(Montreal) Student projects, online works and school librarians: Quebec ministers of Education and Culture, Jean-François Roberge and Nathalie Roy, announced on Monday a series of cultural initiatives targeting young people.
These measures will use an envelope of 10 million per year over five years, which had already been reserved in the budget of last March.
In partnership with the government, Télé-Québec plans to pair high school artists with a mentor, as part of the Les Créateurs program, in order to “allow young people to develop projects and present them,” said the president. general manager of the channel, Marie Collin, during the press conference.
Creators will have until March 11 to submit their application on the website created for this purpose. On April 29, Télé-Québec will broadcast six live videos on the creation of the works, under the themes of “humor, horror, love and the fantastic”. But it is on May 20 that the grand finale will take place, in the form of a variety show with “the most interesting works”.
A second call for projects will be piloted by the government, to support “projects that do not go off the beaten track” and that would normally fall between the cracks, added Mr. Roberge. “Our young people need to be inspired, need to create, need to assert themselves. “
Provide access to culture
At the same time, “more than 400 literary works and documentary content” will be available on the Biblius platform, he said. This website allows young people in the school network to have access to digital books free of charge.
In addition, a new site, called Influx, will do the same for various disciplines such as “music, digital arts or dance”.
The government will also finance the hiring of new school librarians, qualified as “cultural facilitators” by the minister, in addition to increasing the fees of artists who visit classes.
Artists who visit classes will see their fees increased from the next school year, also indicated Mr. Roberge.
Finally, teachers will receive training to be able to “benefit from all these measures”.
“We will come to make life easier for teachers and improve the lives of our children,” said Mr. Roberge, according to whom “everyone should have access to culture”. He also argued that the presence of artistic activities is “a factor of academic motivation”.
Cultural nationalism
The ministers made no secret of their ambitions to expose students to predominantly Quebec content.
“I am very proud to be a Quebecer, very proud of our way of expressing ourselves, of our way of living and of bringing culture to life, very proud of our uniqueness,” said Mr. Roberge.
“It is essential to include our youth in our cultural history and in our values,” declared Mr.me Roy. It is our young people who will ensure the sustainability of Quebec culture. In view of this objective, she “finds it fundamental, for our cultural and social future, to introduce young people to Quebec culture very early on”.
“The school must play an even bigger role in this regard,” she said.
She called culture a “magnificent vector of social cohesion” and “a powerful unifying agent”.
All these measures come in addition to the announcement by Prime Minister François Legault, who revealed last October that he will replace the course in ethics and religious culture with a course in “culture and citizenship of Quebec”, in order to create a “National cohesion” and “imparting a sense of pride” to students.
This article has been produced with financial support from the Facebook and The Canadian Press News Scholarships.