This presentation aims to introduce artistic approaches to urban fabric and territorial transformations. It highlights how artistic production can inspire more common actors of the city, like urban planners, researchers, and policymakers. More than the act of creating public art, the methods and forces used to produce diverse art forms is what should leave a durable impact on these actors.
Through their process of site exploration, artists observe space through unusual prisms and have the capacity to assemble heterogeneous local operating actors freely. In addition, they have the ‘editorialist ability’ to articulate — through the same guiding principle — positions which can sometimes contradict each other. They can interact with a diverse audience, from the broader public to the most specialised one, and can compose with uncertainties and the ‘unexpected’.
In the existing urban production — which must urgently consider the diverse elements linked to ecological transition — these talents can help to invent more flexible and unifying methods that are better adapted than classical planning.
About the Speaker
Maud Le Floc’h studied urban planning, and for the past fifteen years has introduced artistic approaches to urban fabric methods by establishing programs between artists, local authorities, and planners. She has initiated and curated different programmes around ‘arts and cities’. In 2003, Maud Le Floc’h developed her cross fertilisation project, ‘A mayor-an artist’, through ‘Mission Repérage(s) un élu – un artiste’ in different cities. She invited an elected politician and an artist for a one-day walking talk to cross their specific visions of the city, its development, and future. In 2007, Maud Le Floc’h founded the POLAU-pôle arts & urbanisme, a resource institute to promote and develop cultural planning. She is currently associated with urban projects for the “Grand Paris” for the City of Paris, Bagneux et Bagnolet.
Maud Le Floc’h is involved in different urban programmes and in-charge of governmental studies for the French Ministry of Culture. She teaches urban art & planning in Paris La Sorbonne University and in Polytech’ Tours.
Find all the available videos of our previous workshops, here.