Cov’Culture (Impact of the Health Crisis on the Field of Culture and Art in Nouvelle-Aquitaine. Study of Emerging Forms of Innovation)

2021-2025 | Aurélie Chêne, Sarah Montero | UMR Passages (France)

Launched in 2021 with support from the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region and the French Ministry of Culture, the Cov’Culture project examines how the health crisis has affected the performing arts sector. Its objective is to understand how professionals – artists, cultural mediators, and operators – have adapted their practices, and to ask whether the pandemic has revealed or accelerated deeper structural changes. The study is distinctive for its participatory approach: research is co-developed with partner organisations to generate knowledge of immediate value to practitioners in the field. The researchers soon recognised the diversity of the partner fields. They established a flexible methodology in which researchers are paired with partners, adapting the approach to each institution. Each pair designed its own research protocols according to local needs, ranging from qualitative interviews to on-site observations. This process enabled researchers to move from mere observers to facilitators of collective reflection. The project is built on diverse partnerships – ranging from a theatre company and a socio-cultural association to a mediation agency, a major festival, and a departmental cultural agency. Each of these actors plays an active role in the project, albeit at varying levels of involvement. Designers and a cultural engineering organisation were also brought in to assist with content creation. This cross-pollination required significant temporal and methodological flexibility, accommodating professional constraints, voluntary engagement, and the unique pace of each organisation. Cov’Culture thus exemplifies the conditions necessary for a rich, dynamic research-action project, thoroughly anchored in the realities of the cultural sector.