Inaugural Chaumet Awards Go to Youth-centric Projects
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PARIS — An immersive photographic chamber, a collection written by teenage novelists, an orchestra and a library dedicated to diasporic art were revealed Tuesday as the recipients of the inaugural edition of Chaumet’s Echo Culture Awards.
They were among the 10 finalists selected out of the 151 applications, who “are all wonderful and it’s important that this be known,” according to BETC Groupe founder and president Mercedes Erra, a member of the edition’s jury led by French actress Sandrine Kiberlain.
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Journalist Elisabeth Assayag, the evening’s master of ceremony, summed up the profiles as those who “work in the shadows, toiling to make the invisible visible,” and projects that made “those little nothings that added up to the happiness of the whole of humanity.”
Launched in January, the awards’ goal is distinguishing women who lead grassroots cultural projects and award purses of 10,000 euros, 25,000 euros and 50,000 euros, along with mentoring from Chaumet’s teams, to support their efforts.
Kiberlain lauded the coherence of projects who that had the jury’s heart racing, a reaction they were looking for.
“It’s the soul of a person that we felt in the projects we considered,” she continued, adding that witnessing so much commitment, creativity and self-effacement from the candidates had left her feeling humbled.
Taking home the highest cash prize was the Paris Mozart Orchestra, founded by renowned conductor Claire Gibault, who also founded the female-focused La Maestra International Competition for Women Conductors.
Gibault said the funds would be used toward the orchestra’s residency project in the central French city of Bourges, initiated in October 2022 and aiming to bring music to a variety of publics from schools to hospitals and penitentiary establishments, as well as support its concert tour in France and abroad.
The “Caravana Obscura” of photographer and visual artist Lolita Bourdet, a mobile immersive photographic chamber with a development studio attached, was awarded 25,000 euros that will allow the project to develop its workshop program and recruit. Its founder said she hoped to train young people to artistic mediation to further transmit visual arts to new publics.
With 10,000 euros, Marion Curtillet hopes to step up the efforts of her independent publishing house and in particular the “Les Jeunes Prodiges” collection, which publishes the works of teenage authors.
The project was born when Curtillet, a Sciences Po graduate who worked in commercial management, became the full-time caretaker for her unwell youngest child. She initiated writing workshops, particularly for school-age children. One thing led to the next and she launched publisher “Du Sable et Des Cailloux” in 2019.
In addition to the three planned endowments, the edition’s jury also awarded a special prize to 24-year-old Amandine Nana, who founded mobile library dedicated to diasporic art Transplantation to “open horizons on the definition of beauty and reflecting its plurality.”
The additional prize came with a 10,000-euro envelope that will be used to bootstrap the three-year-old organization’s fundraising efforts, including a crowdfunding campaign, to gather the means to open a permanent location in Paris.
Having four youth-centric projects as winners of the inaugural edition was a coincidence, said the jeweler’s chief executive officer Jean-Marc Mansvelt. “When we looked at our shortlists, we realized that it was about transmitting [culture] to younger generations, which is also part of our mission.”
Generosity and selfless commitment were the qualities that impressed the 2023 jury led by Kiberlain and composed of Erra; Mansvelt; artist-entrepreneur François Alu; Ingrid Brochard, who founded the MuMo mobile museum; Cédric Fauq, head curator of the Bordeaux-based CAPC contemporary art museum; Loïc Yviquel, social entrepreneur and founder of media group So Good, and the jeweler’s teams, who received one seat in the jury.
In addition to the purses set out by Chaumet and the mentoring from the jeweler’s teams, the winners of the Chaumet Echo Culture Awards can count on support from “EllesVMH,” the luxury group’s initiative for gender equity, announced at the awards ceremony Chantal Gaemperle, executive vice president of human resources and synergies at LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.
Though there were four winners, all submitted projects touched the jury by the “wonderful commitment” of their founders and the breadth of issues they tackled, according to Mansvelt who had found “151 things to discover [this year] and just talking about it will ensure that we have even more incredible projects to choose from” in future editions.
Mansvelt also reiterated his hope that the inaugural edition would see emulations in markets outside of France, targeting local projects similarly rooted in the local community.
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