The projects

 

Building together

At UNESCO Chair, a project remains a project by definition. By no means it is a scale model which parts would have to be assembled to get the result featured on the box. At first, one does not know the exact number of parts or how they will fit – they will find out gradually through the process of collective building with a group of collaborators hired from various backgrounds.

It is not about shunning all methods but rather taking on innovative ones, as flexible and rigorous, open to examination and prone to improvements that may be suggested. Plans are ever changing as context will inspire them, creativity will design them and actual field experience will reshape them.

In every step, new situations demand creative solutions. The global approach we practice collectively allows to handle complexity and unpredictability, as well as benefiting from arising opportunities. The project takes on its designers in a continuous movement of dialogue, reflection and action. The results will not be described before they are discovered.

 
 

Sharing one’s tools

Building a project collectively is a horizontal experience in which everyone will bring along and share their own tools. Most of the work aims at getting past the “I” in order to reach the “We” through an honest and fruitful dialogue, leaving space for the creative intuition.

As part of the Chair research works, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, community and academic experts, teachers and students will work closely on developing their abilities to :

  • reach out to the unknown and to strangers;
  • walk over new landscapes, either physical or conceptual, guide on and accept guidance;
  • fight against private turfs, listen in order to hear, look in order to see, seek in order to find out;
  • combine precision and scope, confidence and awe, experience and discovery, library and nature, team and family;
  • create, colour the world in without fearing to go over the edges, think just as they are acting along with the flow and with confidence towards others;
  • get into action with a brave heart and body, welcome contribution, let themselves swallow by “the attraction of sensitivities”, of which sociologist Michel Maffesoli says they generate unusual solidarities;
  • build collectively a brand new life through their work and commitments towards everyone.