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About us
Awards
Festival de l'Imaginaire
Performances
Exhibitions
Intangible cultural heritage
MEDLIHER (Mediterranean Living Heritage)
Ethnoscenology
Cultural engineering
Training and residency programs
International resource center on world performing arts
INÉDIT CD collection
The journal Internationale de l'Imaginaire


       
MAISON DES CULTURES DU MONDE (World Cultures Institute)
   


"Enrichment results from diversity.
Through self-assertion the individual becomes universal."


The World Cultures Institute was created in 1982 to promote cultural exchange programs between French and other countries throughout the world. It is open to all horizons and civilizations, with a preference for cultural and artistic perspectives rather than a strictly political focus. It is committed to protecting cultural diversity and the expression of cultural identities.

Based on its main on-going mission of supporting and sustaining intangible cultural heritage throughout the world, it focuses on unveiling the immense diversity of creation and re-creation through the extraordinary abundance of festivities, rituals, games and entertain-ment by which man depicts himself. Human beings express their most personal aspects through the act of creation, and by opening ourselves to the cultural expressions of others we come to know each other better and to better understand the specificity of human nature and the relationship of human beings to the world.

The World Cultures Institute is recognised in France and abroad for its pioneering role in :
- protecting and encouraging awareness of cultural diversity and respect for difference;
- researching and programming intangible cultural heritage performing art forms;
- founding the anthropological discipline "ethnoscenology", in conjunction with the international academic community and Unesco;
- documenting and recording rare and endangered music.

The World Cultures Institute is not a government office that uses culture in international relations. It is a place for genuine discovery and exchanges, and works on behalf of the French Government in one of its key areas of action : welcoming professionals and cultural managers from abroad within the framework of a variety of programs combining visits, internships and training programs in every cultural field. These programs focus on French cultural management and organizational methods in all cultural sectors and offer participants the means to establish a network of contacts in France.

Founded by Mr Chérif Khaznadar in 1982, the World Cultures Institute a been successively chaired by the renowned sociologist Jean Duvignaud (from 1982to 2000) and by the Ministre Emile J. Biasini (from 2000 to 2007). After having directed the Institute from 1982 to September 2007, Chérif Khaznadar has been entrusted with its chairmanship. Ms Arwad Esber was appointed Director on October 1st 2007. In April 2010, Chérif Khaznadar et Arwad Esber were appointed members of the French National Commission for Education, Science and Culture.

The World Cultures Institute is funded by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication, the city of Paris, and supported by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Alliance Française Foundation.

 
       
AWARDS
   


The "Prix Diderot Universalis" of 1989 was awarded to the Maison des Cultures du Monde for its efforts to popularise traditional and modern forms of theatre.
The France-Korea Cultural Award of 1999 was conferred to the Maison des Cultures du Monde for its commitment to the promotion of Korean arts and performances.
The French-Taiwanese cultural foundation Prize of 2004 was awarded to the Maison des Cultures du Monde for its commitment to the promotion of Taiwanese cultures.

 

 
       
FESTIVAL DE L'IMAGINAIRE*
  The 15th edition of the festival will take place between March and June 2011.    


*
Much more than just imagination, the word “imaginaire” also implies the rich and boundless capacity for imaginative thinking innate in human beings, our imaginative spirit, our creative ethos.

"A landmark event for the least known expressions of intangible cultural heritage.
An open stage for young artists constantly working on re-creating their own culture.
A tribute to the modernity of living traditional cultural art forms around the world.
An ongoing effort against stylisation and the uniformization of cultural expressions."

The Festival de l'Imaginaire, established in 1997, is held each year in early spring and featu-res about 15 groups of traditional performing artists. Most of the artists are performing in France for the first time, or there may be "comebacks" after several years of absence, either to cater to the desires of a new generation of spectators or to introduce new talents to the international scene. During the festival, it is not uncommon to watch great masters, guardians of tradition, performing alongside young artists eager to enrich and revive age-old art forms.

