Are the Church Fathers also the fathers of Protestant thought? Jean-Paul LESIMPLE takes up that question in a heritage talk in Sancerre, tracing the long historical and theological passage between early Christianity and Luther. The lecture challenges the habit of skipping those intervening centuries, opening a discussion within the town’s Protestant religious heritage.
Tag: talks-conferences
Le Grand Couvert: Food and Crafts of Berry
Berry’s art of living takes a practical turn at Le Grand Couvert, where gastronomy meets arts and crafts. Hospitality professionals and students work together on a programme of workshops, talks and a feast. A concert adds music to the gathering, which connects the region’s food culture with the skills of those who cook, make and welcome guests.
Hospices de Beaune: Building a New Hospital
Aurélie Waller, Head of Works at the Hospices Civils de Beaune, examines how hospital architecture responds to changing care. The visit and discussion connect the construction of a new hospital with the project of Nicolas Rolin and Guigone de Salins. From the Hôtel-Dieu’s “palace for the poor” to the Centre hospitalier Philippe le Bon, buildings reveal different ambitions for treating patients.
Hospices de Beaune: Preserving Hospital Heritage
Hospital heritage in Beaune unfolds through guided walks, talks and encounters with costumed hospital sisters carrying medical instruments and apothecary jars. Sister Louise Duchini recounts changes in nursing and relationships with patients. Conservation specialists explain the protection of the collections and the creation of a facsimile of the Last Judgement polyptych using digital techniques.
Yvon Le Men and Jean-Michel Le Boulanger: Culture
Yvon Le Men and Jean-Michel Le Boulanger hold a dialogue in the spirit of kan ha diskan, an exchange punctuated by poems. Destroyed works, censorship and slashed budgets frame the talk, which calls for a state of emergency covering artistic creation and cultural policy. Freedom of creation, freedom of speech and freedom of conscience stand as the utopia at issue, one that totalitarian regimes never tolerate and that democracies are asked to cherish. Teenagers as well as adults are the audience named at Guingamp’s Place du Champ-au-Roy.
Sonneurs Noceurs with Roland Becker
Musician and researcher Roland Becker traces the history of Brittany’s sonneurs through sound and visual archives. His lecture follows the developments that shaped Breton traditional music and the lives of its instrumentalists. Becker also serves on the scientific committee for Musée du Faouët’s exhibition on sonneurs as portrayed by artists.
Ciné Sand Conference in Sainte-Sévère: George Sand’s Legacy
Ciné Sand examines George Sand’s relationship with cinema at Sainte-Sévère-sur-Indre. Claire Le Guillou, author of George Sand Superstar, contributes to the discussion. The conference accompanies CinéSand, an exhibition considering adaptations of Sand’s novels, films about her life and the actresses who have portrayed her on screen.
BD BOUM Blois Comics Festival
BD BOUM turns Blois into a broad meeting place for comics, bringing more than two hundred authors into contact with readers, schools and publishing professionals. Exhibitions and author encounters place original voices and drawn worlds at the center, while practical art workshops give younger participants direct experience of making images and stories. Conferences, literary cafés and debates create room for criticism, craft and industry questions beyond the signing table. Shows, film screenings and a concert widen the festival’s language without displacing bande dessinée as its core. With thousands of visitors and dozens of exhibitors, the gathering reflects the scale of Blois’s sustained commitment to comics culture. Its prizes and professional program also recognize creation as both an art form and a working field.
La confrontation de la correspondance de Maurice Dupin par
Didier Dubant brings Maurice Dupin’s correspondence into dialogue with archaeological findings from the Camp de Boulogne in Pas-de-Calais. The surviving corpus comprises thirty-three letters, preserved at Paris City Hall and transcribed by INRAP researcher Frédéric Lemaire, that have never been published in full. Their military and personal testimony gains a material counterpart through the excavated camp. George Sand included parts of these letters in Histoire de ma vie, but shortened, rewrote and recomposed them for her autobiography. By comparing manuscript testimony, archaeology and Sand’s revisions, the conference reveals how family memory becomes literature. The letters themselves accompany the presentation, allowing audiences to examine the documents behind both the historical argument and Sand’s reconstruction of her father’s voice.
Promenade dans l’oeuvre de George Sand en Berry
At the Tour de Vesvre, Mickaël Ragot leads a literary walk through the real and imagined territories of George Sand’s work. Each book is approached in relation to a particular part of Berry, showing how landscape can structure character, conflict and atmosphere. Ragot’s own volume functions as a travel guide for readers, linking passages to places that can still be explored. The method moves beyond biography by asking what geography does inside the writing itself. From Neuvy-Deux-Clochers, the talk gives the surrounding countryside an active interpretive role and reveals why Sand’s novels remain inseparable from the roads, villages and rural horizons of her home region with uncommon clarity and precision.