IN-RESIDENCE WRITERS AT THE HEART OF URBAN AREAS

Theatres, universities but also libraries, bookshops, schools, neighbourhoods, Montreal’s writers’ residence is bustling within public spaces and provides its inhabitants with the incentive for literary creation. It also enjoys various programs established by Montreal’s Council of the Arts such as “Writers in Residence” created in 2007 in order to enable writers to meet their audience by putting in place a literary project in cooperation with people from the community while pursuing their own creative work. The aim is to foster the diversity of the forms of literary expression as well as the forms of participation in cultural life in interaction with numerous institutions of the city.

RESIDENCIES IN LIBRARIES

artsmontreal.org/fr/programmes/ecrivains-en-residence
https://www.uneq.qc.ca
http://www.banq.qc.ca/activites

This residential device carried out with the help of Montreal’s Arts Council (CAM), Montreal’s Library Directorate and the Québec Union of Writers (UNEQ) is aimed at writers living on the island of Montréal. The authors retained for several months in various district libraries must perform a creative work and a cultural mediation project addressed to the population of the boroughs concerned. Writers are not intended to enliven the area, they must occupy it, or inhabit it in an ad hoc manner while producing a work (creative project) inspired by on-site meetings (mediation project with visitors). The idea is to value contemporary literature through the creation of a writer residency inside the library.
For instance, from September 2015 to June 2016, Montreal’s Grande Bibliothèque granted residency to the writer Gilbert Turp who decided to write “Journal intime de la Grande Bibliothèque” (the Grande Bibliothèque’s diary) combining literary experiments, portraits and diarist writing. A sort of “perpetual motion of self-writing, focused on the present”, according to Philippe Lejeune (“”Le journal comme “antifiction””, Poétique 1/2007 (n° 149), pp. 3-14 URL: cairn.info/revue-poetique),the diary is drafted “in progress” on the referential chronology line and relates this inner adventure’s route in digital format available online.
For Gilbert Turp, the residential interest lies in this possible interaction with the library, the taste for the unexpected, the encounters that can nourish the writer’s personal work, as he explains here:

lafabriqueculturelle.tv

RESIDENCIES IN BOOKSHOPS

 Trying to go beyond the usual tension between commerce and culture, the Association des Libraires du Québec (ALQ) in partnership with the Arts Council of Montreal (CAM), through an experiment conducted as early as 2013 at the bookshop “Le Port de tête” sought to disseminate a residential model in this public space. Bookshops here are positioning themselves as “cultural mediators”. This system is based on the incentive to “familiarize the public with writers’works”, as outlined by Nathalie Maillé, the executive director of the Arts Council of Montreal: “Through this residency, we seek to promote meetings between creators and their readers, while also providing a stimulating place which will illuminate the talent of Montreal’s writers in different parts of the city. These meetings will foster discussions and will make the reality of the writing process known a bit more, which is very often done in solitude.”
Regarding the chosen cultural objectives, the aim is to promote contemporary authors, to demystify the process of literary creation, while showing the artisanal side of writing which feeds itself on multiple readings. Thus, every residency in a bookshop welcomes an author who will use a quote of a literary work (Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, The Waves by Virginia Woolf) as the triggering element of his/her creation and mediation project.
In 2016 for instance, for 4 months (February-May) the writer Élise Desaulniers in residency at the “Zone libre” bookshop, proposed that residents of Habitations Jeanne-Mance become introduced to essay writing and opinion pieces through meetings and discussions in the bookshop. This project refers to the very function of this place and to the writer’s position at the heart of the city, as can be noted through the words of Mireille Frenette, the owner of the bookshop:

“Élise Desaulniers’ feminist vision and desire to give a say to Habitations Jeanne-Mance’s women, our neighbours, are in accordance with our repeatedly expressed will to become a place for exchange and for civic thoughts in our neighbourhood.”

RESIDENCIES IN SCHOOL

communication-jeunesse.qc.ca

A program called “a Montreal school for all” gathers several institutions and organisms (Arts Council, Ministry of Education, Communication-Jeunesse) to promote the creation of writers’ residencies in Montreal schools. The central objective is to enable authors of children’s literature to carry out for several months a project of creation and cultural mediation developed on a theme chosen by the participating school. The purpose is also to familiarise the teachers and pupils with the creative writing process.
Within this framework, in January 2015, André Marois, an author of crime and science fiction in particular, benefited from a three-month residency at Montcalm primary school. This mission-like residency is articulated around a literary project with a memorial dimension aiming at encouraging children to collectively create a story linked to their territory (Villeray-St-Michel-Parc-Extension borough) over a definite period of time (the past 50 years) and in connection with testimonies inserted in the fiction. The presence of the crime fiction writer, thus, gives the opportunity to experiment with the relation between literature and reality, the treatment of unusual events or archive consultation as André Marois explains: “My residency is going on at Montcalm school.  I started with the collection of information and documents– not always an easy task for the St-Michel neighbourhood – but I was able to visit the archives of St-Michel’s Journal and St-Michel’s library which also turned out to be a good source. Collecting testimonies and visiting generous witnesses delighted the pupils and enabled them to choose their story’s theme. They finished their plan today and will start redacting next week. We will therefore write 24 stories covering the past 50 years. The stories will be very diverse and interesting, some will be funny, some won’t. The pupils and I are very motivated. To be continued, once again”.

This residency form is similar to an “animation” residency or “a mission residency” often organised in order to promote artistic and cultural education to a specific public, based on extremely various forms of intervention and action and which doesn’t give authors enough time or very little time to conduct their writing work. The resident-authors must also sign up to an educational initiative designed to show and explain the creation processes they implement (reflection, experimentation, completion).