November 2022: Participatory workshops

November 24thThe Appel d’Air team welcomed, within the Vive les Groues incubator (Nanterre), about thirty students of the decorative arts and the master of political arts (SPEAP, Sciences Po), gathered around Pauline Marchietti (architect within the Grand Paris Express) and Thierry Boutonnier (artist-arboriculturist of Appel d’Air).

A first time of exchange was the occasion for Thierry Boutonnier to present his artistic practice and his commitment for the plant. The group then learned the art of cuttings from the paulownia tomentosa destined for the Grand Paris Express stations.

From November 25 to 27, COAL then invited the association
La Cloche
– île-de-France.

La Cloche fights against exclusion by creating social links and changing the way people on the street are viewed. Among its features, Les Clochettes is a network of urban, citizen and eco-responsible initiatives, proposing to link conviviality and manual activity in shared gardens and urban farms. Since the beginning of the 2022 school year, the Culture division has also been trying to rethink access to culture through inclusive artistic and cultural encounters.

Volunteers with and without homes of the association participated in the fall workshops in the nursery of Vive les Groues. This meeting with Thierry Boutonnier, artist-arboriculturist, was the occasion to collect the testimonies of the persons touched by the big exclusion, on their report to the plant in urban environment. Between childhood memories, street stories, and the sharing of arboricultural knowledge, these generous exchanges have woven a collective narrative of a great diversity of relationships to the trees that shelter us, reveal us and heal us in a concrete world.

Thanks to Thierry Boutonnier’s “entremetteurs trees”, the mission of social link of La Cloche has thus crossed the stakes of link to the living defended by COAL. So many inspirations to take care of the trees of Greater Paris during the weeding and cutting activities! On November 26, this meeting was prolonged by the visit of the exhibition “Where do the lights go?” of Thierry Boutonnier and the conference “The city, this natural space” at La Terrasse – Art Space of Nanterre.