What if local culture made it possible to strengthen the competitiveness of businesses? What if we replaced a day of bungee jumping with a traditional dance workshop? This somewhat crazy idea was launched a few months ago by the Pays de Béarn, a metropolitan center chaired by François Bayrou, bringing together the intermunicipalities of this small Pyrenean territory. And the first results exceeded all expectations. “We started from a simple intuition: here, culture has always been a machine for cohesion. We thought that this principle which works in villages could be applied in businesses or communities,” explains Vincenç Javaloyès, the director of La Ciutat, a third place that highlights local language and culture.
The analysis was attractive. It still had to be validated. So, initially, four experiments were launched in different structures. A construction company, Despagnet, tried its hand at the game of nine pins ; an economic entertainment space, La Station, at polyphonic singing ; the Habitat Jeunes Formation association, to the story. As for Gaz Systèmes, a young company of around fifteen people made up mainly of executives and engineers, it faced the Béarnaise jumps. “At the beginning, the employees were a little doubtful, but almost all of them participated in the sessions organized on site,” says Jean-Edouard de Cumont, its founder and CEO. “And the impact on our cohesion was positive. No doubt we would have “We were able to obtain a similar result with another activity, but I felt greater involvement on the part of employees attached to the regional culture. Today, I unreservedly recommend this experience to other companies.”
Better: these courses not only improve team spirit, but also individual skills such as speaking and self-confidence. “Polyphonic singing is a very powerful experience that has brought us a lot. Everyone had to follow the others and develop their listening skills,” says Stéphanie Philippe, from La Station.
“Getting out of folklorization”
After the success of the experimental phase, the time has now come to market this unique “product”. The initial name, Biarnés Team Building, strange interweaving of Occitan-Gascon (Biarnés = Béarnais) and managerial English, now coexists with the very local Acampat (“gathered together”) and the more neutral “team building seminar”. The method ? First, the client receives videos presenting the four activities. Once your choice is made, a workshop is organized on site with a speaker. Ultimately, the employees apply their new know-how during a village festival, a bar, a carnival… “If we started directly with immersion, the employees would remain spectators. And if we limited ourselves to workshops, they would not have the opportunity to really experience this culture,” explains Vincenç Javaloyès.
Beyond the economy, it is of course the survival of regional culture that is sought. “We want to take it out of folklorization by placing it in the world of work, where we don’t expect it,” underlines Marion Llorach, local development project manager in the Pays de Béarn. This type of operation allows residents to reappropriate practices that they know little about and which, here as elsewhere, are threatened by standardization.”
The icing on the cake: the idea seems so good that even the Basques are starting to take an interest in it. Which, for a Béarnais, is worth all the rewards…
An article from the special report of L’Express “These cities that make France move”, published in the weekly of April 4.
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