Art-Connection in France

Association for the Promotion of the APP label (APapp)

In France, the APapp is at the head of a national network that carries an educational label, the APP label (Personalized Pedagogy Workshops, Ateliers de Pédagogie Personnalisée). The APP label qualifies and certifies a very particular pedagogical approach, which is called the “démarche APP”.

The purpose of the APP approach is to support people’s self-directed learning; that is to say, to support the development of people’s empowerment (self-esteem, self-confidence, autonomy, development of soft skills). Thus, the APP network offers a strong potential for observations of innovative pedagogical practices.

Role in the Art-Connection project

As the leader of the Art-Connection consortium, APapp liaised with the French agency Erasmus+ for the management and general conduct of the project as well as the general and qualitative coordination for intellectual productions. APapp contributed to all intellectual productions and produced the 5^th deliverable (European Memorandum). APapp has been in charge for organizing the 3^rd dissemination event that took place in Paris on June 29, 2022.

Referent of the  Art-Connection project in France:

Isabelle Salvi – Head of projects R&D in pedagogy – Referent of the  “Apprenant Agile” certification device

 APapp action research

See the Art-Connection case studies from participatory action research in the territorial contexts of partners in the Toolkit for Cultural Connectors, chapter 2.1 and the 3 UNhandbooks from APapp – Cultural experiences and self-directed-learning – Cultures and learning process – Cultural learning territory.

To conduct its participatory action research, the APapp focused on two fields of experimentation, to make a reflective study and an analysis of APP practices, as part of 2 cultural projects

• With the APP of Barbezieux (AAISC – Association Accueil Information Sud-Charente) in New Aquitaine, who organized with its learners, within a system of permanent input-output and together with a whole collective of actors of the territory, a 3-day symposium to enhance and promote crafts in South-Charente. This experience of organizing a large-scale cultural event in a rural locality allowed us to look concretely at how to stimulate territorial creativity and partnership construction in learning territories.
  The target group (participants in the cultural project of the symposium, including a first project to create an artistic work) was a heterogeneous audience, composed of persons in vulnerable situations, job seekers, young dropouts, including Traveller people, young people graduated with a BTS and young people in a situation of illiteracy.
• With the APP of Marquette-lez-Lille (FCP – Pre-training workshop) in the Hauts de France, who led a cultural project for the collective creation of an illustrated booklet with a group of 9 learners to debate on the theme of discrimination. This experience makes it possible to concretely look at how to integrate the cultural dimension at the core of educational activities within a training structure and on a territory.

These 2 projects were built according to the APP pedagogical modalities resulting from the accompanied self-directed learning – a very complex learning process that involves the whole person and at all levels of bodily, cognitive or theoretical interaction, but also affective, imaginary, emotional or in symbolic resonances.

To quote Bertrand Schwartz, an eminent French pedagogue, in APPs we practice a “pedagogy of creativity, socialization and personal development“.

It is never a question of learning alone, but on the contrary, of understanding one’s experience (self) in relation to others (socio) and the socio-cultural environment (eco) corresponding to the tripolar process of training conceived by Gaston Pineau, professor emeritus working at the University of Quebec, Montreal.

The APP label qualifies and promotes the self-directed learning practices developed by the APP network’s practitioners, according to the principles of a learning organization following a systemic approach.

These practices include specific gestures of the accompagnement of self-directed learning, operating methods and pedagogical positioning on 3 levels:

• micro, learners as actors and authors of their training: agency, self-determination,
• meso, the pedagogical team: educational approaches and implementation of pedagogical practices in compliance with the fundamental rules of learning in an open environment (person-centered approach – individualization, personalization, differentiation, facilitation – heterogeneity of audiences, pedagogical multimodalities, active and participatory pedagogies centered on action and experience),
• macro, structure and ecosystem of training: learning ecosystem, with the notion of an open learning environment and respect for the fundamental rules of learning.

APapp’s action research was an opportunity to highlight the benefits of cultural entry points (actions, activities, cultural experiences) as part of its “Apprenant Agile” certification process and in particular the methodology of kairos, inspired by the work of Pascal Galvani, for the recognition, valorization and validation-certification of acquired experience.

Cultural entry points make it possible to amplify the APP offer and to reach out to the most vulnerable audiences, disenfranchised from all circuits, to accompany them towards access to or upgrading of fundamental knowledge (reading, writing, counting) or access to or upgrading of digital tools, or to learn French language in the case of foreign audiences, immigrants or refugees.