Roselyne Bachelot: "Culture is not at a standstill in our country"

While cultural professionals challenge the Head of State in an open letter that we have revealed, their Minister Roselyne Bachelot defends the government's choices.

Why delay in presenting a reopening schedule, even gradual, even partial, when things are moving in several European neighbors?

ROSELYNE BACHELOT.

We do not delay in any case, since it is not a calendar that we prepare but a framework ... that we draw with the actors themselves, the very ones who challenge us today!

There are several sectors of activity in culture, with different issues, realities and issues: museums, monuments and art centers, cinemas and performing arts, the very large festivals to which we have just given a frame.

You mention our neighbors.

The few who loosen the constraints do so either because their health situation is much better than ours, or because they do not have, and deplore it moreover, the means to support cultural and cultural structures as much as France. artists who cannot work!

In the United States, the cinemas that are about to reopen have been closed for a year, and with rooms filled to 25%, that is not imaginable here!

And concerning Italy, Tuscany has hastily closed its museums, which are open to a minimum, excluding weekends!

It seems to me particularly essential to repeat that culture is not at a standstill in our country: the recordings, residences, shootings, and rehearsals so important to prepare to present shows when cultural venues will reopen, are maintained. .

All this makes it possible to continue creation, to propose cultural projects and to make an entire ecosystem work.

Then, we allowed booksellers, when they were closed, in addition to the clicked away, to send the books ordered from them free of charge: we have never been deprived of books!

Art galleries and record stores were able to reopen in early December.

The parks, gardens and media libraries have also been kept open.

In February, France Télévisions created a new channel: Culturebox, which allows you to see free theater, dance, concerts ... Even if nothing replaces the happiness of being in a cultural place, in direct contact with a work of art or in front of artists, of course!

Many professionals in the sector hammer home that no cluster has been identified in these places.

What is it really?

It was absolutely true, I myself have pointed it out!

The health protocols have been respected and I would like to salute the commitment of all cultural players in their implementation.

All the same, it must be said that there have necessarily been people who may have been contaminated during shows and who then scattered in nature, not allowing real clusters to be identified.

Then, there were contaminations among the artistic teams, which must obviously be taken into consideration.

Last but not least I would say, what we fight when the pandemic is acute is adding flows of people to the existing flows.

This is the reason why, in our preparation for the reopening of places of culture, we thought about how to regulate the flow of people, for example by modulating the opening hours.

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Many of them, artists too, were marked, sometimes hurt, by the non-reopening of December 15 and the debate on "essential / non-essential".

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In October, when the President of the Republic announced the second confinement, he explicitly indicated that a reopening was possible on December 15, if and only if the rate of contamination approached 5,000 new cases per day.

We then worked with all sectors to prepare for reopening, but in mid-December we were more than double the number of contaminations!

And everything went downhill in just a few days.

I understand the disappointment, we all share it!

And concerning what you call a debate: for me there has never been one.

It is a question of purely administrative qualification, how can we imagine that culture is not at the heart of our concerns?

What matters is that we have not failed in our support for artists, the artistic and cultural ecosystem, and all those who bring culture to life and live from culture.

We have chosen to mobilize more than 7 billion for culture since the start of the crisis.

It's huge and it's a social choice that I am proud to be associated with.

Until the various activities can resume fully, the State will be solidly and jointly alongside each other, as much as necessary.