Over a period of one month, around March and April, the festival is held at several wellknown Parisian venues (The Alliance Française Theatre, the Amphitheatre of the Opéra Bastille, the Auditorium of the Louvre Museum, the Zingaro Equestrian Theatre, etc.) and marshals the energies and enthusiasm of other regional and European institutions that want to introduce as yet unknown cultural forms to European audiences.

The festival strives to constantly kindle spectators' curiosity with a three-pronged approach: Exploration, Discovery and Revelation. Each performance is put through a painstaking field study before selection. The decision to schedule a given art form on the Parisian cultural scene is not taken lightly: the choice is based on several parameters, in particular, the esthetic yardstick of the culture in which this art form originated, and the risks inherent to transplanting it into a "foreign" environment. A large network of consultants, cultural advisors and associates assure this phase of extensive research and the preliminary groundwork: anthropologists, theatre people, local consultants, and others work to ensure that the programming remains true to its meticulous standards and philosophy.

In 2006, Chérif Khaznadar entrusted Arwad Esber with the artistic direction the Festival de l'Imaginaire and appointed her Director of the World Cultures Institute in 2007. With one foot in western culture and the other in oriental culture, she is particularly sensitive to questions of respect for the right to difference and for cultural diversity. While observing the founding purpose of the festival, she wants to develop the festival further in three main direction:

- doing research on unknown expressions of intangible cultural heritage and promoting the transmission of these cultural expressions to new generations;
-
focusing special attention on countries which have, throughout the years, witnessed the multiplication of its peoples and cultures and presenting the results of such crossbreeding;
- seeking artists among the new generations who have been able to recreate their traditions according to their own cultural assets and to produce new creations;
- further developing of educational and outreach activities, and the launching of a Master Class program.

The festival is also a forum for reflection and for debate. Symposiums, round tables, conferences, lecture-demonstrations and other activities highlighting issues of cultural interest or of social concerns, offer new landmarks, thus broadening our vision of the world.

The festival is funded by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication, the City of Paris, The French ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Alliance Française Foundation. It is also strongly followed and supported by important French media.

 

 
 
PERFORMANCES
   


"There is no one single culture; there are cultures."

Over the centuries, people have created the means and forms of their own expressions, using the cultural attributes of their neighbours at random – as historical bonds or conflicts provided – and remodelling them according to their needs, tastes, fears and beliefs.
At a time when no one spoke of globalization, cultural diversity, or intangible cultural heritage, Chérif Khaznadar established the Festival for Traditional Arts in France (Rennes) in 1974.

The Maison des Cultures du Monde is convinced that knowledge of others comes for discovery of their intrinsic cultures and that these cultures are in a process of continuous renewal. Since the time of its founding, it has been dedicated to the astonishing wealth of cultural expression, regardless of place of origin, form (music, performance, fine arts), whether traditional or contemporary, erudite or widespread, professional or amateur, literary or oral, erudite or widespread, minimalist or sophisticated.

The importance and success of this action can be measured by looking at the number of programs and festivals that have followed in its footsteps and the numerous performances from abroad and world music concerts that now take place in Parisian, French and European venues.

The Institute for World Cultures programs exclusively forms that still have a profound meaning and important purpose for the people who perform them, focusing on the question of the human path: where do we come from, where are we going? It does not limit its interest to "traditional“ forms, but is also strongly committed to presenting contemporary forms when these are rooted in the imagination of a people and a society and not merely the pale reflections of Western models. Artists are often from an ethnic background and are usually considered, in their own countries, as “backward” and their art as “primitive”.

