This publication describes the genesis of the project QUARTIER, territoire et autres lieux communs, conceived and produced by the organization IQ L'Atelier. This artists' cooperative favours an aesthetic based on exchange and sharing with the community. This project, directed by artists Stéfany Tremblay and Patrick Moisan, allowed some twenty young people, aged 10 and 11, to experience visual art, to be active and to develop a sense of belonging and pride in the neighbourhood.
Imbued with heritage and the social aspect of art, this project draws its reflection from the duty to remember. The initiating artists, having become aware of the history of the site, first worked on the heritage, economic and aesthetic problems of the founding district of the City of Alma, in order to become involved as artist-citizens. The exploration of this environment, through the use of images and different photographic techniques, allowed them to take an intimate and current look at it, which led to an exhibition at the Espacepointca gallery at Collège d'Alma in February 2009.
Subsequently, young people from the Saint-Sacrement and Arc-en-Ciel schools of the Commission scolaire du Lac-Saint-Jean joined the project through a series of mobile and educational workshops based on the discovery and experimentation of light in photography. For ten days, they explored the territory using disposable cameras and pinhole cameras. They surveyed the Sainte-Anne district in an attempt to rediscover it. Their photographs, surprising and authentic, are the result of a real aesthetic research and offer different documentary, historical, poetic, but also sometimes critical interpretations. These works were presented in a professional exhibition at the Langage Plus artist centre.
The project also gave rise to a creative collaboration between the young participants and the students of the Arts and Letters program at Collège d'Alma, as the visual works became the source of inspiration for the writing of the texts accompanying the photos presented in the book.
