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Discovering Street Arts In France

Friday 8 October 2010 , by Winchester students

All the versions of this article: [English] [français]

Whilst in France, working with Le Fourneau and Zepa, we have learnt about the ways in which the Street Arts the industry has evolved over time. They have a lot of differences to the Street Arts industry in England. This article is about how our experiences of their way of working has helped us to understand what we need to do to enable us to evolve in England like they have in France.

The core of French Street Arts is about art and not entertainment like England. Every artist has a vision or story behind the creation of their performance. This has also made us think about why we do what we do as Street Arts students. Is our creation process divised to make us satisfied or do we actually consider what our audience is going to feel and what they would like to see? Therefore we feel that the French are selfless where as the English are selfish as we are not a community orientated country.

An example of the way in which France is more advanced within the Street Arts sector is that they do not need to do a detailed risk assessment and get permission for a performance like artists in England. The police and local authorities are very understanding when it comes to performances. There was evidence of this when we went to La Deambule festival, as the roads had been closed off by the police to enable this event to take place safely. This made us realise that Street Arts in England have a long way to go before they can be as advanced in the safety and understanding of events like in France.

We have also discovered that the French Street Arts boundaries are less restricted, therefore this means that audience participation is present in more of the shows than in England. They also only assess risks that are classed as major or neccessary and do not have to ask permission that are small and irrelevant to them.

In France we have noticed that their performances, events and festivals are based around the community. They make the community and local people come together, which means that there is a sense of security for the people and artists performing within the local community.

Within England there are no creation centres at present that are available for street artists to go to. However in France there are 9 national creation centres. Le Fourneau is one of these. These creation centres enables Street Art companies to produce a show without having to worry about factors like where they are going to rehearse. This enables them to focus all of their time and energy on their production. Due to having none in England at this time, it has made us think that this may be one of the reasons why France Street Arts is focused on Art and English on entertainment.

The company Tango Sumo helped to open our eyes to the fact that in France they feel everyone can dance. It doesn’t need to be hard or complicated to make it good or interesting. The videos that they showed us have inspired us as dancers to start to consider how simple choreography can have a bigger effect on our audience. The technique in Tango Sumo is not as obvious as they base the creation of their production solely on a vision or story.

Therefore for England Street Arts to evolve and become more advanced we need to consider what we can do with our partnership with creation centres like Le Fourneau and Zepa and use the skills that they have ganined to help Street Arts to become as recognised in England as it is in other countries.

Written by Hannah D, Shaunna and Zoe.

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