Due to this undermining, young generations are less and less inclined to perpetuate the traditions of their ancestors and there is a high risk that this precious heritage will soon disappear forever. However, this process is reversed when these groups are invited to perform in Paris and other European cities and are acclaimed with great success. By consistently skirting the pitfalls of the star system, the World Cultures Institute brings recognition to hitherto unrenowned artists, thus giving them the opportunity to launch an international career (e.g., Alim Qâsimov, virtuoso of Azerbaijani mugam, or Faiz Ali Faiz, Pakistan’s golden voice) and often confers the visibility required to ignite the revival of an endangered art form (e.g., the Muqam music of the Dolan, a Uighur sub-group living in the desert of Taklamakan, in the center of Xinjiang, China).

 
       
EXHIBITIONS
   


The World Cultures Institute has also achieved considerable success in the promotion of fine arts, notably in the field of contemporary art. It has hosted exhibitions such as New Trends in New York, Terrae Motus (Italy), Zhang Peili (China), Moon in Soo (Korea), Rei Naito (Japan), A Su Wu (Taiwan), The Mask and the Five Worlds, Wooden Sculptures of the Paiwan (Taiwan), Fabric Design (Syria), Naïve Art from Brazil, Paris- scène du Monde, Paraguay Esquivo, Généalogies (Taïwan)...

 

 
INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE
   


"The practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills – as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated therewith – that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage."

As President of the Culture Committee of the French National Commission for Unesco, Chérif Khaznadar has played an important role in drafting the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH). This convention was adopted in 2003 and is currently being ratified at a steady pace by member states around the world. It should be implemen-ted as of 2009.

The intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity. For the purposes of this Convention, consideration will be given solely to such intangible cultural heritage as is compatible with existing international human rights instruments, as well as with the requirements of mutual respect among communities, groups and individuals, and of sustainable development.

The ICH as defined above is manifested in the following domains among others :
- oral traditions and expressions, including language as a vehicle of the intangible cultural heritage;
- performing arts;
- social practices, rituals and festive events;
- knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe;
- traditional craftsmanship.

The ICH is traditional and living at the same time. It is constantly recreated and mainly transmitted orally. It is difficult to use the term authentic in relation to ICH; some experts advise against its use in relation to living heritage.

The Wolrd Cultures Instituteorganizes, during each editionof the Festival de l’Imaginaire, an ICH workshop co-organized with the UNESCO Division of cultural heritage.



 
MEDLIHER (Mediterranean Living Heritage)
   


The MEDLIHER project aims at enhancing institutional capacities in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and the Syrian Arab Republic to facilitate their effective participation in the international mechanisms established by the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, as well as to support the elaboration of specific safeguarding measures with the participation of communities and groups concerned in each of them. The Medliher project is lead by the UNESCO, in partnership with:
- Egyptian National Commission for UNESCO, Ministry of Higher Education
- Lebanese Ministry of Culture
- Department of Folk Heritage, Ministry of Culture, Syria
- Jordan National Commission for Education, Culture and Science, Ministry of Education
- Maison des Cultures du Monde, France

 
       
       
ETHNOSCENOLOGY
   


"Avoiding ethnocentrism in the study of performing arts and practices in their cultural, historical and social context."

The term ethnoscenology was first coined in 1995 in Paris. The concept was born of a scientific need defined by the Institute for World Cultures and the specialized Research Laboratory on the Study of Human Performing Phenomena of the University of Paris VIII Saint-Denis. The founding symposium was organized under the auspices of UNESCO on May 3, 1995. The discipline attempts to view the immensity of human expression with new eyes, through an array of performances juxtaposed with a study of forms, avoiding all hierarchies and exclusions: theatre, music, dance, masked games, puppets, shadow shows, rituals, coded tracings, etc., all these and more find their way into ethnoscenology's sweeping embrace.

