{"id":191935,"date":"2025-09-30T09:25:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T09:25:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/191935\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T09:25:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T09:25:14","slug":"how-nature-is-helping-a-rural-french-arts-centre-to-reduce-its-carbon-footprint-the-art-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/191935\/","title":{"rendered":"How nature is helping a rural French arts centre to reduce its carbon footprint – The Art Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

Situated on a forested island on a lake in the rural Plateau de Millevaches in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, the Centre International d\u2019Art et du Paysage\u2014\u00cele de Vassivi\u00e8re<\/a> (CIAPV) is about as far removed from a major industrialised city as one can get in France.<\/p>\n

A carbon footprint analysis mandated by the French government last year confirmed what the bucolic surroundings already suggested: CIAPV\u2019s carbon footprint was not especially high. But about 95% of the art centre\u2019s emissions came from a single, indispensable source: its visitors.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause we\u2019re in a rural location and there are next to no modes of public transportation, you are basically obliged to take a car,\u201d the executive director Alexandra McIntosh tells The Art Newspaper. \u201cWe also have an international exhibition and residency programme, but we\u2019re not about to limit our programming to only regional artists, and obviously we\u2019re not going to close the doors to visitors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Internationally focused arts centres located far from major cities face a particular challenge in the era of climate change. McIntosh, who notes the irony that CIAPV\u2019s rural surroundings are part of its allure for artists and visitors alike, is drawing inspiration from the environment, ecology and history of Vassivi\u00e8re Island.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of our thinking now is how can we mitigate the carbon footprint of our visitors in other ways,\u201d she says. \u201cWe have the great benefit of being an art centre on an island, so we\u2019re surrounded by green space and forests and water. There are concrete things that we can do to increase biodiversity and to reduce, let\u2019s say, surface temperatures and air temperatures.\u201d<\/p>\n

The island and its wilderness are the consequences of human activity and intervention. Before the construction of a nearby hydroelectric dam flooded the surrounding valley, Vassivi\u00e8re was not an island, but the area\u2019s highest point. The region\u2019s primary economic activities have also reformed the landscape\u2014first agriculture, then logging.<\/p>\n

The forests are the result of human intervention; Douglas fir is not native to the region, but was imported and planted after the Second World War. Vassivi\u00e8re Island\u2019s \u201cnatural\u201d environment and ecology is therefore, in a sense, the unintended consequence of a long history of deliberate human activity. This manmade landscape\u2019s history will now help determine the best way forward to minimise human impact, McIntosh says. \u201cThere are forested patches, there\u2019s open fields, and then there\u2019s the shoreline,\u201d she says. \u201cIn some of the more open fields, we\u2019re going to initiate a kind of wild growth.\u201d<\/p>\n

McIntosh plans to work with a local organisation to measure insect life and conduct inventories in the first and second years to see whether biodiversity increases with what she describes as \u201crewilding in a very controlled situation\u201d.<\/p>\n

For the island\u2019s forested patches, CIAPV will work both with forestry experts from Nouvelle-Aquitaine, as well as the French botanist and biologist Francis Hall\u00e9, to develop a \u201ctest forest\u201d designed to manage itself without direct human intervention. \u201cWith humans kept at the periphery, the test forest becomes a site for fauna and flora to flourish and evolve at their own pace,\u201d McIntosh says. CIAPV also plans to plant pollinating flowers to attract and sustain plant and animal diversity.<\/p>\n

Efforts to minimise and mitigate CIAPV\u2019s carbon footprint require considerations across multiple levels, including the problems inherent with being an international arts centre and residency programme with global appeal.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not going to make artistic decisions based on where people live,\u201d McIntosh says. \u201cLet\u2019s say an artist wants to do a project using particular materials that are not especially conducive to good environmental practices. We would have that conversation with the artist but, ultimately, they are the authors of their work. If they are really adamant about working with a particular material or a particular form, we would try to support that as best we could and mitigate the impact in other ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since taking on her role as director in June 2021, McIntosh says questions around ecological concerns and environmental connectedness have permeated a number of CIAPV\u2019s shows, and that will continue in the year ahead. The environment also clearly occupies artists applying to the residency programme: \u201cWe had over 100 applications, and so many were taking into account environmental questions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Situated on a forested island on a lake in the rural Plateau de Millevaches in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, the Centre…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[4253,192,594,6049,6359,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-191935","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-climate-change","9":"tag-environment","10":"tag-france","11":"tag-museums","12":"tag-museums-heritage","13":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}