Focus on CREA, Centre d’Eveil Artistique
Participating in the creation of an intergenerational opera.
Erwan Blin, General Manager Novotel Aulnay-sous-Bois.
Le CREA, Centre de Création Artistique of Aulnay-sous-Bois, aims to foster the individual development of its participants primarily through singing but also through a pluri-disciplinary approach to stage arts. It invites young people not specialising in music to take part in musical creations. There is no selection or audition process. This centre was created in 1987 by Didier Grojsman, currently CREA Director.
Website of Le CREA : www.lecrea.com
“L’île du Temps Perdu” (The Island of Lost Time), Christian Mesmin’s opera, is an adaptation of the novel by Silvana Gandolfi. It is the story of several children who find themselves isolated on a desert island.
50 young people (2 classes of 10-11-year olds from Aulnay-sous-Bois, from one primary school in a well-off neighbourhood in the south and one primary school located in a priority education zone) and 35 elderly people (from a choir in Aulnay-sous-Bois) are participating in this intergenerational opera. Placed under the artistic direction of Le CREA, this project involves a lot of contributors (teachers, choir directors, choreographer of the company Teatro del Silencio, costume designers and musicians from the conservatoire fo music of the town).
The objectives of this project are to:
- encourage social mixing;
- propose an artistic and educational project aiming to improve reading and oral expression skills;
- develop civic behaviour, the entrepreneurial spirit, the collective spirit, initiative-taking…;
- fight academic failure;
- develop young people’s sensitivity and critical judgement capacities;
- promote personal development (self-confidence, ease in public…).
For this artistic, educational and citizen project’s implementation, training workshops have been scheduled from September 2010 to May 2011.
At the same time, awareness-raising workshops are being offered to the other classes from the 2 schools in order to further involve them in the project and invite them to discover singing and artistic practices.
In order to establish ties between the various generations, the CREA team has organised written correspondence between them: each young person has a pen-pal in the other class and an elderly person as sponsor.
The all age groups performance of this work was held on 25 May 2011 on the large stage of the Espace Jacques Prévert / Théâtre d’Aulnay-sous-Bois.