The aims of this new field which comprises anthropology of theatre, ethnology, musicology and sociology are manifold :

- to question the way we look at the immense diversity of human expression, today endan-gered by the ramifications of "mass production". The dubious terms "universality" and "fusion" have in fact reduced observers' capacity for objectivity. The universality of cultures can only be achieved at the expense of the weaker ones - progress in technology automatically favors the stronger cultures. Ethnoscenology is thus an unswerving champion of diversity;

- to forge a concept, a notion, a method and to bring together all that lies scattered. To tirelessly explore and publish inventories and research findings. To patiently but firmly remind people that forms as diverse as the Gambuh from Bali, the Kagura from Japan, the Teyyam from India, the Tchiloli from São Tomé, the Sulamiyya rituals from Tunisia, or the Diablada from Bolivia, are full-fledged art forms, and not - as is often condescendingly implied - poor relatives of Western theatre, itself a relic inherited from ancient Greek drama;

- to emphasise that these art forms obey other rules, meet other criteria and are appraised by other value systems

Through the study of these forms, using all the possible means at our disposal today and by correlating them, we will eventually witness the emergence of a new field of scientific enquiry, shorn of all ethnocentricity.

Several meetings, symposiums, seminars and workshops have been held since the official "birth" of ethnoscenology: in Paris (UNESCO and the Maison des Cultures du Monde), in Cuernavaca (Mexico), and in Salvador de Bahia (Brazil).

Ethnoscenology is now taught in several French universities such as Paris VII, Paris VIII and Paris X.

 
       
Reference works  
 
"La Scène et la Terre, Questions d'ethnoscénologie", Internationale de l'Imaginaire n°5 (Babel 190, 1996)
 
"Les spectacles des Autres, Questions d'ethnoscénologie II", Internationale de l'Imaginaire n°15, (Babel 525, 2001)
 
 
     
 
       
CULTURAL ENGINEERING
   


The World Cultures Institute has gained solid experience in organising cultural events (music festivals, performing arts festivals, etc.), developing methods of recording and disseminating culture, and organizing meetings and symposia for discussion and comparing of experience, not to mention exchanges and training of culture officials throughout the world. The World Cultures Institute has proven expertise in field exploration and research as well as identification of various forms of ICH.

Cultural programming, especially in the field of traditional arts, entails a particular know-how that the World Cultures Institute has acquired through the organization of many festivals, events and festivities at the request of public authorities and private bodies. It has organized numerous prestigious events, including the Grand Mela that marked the opening of the Year of India in France (1985), and reciprocally, the French Mela in India (1989), the Carnival of Venice in the Palais Royal Gardens (1987), the concert of Sacred Music of the World at the Pantheon (1992) and the Icelandic Fortnight (2004).

The World Cultures Institute has also been in charge of the programming of the Mawazine-Rhythms of the World Festival in Rabat, Morocco since 2002 and of the Islamic world music programs of the Louvre Museum since 2004. It has been a co-organizer of the Asilah Forum in Morocco since 1982. It organized the first “Conference on Music in the World of Islam“ which took place in Morocco in August 2007. The goal of this Conference was to encourage the vitality and the diversity of the traditions and musical practices of the world of Islam today and to promote greater circulation of knowledge and practices in a spirit of tolerance and mutual recognition.

The French Ministry of Culture and Communication and other governmental bodies also frequently call on the World Cultures Institute the organization of international meetings, such as Europe in Paris (1992), Europe Culture Horizon (1994), the Colors of Freedom (1994), the European Conference of Recording Industries (1996), the Slovakian Presence (1996), the Symposium on Japanese Architecture (1997), the Franco-Japanese Cultural Summit (1997) and the Iceland Fortnight Festival (2004).

In August 2007, the World Cultures Institute organised the first Conference on Music in the World of Islam in partnership with the Assilah Forum Foundation in Morocco. Chérif Khaznadar has since been appointed head of project for the Al Aïn Centre for Music in the World of Islam (Abu Dhabi).

 

 
TRAINING AND RESIDENCY PROGRAMS
   


"Dynamic networks for cultural leaders from abroad.
Over 2700 professionnals invited since 1992."


