Our ambition is to present people who are or have been been active in ETEN. Hope you´ll be inspired to share your story here! 
Link to questions

Please provide a brief description of yourself.
Male, 60 years old, white skin (It starts badly) traveler, walker, biker, art and culture smuggler. I love nothing so much as sharing feelings, ideas and practices. I’m trying to make this sentence my own : Art is what makes life more interesting than art ( Robert Filliou).

Please provide a brief bio of your current professional role.
As a french artist (digital poetry and performance) teacher (creative writings, digital writings, arts methodology), and researcher in arts (CY Cergy-Paris Université – laboratoire EMA (Ecole Mutations Apprentissages / School, Mutations, Learning)). I’m in charge of the master degree in Artistic & Cultural Mediation (Inspé Académie de Versailles), head of International Relations Office of Inspé de Versailles. I’m a member appointed to the national commission of universities (CNU Arts).

Tell me something (personal?) about yourself!
I am fortunate to live with a great woman and to see growing my 3 beautiful (adult) children.

What are your interests (in an out of your professional realm)?
I’m interested by all kind of arts but my favorites and those I practice are poetry, photography, video, performance, music.
I’m interested by practicing and thinking and sharing about arts, education, accompaniment, transmission through collaborations.
I like hiking, traveling, meeting people from all cultures, ride around Europe in sidecar
I like to taste dishes and drinks and I try to keep my eyes open everywhere

How did you get involved with ETEN?
I got to know the ETEN network through my colleague Pascale Boissonnet, who was before me in charge of International Relations. She invited me to ETEN Setubal where we proposed together, a multilingual creative writing workshop (each one wrote a personal text on an image of his choice, then we made a multilingual Pecha-Kucha, each one reading his text in his own language, projecting the image and the translation into English for all.
The following year I was invited for 2 months in China for an art residency. Il was the starting point for a beautiful partnership with E-Art (a small art structure), and the next year, the first of 3 workshops with our students and students of China Academy of Arts Hangzhou.
When I came back, Pascale proposed me to apply for her position at the Head of International Relations Office. Since this time, every year we proposed a workshop (TIG Arts) with Samira Jamouchi (NO) and Kerttuli Saajoranta (FI) for the students of the organizing university of ETEN meeting.
Last year I have proposed the new logo for ETEN, which was adopted during the Zurich meeting.

Do you have any good experiences/memories about ETEN which you would like to share?
For sure, all our workshops with Kerttuli and Samira. Since few months, we’re (trying to) write about that for an JETEN article.
I’m still impressed every year by the work of Krista Exel & Edwin Schot (NL), they made collaborative performance very engaging and “sparkling” for us in the TIG Arts !
I like also the propositions of our musicans colleagues of TIG Arts, simple, cooperative as well funny and sensitive.

Has your engagement in ETEN affected your personal life?
For sure, my involvement, in interaction with my ETEN colleagues, showing me a path, exploring the different ways to be a better teacher. If the teacher improves, he does it from his person, emotional and sensitive, as well as from his reason and professional tools. I think we can become a better teacher if we became a better person.

What is the value of the network for your institution and students?
I am actually concerned about the way in which our teacher training institutions in France do not give importance to international exchanges that I encounter and appreciate each year in contact with my ETEN colleagues. The current reform could give us the opportunity to change this. Finally !
For my students, I hope they benefit very directly from all these contributions, because in our Master’s degree in artistic and cultural mediation (30 students), we place creativity and cooperation at the center of our practices – as a high value, in projects as well as in research. In this Master Degree, our students are not intended for teaching (but to work in Artistic and Cultural Institutions with childs and young people), so they are free to do Erasmus exchanges freely.

How do you think we can develop JETEN/etenjournal.com?
I think that JETEN is a beautiful and good project that should be supported, maintained and progressed, by encouraging contributions of course. I think we can do that by diversifying the types of contributions (outside JETEN), on the website (blog) for example.
I think it is necessary to propose (and to promote) various modes of collaborations and/or contributions: presentations, movies, article commentaries, documentation of completed projects, etc.
If these forms do not constitute a scientific publication (peer review), they are often the starting parts of it. By encouraging these kind of editions and sharing, we could encourage and facilitate the birth of new scientific contributions.
It is the whole chain of production of scientific articles that I believe should be considered, encouraged and welcomed: experiences stories, documentation, good sheets, good practices, reviews and commentaries (movies, articles, books, methods, …) and finally, with a peer support, scientific articles in peers to peers model.

Plans for the future?
In our 32 institutions of Teacher Education in France, we can welcome students from Europe and beyond but not propose to our students internship or study mobilities (except on the margin). It’s a real pain for us. This is due to our national competition system which is superimposed on the master. We have been trying for years to make a difference.
A national education reform has been under way for a year now and we have an opportunity to change things. My management has asked me to lead a working group on the “International Dimension of Studies” to produce recommendations in order to be able to offer real mobility time (at least 3 months), both inbound and outbound. We gave our recommandations last month…
I will be retiring in a year and a half, and I have my heart set on being able to leave on these necessary changes. After that, it will be time for me to ride with our side-car, from France to Iran and central asia, in a few months travel.
Then I would like to write a book that I have wanted to do for a long time, to defend the idea that we should change the paradigm for the school: How to move from an industrial school to a permaculture school ? How and why should we do that.

Categories: Arts Education, News, Portraits