Bourges (Cher). The city of Bourges has three years left to implement everything it promised to do in 2028 when the European Capital of Culture will be inaugurated. This is not much when the project still has many unclear areas. Yann Galut, mayor of the city, called on Frédéric Hocquard a few months ago to pilot the project in tandem with artistic curator Pascal Keizer. In tandem, but the new general delegate intends “get the final cut”in its own terms, that is to say the final decision. Frédéric Hocquard and Yann Galut know each other well, they are both in the Socialist Party and have learned to work together within the National Federation of Local Authorities for Culture which Hocquard chaired from 2021 to 2024. The latter is himself elected , at the City of Paris, where he is deputy for tourism and nightlife.
Tourism, precisely. First decision of the general delegate: organize the opening ceremony in December 2027 rather than January 2028 in order to better match the seasonality of tourism. And this is seen in the figures, at least in the estimates since the number of expected spectators increases, in the new version of the “bid book” (the project detailed in a booklet) from 100,000 to 200,000.
The format of the ceremony does not change – like the general architecture of the programming – and remains focused on current music and artistic creation. The Printemps de Bourges is a festival which has done a lot for the notoriety of the Berry town. The only worry is that Thomas Jolly, the artistic director of the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games, has set the bar so high that it will be difficult with a budget ten times smaller to meet the level.
Uncertain availability of exhibition venues
The main issue is linked to the availability of heritage places. Already, between the first version of the project in February 2023 and the second in November of the same year, Bourges has skipped the renovation of the “Great Museum” (i.e. the merger of the four existing museums) to focus on the renovation of the Estève Museum (680 m²) and the Lallemant hotel (500 m²) in order to be able to open them in 2027 (budget 10 million euros). But these two places are no longer mentioned in the third project, drawn up in spring 2024, and it is difficult to know where the key exhibitions on the “mourners” and the “Very rich hours of the Duke of Berry” will take place. The Jacques-Cœur Palace must undertake fire and intrusion alarm work in 2026 and 2027. The central site of the Capital is itself under construction. The Hôtel-Dieu (1,300 m²) is to host the flagship project of a “European City of Artists – Melina Mercouri” at the end of 2027. The estimated amount of work has tripled in a few months, from 1.2 million euros to 3 million euros. “All this is going to change,” concedes Frédéric Hocquard who raises the possibility of using buildings from the arms industry. Because Bourges – which the files have been careful not to mention – has been home to the jewels of this industry since Napoleon III, which have taken on a new dimension since the takeoff of sales of Rafale aircraft and especially the war in Ukraine. This is particularly the case of the MBDA company which manufactures Aster anti-aircraft missiles.
Hotel Lallemant – Museum of Decorative Arts of Bourges, entrance rue Bourbonnoux.
A call “for intentions”, in order to cast a wide net
The Melina-Mercouri City is all the more important as it is at the center of the calls for projects system. Part of the programming is in fact based on activities which have not yet been defined, as is the case at Noirlac Abbey. The Bourges 2028 team has just announced the calendar: from 2025 and until 2027, local or European cultural actors will be able to submit a project before April 15 of each year for a decision in December. It is between these two dates that the uniqueness of the approach lies: the candidates will be supported by permanent staff from Bourges 2028 who will help them refine their projects, guide them in the search for additional financing or even suggest that they join forces with each other. .
Frédéric Hocquard, who headed the Île-de-France cultural engineering agency Arcadi before it was scuttled by the president of the region, and who is therefore very aware of these approaches, prefers to talk about call to “intentions” and cast a wide net. “Otherwise it is always the same structures that try to place a project that is not necessarily suitable and who hunt for subsidies,” he explains. Bourges has planned an envelope of 5 million euros to finance these projects by expecting a leverage effect: each candidate is in fact encouraged to find another financing partner.
