Action-research no. 2 — Cahors and the Lot Valley, March 2026
Cahors: encounters — Episode 2
Recorded in Cahors and Pradines, March 2026.
Produced by Rémi Pons
L’accueil
La Fabrique Francophone welcomed the team from La Vénerie to Cahors for three days built around a single question: how do you move from an ethical framework to putting it to work in the field?
The first morning was spent revisiting the Brussels stage, reworking the self-evaluation questionnaire co-built in December, and naming each person’s learning — formal and informal — with a view to formalising it on Europass.
The training
A full day with the Laboratoire des Droits Culturels: the international history of the framework, an interpretation of what is at stake, its markers and its limits. In the afternoon, a comparative analysis of the French and Belgian legal frameworks — the NOTRe law on one side, the decree on Cultural Centres on the other.
The “local working group” then presented the “cultural rights” action-sheet of the Leader programme of the PETR Grand Quercy — one way of translating a framework into territorial public policy.
The full cultural-rights training session — Maël Lucas, Laboratoire des Droits Culturels.
Cahors, 11 March 2026
An inspiring visit
At La Scène d’Anglars, in Anglars-Juillac, the group met the Compagnie Bachibouzouk, then in creative residency in the venue, along with the cultural coordination team of the Vallée du Lot et du Vignoble municipalities. The discussion turned on cooperation between a cultural venue and residents in a rural setting, and on the practical conditions of hospitality.
The Interstices Protocol
Trialled in Pradines with the l’Escale social and cultural centre and the residents who use it, in three stages:
Sensory mapping — each person locates their attachments to the neighbourhood: what matters, what is missing, what connects.
The reciprocal visit — Karima Tayeb, a resident of the Escales neighbourhood, welcomes the group and introduces her association, Solidarité Famille.
The Faro walk — a crossing of the Escales neighbourhood at dusk, led by Abdelaziz, a resident “ambassador”. From apartment-block lobbies to their cellars, by way of the car parks and the graffiti walls…
The day ended with a couscous shared at the social centre, cooked by Karima — to whom we are deeply grateful!
So what came of it?
The reversal at the heart of the Protocol — going to meet the other before inviting them in — shifts the position of the very people that cultural organisations say they want to “reach”.
A second step: from doing with to being with.
