the transitions generation wants to move the lines
It is bubbling, Rennes, and not only during the rises of social fever which almost always see it appear at the head of the most spectacular mobilizations – the garbage cans set on fire on the campus of the Rennes-II university have again made the rounds of social networks in beginning of the movement against the pension reform.
It bubbles, and the wave spreads around it. On the occasion of Our Futures Festival, which stages this effervescence, we went to meet the young people who contribute to the attractiveness and dynamism of the metropolis – 5,000 more inhabitants each year, mainly due to births – and its surroundings. The choice was difficult, as the city and its outskirts are teeming with social, urban and cultural innovations, with inspired and inspiring personalities who move the lines.
The initiatives that we have discovered are extremely diverse, but have one thing in common: they have flourished on ground that has been fertilized for a long time by seniors who have lost none of the vitality of their 20s. Here, many projects are built thanks to an ability to stretch threads between generations. We don’t just age our arteries.
Gwenola Drillet, “matchmaker” of talents
When asked what her role is, Gwenola Drillet, the young woman who runs the hHotel Pasteur of Rennes, replies with a smile that she serves as “Chief Janitor”since it is she who gives the keys to the various premises to ” clients ” passing. ” Attentionshe says, it’s a free hotel, where you don’t sleep, but where you can stay from three hours to three months. » It doesn’t matter, after all, the name of this extraordinary place. It has already enabled dozens of young and old in the region to imagine original life projects together.
This superb two-storey building was built in the 19the century in the center of Rennes to house first the faculty of sciences, then that of dental care. In 2012, when she left the premises, the city and the Fairground University – an ambitious project aimed at “rebuilding society” – come together to rehabilitate them. A construction site unlike any other saw workmen and women working from twenty different trades, dozens of students and apprentices from the Beaux-Arts, volunteers from the Companions builders.
In March 2021, work is completed. The adventure can begin. On the ground floor, the “school in common” brings together seven kindergarten classes, including two bilingual French-Breton. On the first floor, an “édulab” hosts training and creation activities in the digital field. On the first and second floors, 2,500 square meters of space make it possible to receive, for three hours or for three months, therefore, women and men, often young, who find there a place to launch several projects that are important to them. to heart and whose purpose, voluntarily elastic, is to“accompanying the transformations of society”. ” The logic, it is reciprocity, explains Gwenola Drillet. Each host arrives with its own economic model, with resources or not. If he doesn’t pay any rent or charges, he can fix a library, bring cutlery for the kitchen, build something that will be useful to others. » Only obligation: every Wednesday morning, it’s cleaning for all, which avoids paying a cleaning company.
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