Médiations culturelles au lycée

EAC Region Ile-de-France Scheme

The Île-de-France region supports IRCAM's artistic and cultural education projects for the 2023-2024 season through its ‘Regional support for artistic and cultural education in secondary schools and apprenticeships’ scheme.

IRCAM's Cultural Outreach Department has supported two classes in three establishments in the Île-de-France region over the 2023-2024 season, offering them:

Workshops on a range of artistic themes

These workshops, which ran over a dozen sessions, gave students the chance to discover IRCAM's programming by creating a group piece in connection with one of the season's events. The work was then performed in public.

Steve Reich and Minimalist Music Course with the Maurice Ravel secondary school, 20th arrondissement
The ‘Minimalist Music Course’ project was offered to a class of high school students in connection with the ‘Steve Reich’ concert held in January 2024 in IRCAM's concert hall, the Espace de projection, which also featured a new work by New York composer Aaron Eibond. The programme consisted of 10 educational workshop sessions with Maxime Echardour, percussionist, and Mathieu Steffanus, clarinettist with the l'Instant Donné ensemble, and was centred on the creation of a short interactive final concert in the Salle Stravinsky at IRCAM, prior to the Steve Reich concert.

Music in Images Course, Chaplin Factory, with music students from the lycée Alphonse de Lamartine, 19th arrondissement
The course dedicated to music in images was offered to the S2TMD high school class in connection with the ‘Chaplin Factory’ concert performed at IRCAM on May 30, 2024. Composer Didem Coskunseven led 10 sessions, focusing on the collective creation of a sound work based on Charlie Chaplin's film ‘The Immigrant’. The students were introduced to professional mixing software and were able to perform one of Coskunseven's original works. Two film-concerts were organised: at the high school on Monday, June 3 and at the Centre Pompidou on Sunday, June 23, as part of the ‘Come with us’ weekend. Many visitors to the museum were able to attend three sessions of this film-concert in the afternoon.

Sound Landscape Course, sound system for the École Du Breuil training garden, Bois de Vincennes
The ‘L'oiseau quasiment gong’ project is designed to introduce the school's landscape design students to the cultural offerings of IRCAM and its musical aesthetics. Joined by composer Romain Barthelemy, the first-year CAP Agricole students at École du Breuil were invited to rediscover the environment in which they work, in the heart of the Bois de Vincennes, through the notion of soundscapes.
The workshops led to the creation of an imaginary bestiary of sound, echoing the history of the school, which originally housed a farm. An installation of the group's sound creations was presented in a greenhouse at the school during the school festival in May 2024, before an immersive installation in the garden during Heritage Days on September 21 and 22, and for a week until September 30, 2024. Encounters with the public in the garden, where the students will act as mediators for their creation.

Discover the project's website

Listeners' Program

IRCAM also offered one class in each school the possibility of taking part in an listeners' programme, which includes three different performances from the 2023-2024 season. The students also benefited from a introductory session to creative music before the concert.

Listening Courses

The Cultural Outreach Department offers middle and high school classes the chance to follow an listeners' course. Throughout the year, students can attend three performances from IRCAM's artistic season. The artistic program will depend on the availability of performances and the preferences of the teaching staff.

In addition to these three performances, students can enjoy a guided tour of IRCAM, learning about the institute's architecture and history, as well as an in-class introductory session before each concert to prepare them for the performance.

The listeners' program is designed in collaboration with the IRCAM teams and according to the school calendar, and is organized a year before the artistic season in question.(Example: contact made in spring 2024 for a listeners' tour for the 2024-2025 school year).

Information and prices transmission(@)ircam.fr

Interactive Map of the Bois de Vincennes

In conjunction with the production of Transfert  by composer Florent Caron Darras, educational workshops based on the theme of field recording and listening to the environment were held with students from the Maurice Ravel high school, exploring the world of sound creation and electronic music.

