-transmission residencies or artistic practice workshops.
Additionally, students of all school levels who wish to continue learning music can do so at AnimaNice during extracurricular time or through the teachings of the Conservatory of Nice.
The Call for Expressions of Interest
“Nice 100% Culture at School” is also a municipal recovery plan aimed at local cultural players affected by the health crisis. The City of Nice is launching a Call for Expressions of Interest (CEI) to identify all those willing to engage in cultural intervention projects in schools for primary students in Nice. These projects will start in the September 2021 school year.
This CEI seeks to identify eligible participants who will be proposed to the 21 schools selected for the pilot program starting in the 2021-2022 school year. Candidates are not required to propose a specific project but only to indicate the uniqueness and significance of their artistic and transmission approach in order to co-construct, if selected, a specific project in dialogue with teachers.
Several objectives are expected from this project:
• Quality interventions in pedagogical, artistic, and cultural levels
• Co-construction of the project between teachers and candidates
• A dynamic and innovative approach to heritage appropriation
• Adaptation to pedagogical approaches developed with teachers
• The development of artistic practice and the possibility of production by students
• The encounter with the artist’s world and works, meeting their ongoing creation, within the framework of creation residencies
• Discovery of artistic professions and meetings with cultural professionals
• The development of cultural knowledge and artistic skills
Formats of Interventions
For this occasion, two formats of intervention will be prioritized:
– The creation-transmission residency (96h)
The artist’s working time is divided between personal creation time (48h) carried out in a space provided free of charge by the City of Nice (school or AnimaNice) and intervention time in a school setting (48h). This intervention time will take place with four classes per school for 12 hours per class (for one residency). Each supported project may receive assistance up to 5,800 euros including VAT.
– Artistic practice workshops (72h)
The selected artist exclusively intervenes in a school setting to carry out the culturally co-constructed project with the teachers. This intervention time will occur with six classes per school for 12 hours per class (for one artistic practice workshop). Each supported project may receive assistance up to 4,400 euros including VAT.
In April, juries will review the applications based on the candidate’s professionalism in the cultural field and the quality of educational interventions they have previously conducted. In May, a co-construction process will be initiated between the teachers and the preselected artists to define each class’s cultural project. Finally, in June, a final approval will be given to the artists definitively selected.