Welcoming professionals from abroad to France is one of the key international areas of action of the Ministry of Culture and Communication. Because it helps build long-term networks for exchange, this policy meets one of France’s primary goals: the promotion of cultural diversity. It takes the form of visits, internships and training programs in every cultural sector. The European and International Affairs Department of the French Ministry of Culture and Communication entrusted the organization of these programs to the World Cultures Institute in 1994.

World Trends Program (Programme “Courants”)

A dynamic network materialized through this interactive directory of professionals around the world who hold positions of responsibility and who are confirmed specialists in their field of activity, creating sustained co-operation and exchange activities in the field of culture between France and foreign countries.

The most frequently requested fields include cultural management and administration, books and reading, decorative and fine arts, museums, audio-visual and multimedia, performing arts, archives, heritage, publishing, libraries, architecture and city planning.

This program, set up and administered by the Institute for World Cultures, receives the support of the European and International Affairs Department as well as that of the various specialized Divisions of the Ministry of Culture and Communication. It also relies on a large network of public and private cultural infrastructures, whose broad range of competencies covers every aspect of modern cultural activities.


1) Training workshops & seminars

These take place all year round in Paris and other French cities and aim at providing cultural leaders with practical tools for the analysis, design and management of cultural projects and institutions. At the same time, these workshops promote the creation of networks of cultural leaders from around the world.

Interaction among specialists in smaller groups is encouraged around specific technical topics over a two-week period. The participants take part in training courses and information sessions held by both academics and practitioners, meet up with leaders of French cultural institutions, visit a large number of cultural organizations and participate in discussions and debates. There are currently eight of these programs per year :

> Leading and Managing Cultural Projects (French speaking professionals);
> Cultural Industries in Europe and in the Euromed countries (bilingual);
> European Seminar for Curators (bilingual);
> Cultural Policies and Cultural Administration (French speaking professionals);
> Financing and Economics of Culture (French speaking professionals);
> Archival Theories and Practices (French speaking professionals);
> Managing Library Projects (French speaking professionals);
> Electronic Resources in Librairies (French speaking professionals).


2) Cultural residencies and individual networking programs

Every year, the World Cultures Institute invites 50 to 60 cultural professionals for custom-designed programs to promote exchanges of know-how between participants and their French counterparts and to encourage partnerships. These two-week programs are intended for cultural leaders in the following fields: fine arts, museum, theater, circus, music, dance, cinema, archive, library, architecture, city planning and heritage.


3) Bilingual Art Administrator Exchange Programs

Expertise projects are organized for non French-speaking professionals upon request from foreign institutions* with the European and International Affairs Department of the Ministry of Culture and Communication, according to pre-established agreements.

Some of the specific topics that have been addressed so far are: Film preservation, heritage preservation and promotion, music industry and property rights, design, prehistoric rock art, organization of festivals, publishing industry, educational and outreach policies in the field of Arts and Culture, creative centers formed from grassroots artistic initiatives and founded with the involvement of communities, etc.

*USA - French-American Foundation
Japan- Japan Foundation for Regional Art Activities (JAFRA)
Taiwan - Ministry of Culture
Korea - Korean Culture and Arts Foundation
South Africa (Department for Arts and Culture)...

Starting January of each year, application forms may be downloaded from www.mcm.asso.fr or from the French Embassy’s Service for Cooperation and Cultural Action (SCAC) website in the candidate’s country of residence.

Online alumni directory : www.mcm.asso.fr


 
INTERNATIONAL RESOURCE CENTER ON WORLD PERFORMING ARTS
     
 
 


The Center is located in a former Benedictine priory in Vitré, one of the oldest cities in Brittany. The restauration of the historical building of the Resource Centre was jointly funded by the city of Vitré, the Departmental Council of Ille-et-Vilaine and the Regional Council of Brittany.