Interactive Map of the Bois de Vincennes, January 2023 © IRCAM-Centre Pompidou, photo: Quentin Chevrier

The Program

1. Recording of sound samples in different spaces
The students approach the Bois de Vincennes through listening, spending an afternoon recording sound samples in different areas of this landscape located midway between urban and natural spaces. This exercise lets them hear different sounds and their variations in the same environment.

2. Composition
The students learned audio editing techniques on a computer so that they can transmit their experience through short sound portraits of the spaces they visited. They then created a sound map of the area with the help of their history-geography teacher, Morwenna Coquelin, present throughout the project. This interactive sound map—a subjective representation of the Bois de Vincennes—helps students synthesize their experience and share it through a physical and tangible medium.

3. Discovery of IRCAM and Exchanges with the Artistic Team
During this project the students visited IRCAM, its anechoic chamber, and its studios. They met with composer Florent Caron Darras and computer music designer Augustin Muller to talk about their work in the studio for the creation of the piece Transfert. Students were able to discover several compositional techniques used in the creation of this piece. They also meet with Laurent Cuniot to discuss his work as conductor of the TM+ ensemble.

4. The Performances
Two performances were be organized. The first, for the general public, was held at IRCAM during the Open House in January 2023, and the second at the school for other students, parents, and the educational community.

Through these workshops the students will be able to familiarize themselves with the musical creation being carried out today at IRCAM as well as some of its technologies.

Project 2022-2023

Several sessions with students from Maurice Ravel High School (20th arrondissement of Paris) in the IRCAM studios from October 2022 to January 2023
Instructor: Pierrick Pedron, sound designer

Musiques fictions et arts appliqués

During ManiFeste 2024, IRCAM initiated a project in collaboration with the music department of the Bibliothèque Publique d'Information, the Cultural Outreach department, the DN MADE of the Lycée Maximilien Vox, and Mathilde Delahaye, director of the musique fiction Croire aux fauves.

With the support of the Cultural Outreach department, the teachers embarked on a creative exercise in stage design and visual expression based on this fictional piece of music, created for the Espace de projection by IRCAM.

The students were invited to explore and interpret the work through visual expression, before designing a hypothetical stage for a theatrical production of the novel Croire aux fauves. To further their creativity, the students had the opportunity to come to IRCAM in November to listen to the musique fiction. This immersive experience inspired them to draw parallels with passages from the novel, and gave their work a fresh impetus.

The project culminated in an exhibition of the models and graphic productions in the music section of the Bpi library. The exhibition, which ran from May 24 to 30, opened on Friday May 24, 2024 at 6pm.

Sounds of Movement, with Cours Morvan

Launched by IRCAM in connection with The Rise, an opera staged in September 2024, a series of workshops was organized for deaf students from the Lycée Morvan. Drawing inspiration from Eva Reiter’s opera and an encounter with the artistic team—including deaf actor Ruben Grandits—the students took part in a choreographic creation process, set to sound by composer Kinda Hassan.

Developed in partnership with the Lycée Morvan, the Sons en Mouvements project aims to introduce deaf students to sound exploration and representation through visual and gestural expression. Over the course of ten workshops, a class from the high school discovered the musical language and aesthetics of The Rise by creating body scores.

The primary objective was to encourage students to interpret sound in their own way and foster a shared language between auditory and non-auditory perceptions. Kinda Hassan guided them through concepts of energy and movement, fundamental to electroacoustic composition. Elements such as crescendo, abruptness, attack dynamics, and sound transitions were adapted and transposed into French Sign Language (LSF). Through this process, students learned to express sound characteristics using evocative gestures, drawing on abstract and imaginative descriptions rather than direct causality.

Student presentation of the project at IRCAM on December 14, 2024.

Discover the project video

This project is supported by SACEM's IN SITU programme.

Boulez et la jeunesseBoulez and Youth

As part of the Boulez Year 2025, IRCAM is working with four schools - two secondary schools and two higher schools - inviting them to discover the work of the composer who founded the institute. Project presentations are scheduled for June 2025.