Since 2019, Bintou Dembélé, an artist often associated with the high points of French culture, has noticed the absence of the cultures that built it. This led her to question the place of the artist in the city. She felt it was necessary to imagine a place that would enable her to deploy the skills and know-how that have nurtured her artistic approach, and to bring together documentary resources of various kinds (books, catalogs, CDs, films, etc.) highlighting the cultures that have emerged from the peripheries and the margins, through artistic, cultural and intellectual productions. In 2022, Bintou Dembélé launched the Cultural Resources centre, housed in the innovative Maison du Parc Jean Moulin – les Guilands.

The center is designed to be inclusive of everybody ie the “whole-world”, with a particular focus on young people, so that they can project themselves into adulthood by learning from the experience of their elders.

The cultural resource is a crossroads for the promotion of minority and popular cultures and their history in France and elsewhere. It also raises questions about the need to pass on these cultures, which are often poorly documented (or not enough to say the least), and about research into the issues that run through them. Or the formulation of what ecology is, how it is lived, its issues and its needs in working-class neighborhoods. These themes need to be explored in greater depth with a view to designing a broader facility dedicated to these issues, which seems to exist nowhere else.

The Francis Kurkdjian Endowment Fund is delighted to be able to support the strengthening of this project and the organization of these activities by recruiting a person to be responsible for the life of the space.

Don't wait any longer to discover Bintou Dembélé's tour of the ressourcerie culturelle here. (c)Snezana Lazic