Documentation

The Center has a unique library that covers all forms of traditional performing arts from all over the world: music, theater, dance, marionettes, shadow puppets, and rituals. It is based on the archives of the Maison des Cultures du Monde and the Festival des Arts traditionnels of Rennes (1974-1983) and includes more than one thousand books and journals, encyclo-pedias and reference books, 1,500 unpublished texts (performance programs, reports, papers, theses and travel notes), 50,000 photos and more than 2,500 sound and audio-visual recordings.
A digitizing, cataloging and indexing program has organized all of these documents in a database by topic, genre and cultural area with a thesaurus of 3,800 key words specially developed for the needs of the database.
This on-line database, called Ibn Battuta to pay tribute to the famous 14th-century Moroccan explorer who traveled all over the world for more than twenty years and brought back descriptions that were very accurate for the time, is thus a real webencyclopedia of performance traditions from around the world. Each form is presented with texts, photos, sound recordings and video sequences.

World Performing Arts Web Portal : www.spectaclesdumonde.fr

Several key public institutions involved in the dissemination and documenting of world musical traditions, including the Cité de la Musique, the World Cultures Institute, the Musée du Quai Branly and the Théâtre de la Ville, have teamed up to develop a portal offering access to their audiovisual archives. The portal aims to contribute to our knowledge of these traditions based on archives dedicated to the performing arts, improve the visibility of stakeholders and resources, and help preserve this intangible heritage through digitisation. It brings together records of recorded music and audio and video extracts, revealing the diversity of programming in the field. This collection started being digitised in 2008 as part of the national digitisation plan, and the lexicons of partner catalogues have been merged and standardised.

specacledumondewww.spectaclesdumonde.fr



Education and outreach

The Center’s projects with schools aim to provide an opening to world cultures. Going beyond typical subjects of learning, the traditional arts provide an opportunity for dialogue with other cultures in the course of students’ daily lives. These meetings with distant cultures give them a new perspective in which to consider their immediate environment. The topics and issues raised by the Maison des Cultures du Monde encourage a cross-discipline approach, and the variety of sources available (books, CD’s, video, photos, objects) allow for a diversified exploration of traditional arts.
The potential of the Center’s documents as teaching resources and tools for reflection are all the greater because they offer content that is not governed by Western social norms and esthetics.
These activities intended for primary and secondary schools pupils and for university students are carried out in cooperation with teachers through topic-based projects such as "Ethnocentrism – racism", "Funeral Rites", "Initiation Rituals", "Commemoration of Ancestors", "Afro-Brazilian Culture", "Masks in Africa", "Ritual and daily life", "Jewellery", "Theater of the Orient”, etc.

Cultural activities

The Documentation Center also works on bringing performances from the Maison des Cultures du Monde’s Parisian programs to Brittany by establishing partnerships with local cultural institutions and acts as a consultant for performing arts programs.

Since 2007, the center has been organizing temporary exhibitions based on its collections of objects (masks, marionettes, musical instruments), workshops, meetings and artist in residence programs.

Foreign artists in residence

The Documentation Center on world performing arts, both withdrawn and open to the world, is a privileged setting for welcoming foreign artists who want to undertake thinking and creation work. The center’s team supports them in this approach and helps them to adapt their work to this new environment.

For more than twenty-five years now, the Maison des cultures du Monde has been scheduling, publishing and disseminating diverse and little-known forms of cultural expression, both traditional and contemporary. The performing arts (dance, theater, music, rituals, etc.) are predominant in its schedule, but it also hosts exhibitions that reflect specific practices and artistic and sociological thinking on the relationship between tradition and modernity in changing cultures. The purpose of this residence program is to deepen this approach by accompanying artists in their work of thinking, research, production and dissemination. The presence of creators in residence in Vitré gives the Maison des Cultures du Monde an opportunity to locally reinforce its role as a bridge between cultures, making it a place of reference for young foreign creators, particularly from southern countries.

