The Action Plan aims to implement a set of measures to develop a platform, the Caravan Creative Lab, where creativity meets heritage
Grand Angoulême is a territory made of 38 municipalities characterised by an industrial tradition which, after a crisis linked to deindustrialisation in the 1970s, has partly succeeded in converting its economy towards creative and cultural industries, thanks in particular to the Comic Strip Festival (50th edition in 2023) and to significant support for the image sector (cartoons, video games, etc.).
Despite the urban renewal strategies carried out, the know-how, traditions and built elements of the industrial period are sometimes unfortunately poorly known and little protected. Another challenge to tackle is to provide the flourished local creative industry with tools and infrastructure to easily network with local partners or get in touch with the area and its urban history.
I am delighted and proud to support the European HUB-IN project. With the development of our innovation platform, the Caravane Creative Lab, which prefigures our future Metropolitan Trail, our aim is to encourage and federate initiatives that will enable us collectively to deepen our knowledge of our territory and make it our own, to enhance its rich heritage and creativity – Gérard Desaphy, Vice-president of Grand Angoulême, department of culture
THE CARAVANE CREATIVE LAB: DEVELOPING INNOVATIVE PROJECTS LINKED TO THE LOCAL HERITAGE
To address these issues, in 2020 Grand Angoulême decided notably to launch a Metropolitan Trail project, i.e. an urban and peri-urban walking route with a cultural dimension that explores and recounts the urban and, in particular, industrial history of the territory. HUB-IN’s Historic Urban Area (HUA) goes beyond the municipal limits, including several districts and industrial valleys. Grand Angoulême’s Hub of Innovation is named Caravane Creative Lab. It aims to create a link between the cultural and creative industries and the territory (particularly in terms of heritage) by implementing new rituals (regular collective scoutings or sightings), to bring out and promote a genuine shared culture of the territory and initiate the creation of an innovative platform for inter-learning and creation.
Four actions established during the co-design and co-creation process that led to a roadmap will guide the development of the Caravane Creative Lab:
Action 1 – Investigating and mapping the historical heritage to reveal the sense of the place of Grand Angoulême – aims at mapping the heritage, and particularly the unlisted small and intangible heritage. The action consists in carrying out an inventory, a bibliography and a collective survey on the scale of an intercommunal territory marked for several centuries by various industrial activities. The result is a new geographical database that makes it possible to identify the characteristic urban situations of Grand Angoulême and the related heritage issues.
Action 2 – Co-design a Metropolitan Trail as a framework for the Caravane Creative Lab. Using the geographical database developed in Action 1 and in dialogue with local partners and initiatives, this original walking itinerary will reveal the specific heritage features of Grand Angoulême and constitute an original shared space for local stakeholders and citizens.
Action 3 – Set up an itinerant hub of innovation: Caravane Creative Lab (CCL). To overcome the lack of a common space between the partners of the territory, and in particular the creative and cultural industries, we envisage the creation of the Caravane Creative Lab, an innovation hub dedicated to the valorisation of heritage and the creation of narratives anchored in the local urban geography and in coherence with the contemporary issues linked to urban regeneration and the global ecological crisis. The CCL is a meeting platform between local partners (schools, authors, local associations, artistic collectives) which should encourage the realisation of professional and educational projects: audio-visual creations, editions, learning workshops, in-situ works, web projects, etc. During the HUB-IN project, the CCL will meet on an “under construction” metropolitan trail.
Action 4 – Create and run an open call to raise awareness about cultural heritage. The CCL (Action 3) is a long-term project that relies on the capacity of its members to set up projects and finance them themselves. To accelerate the project’s timeframe, Grand Angouleme will launch two open calls addressed in priority to local artists, associations and businesses (members or future members of the CCL). The aim is to build in a quite short time an ambitious transmedia learning and discovery path for the public.
Grand Angoulême’s HUB-IN will support local professionals in the development of innovative narrative projects, as well as raise awareness among the public and decision-makers of heritage issues via these narrative projects.
Learn more about the project here.
