Grand Chambardement

Overall context

In April 2019, the CREIDD team and Chênelet Institute (Research institute for living and including in rurality) conducted a territorial experiment in the municipalities community of the Barséquanais based on the emergence of collective dynamics for the socio-ecological transition. This experimentation was named Grand Chambardement. It led to continue the experiment in this territory to carry out the first projects and to envisage a rise in empowerment of local communities. The goal is to experiment to test different root based approach for transition in rural areas, that could be expanded to other rural territories.

The main challenge of these experiments is to concretize at the local level and in an operational way, a kind of “territorial alliance”, between public institutions, economic network, civil society, research and higher education, as a translation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Our partners

Objectives of experimentations

While traditional recipes and top-down territorial development are no longer proven in rural areas, the territories of projects (communities of municipalities, Rural and Territorial Equilibrium Poles (PETR), ...) are searching approaches adapted to the local scale. These approaches must respond to the dual challenge of implementing the ecological transition and promoting a better life for their inhabitants, particularly the most vulnerable. The objective of territorial experimentation is therefore to invite, through different mechanisms, the inhabitants to engage collectively to define the needs, to invent and implement solutions to improve their daily lives, and to strengthen the local economy.

The University faces the challenge of training qualified professionals who will have to evolve, innovate and thrive in the complex and uncertain context of a successful socio-ecological transition. This includes the invention of teaching approaches "outside the walls", which allow students to confront the real, the challenges of scientific or operational engineering at the service of actors and territories.

Finally, the third objective is to respond to the strong search for meaning and the requests for concrete involvement of students, who rarely perceive the potential for experimentation and innovation existing in rural areas.