The invited artists are free to take advantage of the residence to carry out a specific project, to go deeper with an earlier approach or to start on some new research. The Center’s team can offer them personalized approaches for starting new projects (help with drawing up a proposal, contacts with other artists or institutions involved, communication supports, etc.) or can help them extend and make concrete their projects already underway. It provides them with an appropriate work space, with assistance in terms of logistics and equipment, and makes every effort to disseminate their work with the public through workshops and a public presentation at the end of the residence.

This program of residences focuses on the fine arts, but can also include musicians, choreographer-dancers, and writers and can involve training activities, courses, workshops, and master classes for creation in the strict sense.

RESOURCE CENTER ON WORLD PERFORMING ARTS
2 rue des Bénédictins 35500 Vitré, France
Phone : 33 (0)2 99 75 82 90
Fax : 33 (0)2 99 78 82 93
documentation@mcm.asso.fr


 
 
       
INÉDIT CD COLLECTION
   


"Documenting and recording rare and endangered music."

"World traditional music" has braved considerable changes over these last few years. Today the heading "world music" encompasses a variety of genres: from traditional music – both erudite and popular - to international pop and urban foreign music. The INEDIT series, founded in 1985 by Françoise Gründ and led since 1999 by ethnomusicologist Pierre Bois, is the World Cultures Institute’s answer to the ever-evolving trends and the confusion of genres that prevail in the market. It is the alternative born of our commitment to defend the
integrity of living cultures and repertoires emanating from tradition.

The INEDIT series, recognizable for its singular world view, is a mirror to the musical discoveries offered by the World Cultures Institute (live concert recordings), a means for ethnomusicologists to publish field recordings and an active memorial dedicated to the preservation of endangered forms of the world musical heritage (through anthologies and complete series). Each CD contains extensive information in the form of a bilingual (sometimes trilingual) booklet written by ethnomusicologists and researchers. The series has received more than 180 awards and citations for its relentless quest for quality and originality, both "trademarks" of the World Cultures Institute. With an average turnout of six releases per year and also available in download and streaming on major e-stores, the catalogue of the INEDIT series currently contains 130 albums.

Alim Qâsimov, Aqakhan Abdullaev, Ida Widawati, Davlatmand, Abida Parveen, Aïcha mint Chighaly, Okna Zam Tsagan, Faiz Ali Faiz, Hukwe Ubi Zawose and Gigi are a few examples from among today’s internationally acclaimed artists who recorded their first album with Inédit.

 
       
 
 
Musique des Maale / Maale Music
  Munir Bachir, maître du luth arabe / master of the arab lute (3 CDs)  
 
THE JOURNAL INTERNATIONALE DE L'IMAGINAIRE
   


This journal, formerly directed by Jean Duvignaud (the renowned sociologist, President of the World Cultures Institute from 1982 until 2000), seeks to highlight the multiple aspects of creation present in different regions of the modern world. Each issue invites writers, artists and specialists from the world of performing arts to discuss and debate on a wide range of topics, such as “ethnoscenology”, “world music”, “cultural crossbreedings”, “the body as a taboo”, “intangible world heritage”, and many others.

The journal Internationale de l'Imaginaire is a forum for debate. Like the World Cultures Institute itself, it seeks to highlight the multiple aspects of creation present in different regions of the modern world.

The journal avoids dogma and ideology and is committed to independent reviews, scientific and literary testimonies, reassessment of heritage, and information on the mutation of cultural forms.

Each issue brings together writers, artists, specialists and people from the world of performing arts for wide-ranging discussions on a given topic; discussions that inevitably give rise to appraisals as well as new perspectives for the future.

The Internationale de l'Imaginaire can boast of an impressive array of bylines such as those of Jacques Berque, Jean-Paul Aron, Malek Chebel, Renaud Camus, and Gilbert Rouget, but it also provides space for young researchers. More than forty issues of the journal have been published in association with Babel / Actes Sud since 1994.

Since 2008, the journal specifically focuses on intangible cultural heritage topics.

 
       
 
"Événementiel vs Action culturelle", International de l'Imaginaire n°22 (Babel 820, 2007)