The Espace Kenere media centre in Pontivy gathers the many-sided work of Jeanne Malivel, mounted with the Association Jeanne Malivel. Visitors move between engraving on wood, furniture, stained glass, textile, ceramics and painting, much of it lent from private collections. Her aim in Ar Seiz Breur was to draw on Breton heritage for an artistic language of its own time. The pieces beside hers were made by schoolchildren working from her motifs.
Region: Brittany
Les Murmures du Passé, dusk at the Vallée des Saints
An outdoor escape game runs across the fifteen hectares of the Vallée des Saints at Carnoët, among the monumental statues scattered through its natural surroundings. Players hunt for clues by listening and watching closely, and the saints give up their stories as the search advances; the game is open from five years up. The fifth edition of Les Minutes Bleues frames the session, opening heritage sites of the Côtes d’Armor in the blue light of dawn or dusk.
L’apéro breton revisité pour les fêtes à Kabañ
Kabañ, an old fishermen’s house in Saint-Suliac, is where Atelier Retour de Pêche sets its collective cooking table. Three festive plates get built by hand: crème de carotte with chantilly au chèvre and roasted hazelnuts, Saint-Jacques à la bretonne, and praires stuffed with parsley butter and beurre aux algues. The seaweed butter is the local signature, cut from the same shore as the shellfish. The produce is seasonal and local.
Abbaye du Relec : sac à dos « Sortir dehors »
Birdwatching, the colours of nature, puzzles and amulet-making are packed into a bag collected at the abbey shop and carried around the grounds in stages. Chemins du patrimoine en Finistère, the departmental heritage operator that holds the site, built those stages with the association Au Fil du Queffleuth et de la Penzé. Each étape reads the abbey’s patrimoine together with the ground around it, in the Monts d’Arée country of inland Finistère. Booking is needed, and the bag goes back to the shop before closing.
Veillée marionnettique at the Château de Quintin
Polichinelle, Guignol, Charlemagne and the trois mousquetaires carry the tales and legends gathered at the Château de Quintin. Designing a puppet, real or imaginary, and bringing it to life follows the telling, for ages six and up, with reservation required. A Monument historique at the heart of the Petite Cité de Caractère de Quintin, the château programmes the veillée within the fifth Minutes Bleues. That festival opens high places of the natural and cultural heritage of the Côtes d’Armor in the blue light of dawn or dusk.
Vallée du Bizien: mills, biefs and routoirs à lin
Flax-retting pits and earth banks give the Maison des talus et des routoirs à lin its name, and the guided route begins there. Underfoot runs the Bizien, a small coastal stream in a wooded valley of the Trégor, lined with natural habitats and home to a rich biodiversity. Mills, their biefs and micro-quarries cut into the slopes mark a worked rural landscape of northern Brittany, read here alongside the valley’s nature.
Festival des Arts Vivants et Artisanat Celte
Ploermel Communaute’s hall at Guilliers, the Salle du Carrouez, gives three days to Celte living arts and craft. Luc Arbogast opens the programme and comes back to close it. In between the floor is cleared for Breton dance: an initiation led by the association activites en pays de Guilliers, then a fest deiz and a fest noz. Chick’nla, the Bagad de Ploërmel, Meskan, Les Beurbis Gallèses and Ferzaè play them, with pairs of singers and sonneurs.
Brieuc workshops: kouign amann and salted caramel
The Yffiniac house of Brieuc opens its production workshops to visitors who book ahead. An hour-long route runs from raw ingredients to the finished tin, passing pâtissiers, carameliers and confituriers at work before the tasting. The recipes belong to the Breton biscuit tradition: gâteaux bretons, kouign amann, palet breton, Confibreizh jams and salted-butter caramel. Children from eight can come along once a small group has booked.
Spontailh at the Fête des Babigoù, Paimpol
Spontailh is a bilingual Breton-French musical tale that Awenn Plougoulm brings to the Fête des Babigoù in Paimpol. She sings and tells of the Samain, the moment when the door to the other world stands open, and glosses her own title along the way: in Breton, spontailh means scarecrow. Her songs and stories are drawn from the repertoire of the Monts d’Arrée. Two sittings are programmed at La Sirène, one for babies and one for older children.
Le cimetière de Dinard: Aillerie, Caquot, naufragés
Dinard’s municipal cemetery holds the town’s own history, and a guide walks its alleys to tell it. The graves include the architects René Aillerie and Albert Caquot, the men and women who resisted fascism, and les victimes de naufrages, the shipwreck dead. The walk sets out from the Esplanade du Souvenir Français. What accumulates is local history read through a single enclosure, with a little of the wider century attached.