Maison Legris is a conchylicole house whose oysters are raised in the Archipel de Lilia, off Plouguerneau. The visit sets out from the family’s oyster bar facing the open sea and crosses a few hundred metres to the chantier. The oysters are then sorted, graded and packed for dispatch while the work is explained. The thread running through it is the métier de l’ostréiculteur, worked on the beds of the archipelago.
Region: Brittany
Les clés de la Ville-Close, walled Concarneau
A guide from Concarneau’s own heritage service walks the Ville-Close, the historic heart of the town. The route traces its maritime history, then its civil and its military past, so that the medieval walled town is read closely instead of simply crossed. The service that leads it carries the Ville d’Art et Histoire label, and the Maison du Patrimoine takes the bookings. The visit takes thirty-five people at most.
Dans les coulisses des algues bretonnes
The drying facility of a Trégunc seaweed business opens for this visit, and the stages of seaweed processing are presented in order. With them comes the trade of the professional seaweed harvester, who works wild food seaweed, not a cultivated crop. A tasting closes it: seaweed as broth, as crackers, as tartare, as chips, and in cheeses aged with it. The Maison de l’Alimentation Itinérante of the association Aux Goûts Du Jour runs the stop.
Brendan ha sekred Kells, film en breton
Ti Douar Alré, a house of Breton language and culture, shows this film dubbed into Breton for children. The story is set in ninth-century Ireland, in the fortified abbey of Kells, where Brendan is a monk of twelve. Brother Aidan, a master illuminator and keeper of a fabulous unfinished book, takes him on as apprentice. To finish the manuscript Brendan leaves the abbey for the first time and meets Aisling, the wolf-child.
Jules Gros in Breton at La Roche-Jagu
Jules Gros spent a lifetime writing down how Trégor actually talks, and the Domaine départemental de la Roche-Jagu has turned that record into a room to walk through. Olivia Blondel made the sculptural half and Gaby Kerdoncuff the sound. This guided reading of the exhibition is given entirely in Breton, announced by the estate as Gweladenn heñchet en diskouezadeg. The manor runs it as one of its own Breton language visits.
Gwerzioù & sonioù du Trégor, Ifig and Nanda Le Troadec
Ifig and Nanda Le Troadec are a couple on stage as in life, and Brittany’s fest-noz dancers know them for the kan ha diskan of Centre-Bretagne and Haute-Cornouaille. This veillée leaves the dance floor for the gwerzioù and sonioù of their native Trégor, sung in French and in Breton. Love songs sit beside epic tales, grandes complaintes, satires, children’s songs and darker ones. These were fireside songs, or songs thrown out at fairs and pardons.
Jules Gros, une vie à l’écoute du breton populaire
Daniel Giraudon and Francis Favereau sit down at the Domaine départemental de la Roche-Jagu to talk about Jules Gros. He gave much of a very long life to noting the Breton spoken around him in Trégor, one turn of phrase at a time. The result, the monumental Trésor du breton parlé, is why his name still circulates among speakers of the language. The man who emerges from their recollections is a polyglot and a collector of the vernacular.
Le Temps des Fileuses: Breton tales and archive film
Compagnie Marmouzic brings a told, musical and filmed passage through rural Brittany as it was in the decades either side of the war. Catherine Le Flochmoan tells three humorous Breton stories on stage, set against four films drawn from regional archive and documentary reels. Jérôme accompanies her on accordion. The spinners the title names stand for a round of farm work that has gone, and the piece tours under the Culture en Partage banner.
« Transmission(s), regards croisés » à Redon
The Groupement Culturel Breton opens its photographic archive at the Centre social Confluence, on Rue Guy Pabois in Redon. The series holds scenes of transmission: a geste, an air, a pas de danse, a story. Some travel de bouche à oreille, others de main à main, and together they shape a collective memory. The show hangs alongside the Bogue d’Or, the town’s gathering of chant, conte, musique and danse de tradition populaire, and entry is free.
Fest-noz des 40 ans du Bagad Bro Konk Kerne
The Bagad Bro Konk Kerne has carried the Breton pipe-band repertoire for four decades, and marks the anniversary with a fest-noz at Melgven. Its Bagadig and its Pipe-Band open the hall before the dancing. The Hamon-Martin Quintet, Blue Glaz and Kaféhin then take the stand, with the singers Irvoas and Flouret and the piper pairs Henaff/Meunier and Carrer/Perennou. A parquet is laid for dancers, and the bar serves crêpes and galettes-saucisses.