a priority of the No Mad Festival in the Val d’Oise

The 8th edition of the No Mad Festival takes place at the Cergy-Pontoise tourist office. Here you are on the banks of the Oise, the ramparts of the old town in the background.

This name, No Mad, in two words is a nod to the adjective “nomad” traveler but also to the English expression no mad which means “not crazy”. The co-founder of the festival, Laetitia Santos explains that “travellers are invited not to be crazy in some way, to be aware of their impact while traveling, whether on the environment, the peoples encountered, the cultures of the world, to know where they are setting foot and to know that the trip has an impact, and to try to control it as much as possible.”

Among the fifty or so exhibitors, players involved in sustainable tourism offer festival-goers ideas for getaways close to home.

“Very close to home, that’s also very important in the festival, we really aim to promote sustainable tourism locally. We have a whole program of hiking, with donkeys, by bike, by boat, to invite everyone to travel on their own territory. To travel smarter perhaps”continues Laetiia Santos, founder of the Babel Voyages website.

The No Mad festival also invites you to travel far and wide, with cinema evenings and conferences, such as the one with the director and environmental activist Cyril Dion who will come and exchange with the public, after the screening of his latest film. Animal.

This year, the festival also highlights Polynesia, a choice supported by the visit of the Papuan chef Mundiya Kepanga who denounces the ravages of deforestation in the film Tree Brothers, by Marc Dozier and Luc Marescot.

In another register, we will be able to meet the explorer Christian Clot who has come to present his film Adaptation. At a time of climatic upheavals, he experimented with the adaptation of Man in extreme environments, particularly in the icy poles and scorching deserts.

Christian Clot explains that “The men who will come out of it the best will not necessarily be the best trained, the strongest physically, but they will above all be the most nourished, those who will be the richest internally, the most positive spirits and suddenly, it highlights the importance of love, education, art and beauty.”

And beauty is precisely what painter-traveler Stéphanie Ledoux pursues. This esthete will lead workshops to learn how to sketch the characters. She is in the spotlight with exhibitions born of her immersions in Benin, Namibia and Cambodia.

“I travel with my pencils and a sketchbook, she confides. Generally, people are quite proud that we are interested in them in this way, it generates beautiful encounters. Drawing is something very visual that leaves no one indifferent, whatever the culture, and this art that overcomes the language barrier.”

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