Launched by the Sor­bonne Uni­ver­si­ty Clus­ter in the frame­work of the Sor­bonne Uni­ver­si­ty Alliance, of which UTC is a part­ner, and of the Euro­pean Alliance 4EU+, the “Fes­tives” event aims at pro­mot­ing the dia­logue between sci­ence, cul­ture and soci­ety. The first edi­tion was held from Novem­ber 25–28, 2021.

What will be the main theme of this first edi­tion of “Fes­tives” ? « Let’s imag­ine the Future ». A future explored this year via three themes. “The first is “Nature: what future for human­i­ty? Build­ing new rela­tion­ships and a new “con­tract” between human­i­ty and its envi­ron­ment; the sec­ond focus­es on “The human being tomor­row: aug­ment­ed, assist­ed, mod­i­fied, redesigned from scratch? From evo­lu­tion to repair” and the last theme deals with “Art, cul­ture and her­itage: what roles in the social tran­si­tion? Cre­at­ing in tomor­row’s world”, Karim El Kirat explains. 

Among the rea­sons that led to the launch of this fes­ti­val: “It is not a ‘sci­ence fes­ti­val’. For the design­ers, of which UTC is a stake­hold­er, the objec­tive was to organ­ise an event that is both cul­tur­al and sci­en­tif­ic in a fes­tive atmos­phere. The idea was to invite the pub­lic to join the dif­fer­ent places of the Sor­bonne Uni­ver­si­ty Clus­ter spread out over Paris for meet­ings on var­i­ous sub­jects and with very dif­fer­ent for­mats. This can take the form, for exam­ple, of a DJ ani­mat­ing the UPMC (Uni­ver­si­ty Paris 6) esplanade trans­formed into a “Dance Floor”, con­fer­ences-debates or even the­atre for exam­ple. It is a fes­ti­val of knowl­edge and debate with soci­ety on major issues, in short,’ explains Karim. 

UTC-Com­pîeg­ne active­ly con­tributes to the Fes­tives with numer­ous pro­pos­als, most of which accept­ed, com­ing from research sci­en­tists were work­ing in UTC’s lab­o­ra­to­ries as well as from stu­dents and stu­dent asso­ci­a­tions. Among the researchers’ con­tri­bu­tions? “For exam­ple, Pas­cale Vigneron, along with oth­er col­leagues and stu­dents, set up an exhi­bi­tion ded­i­cat­ed to bio­engi­neer­ing of liv­ing mat­ter with the aim of show­ing what we do for the patient and the clin­i­cian, with­in the BMBI. Marie- Chris­tine Ho Ba Tho and Zoheir Aboura mod­er­at­ed a round table on “rea­soned, sus­tain­able tech­no­log­i­cal research”. Anoth­er round table on “repair­ing the human being by bio­engi­neer­ing” was organ­ised by Xavier Guchet (UTC-Costech) and Cécile Legal­lais; the lat­ter, togeth­er with Pro­fes­sor Devauchelle, gave a lec­ture on “the repaired and con­nect­ed patient”, while Pas­cal Alber­ti spoke on the theme of “jazz and inno­va­tion”. Final­ly, a work­shop enti­tled “Let’s invent a low-car­bon life” was led by the Ingénierie souten­able [sus­tain­able engi­neer­ing] group. “As for me, I gave a con­fer­ence-debate on bio­mimicry,” he explains. 

The stu­dents were not for­got­ten here and, in par­tic­u­lar, the local com­ic strip stu­dents’ asso­ci­a­tion Bib­lio­thèque De Ban­des Dess­inées Des Etu­di­ants de Com­piègne (BDBDEC). “The lat­ter mount­ed an exhi­bi­tion on the theme “The future seen by the 9th Art”. Antic­i­pa­tion comics oscil­lat­ing between dystopia and utopia while under­lin­ing the inter­twin­ing of tech­nol­o­gy and soci­ety,” con­cludes Karim El Kirat. 

A fes­ti­val com­bin­ing sci­ence and cul­ture no doubt des­tined to devel­op every year, around new themes.