What meaning would you give to the inclusion of Clermont-Ferrand within the network of Learning Cities - UNESCO?

Having been the first city in France to join it, Clermont-Ferrand has remained faithful to its history, that of having always participated in this broad universalist movement of popular education, deeply marked in our city by the imprint of Jean Zay.

Training throughout life, where everyone finds himself receiving and transmitting knowledge, is the beating heart of Popular Education; the Network of Learning Cities-UNESCO brings together 229 cities that have chosen to defend and implement it in the service of the Sustainable Development Goals.

How could you define your role as Learning City Manager?

Responsible for the Learning City mission is to bring this innovation and research process to life in favor of formal and informal education throughout life. My role is to identify the actors of the territory, inhabitants, professionals, academics, economics, associations, to forge links between them to co-build very concrete projects which range from an educational installation of aquaponics in a college to the co-construction of a learning and innovative “Educational City” program in a large working-class district of our city of more than 5,000 inhabitants.

It is a work of engineering, of “research / action laboratories” which admits that totally unforeseen projects, born from the mix of encounters, can be carried out freely in a territory.

The candidacy of our city to the UNESCO network having focused on the relations between the urban and the different forms of “ruralities”, my particularity is to always be at the service of a bio-based territorial organization, the objectives of sustainable development. fixing in all points my roadmap.