My Precious One

Since 2009, the Seine-Saint-Denis County Council has been backing “la Culture et l’Art au Collège (CAC)”. This project is based to a large extent on the presence in class for several weeks (40 hours) of an artist or scientist whose mission is to engage the students in a process of research and creation.

Contributors:
Designers

Project Manager:
Lucille Negre

Objectives:
This comprehensive project gets students to navigate between industrial formats, methodical rigour and endless variations in order to explore the wealth of possibilities to customise a normal bike and turn it into something unique and incomparable.

Workshops:
Phase 1
What do the students really know about “tuning”? The contributor helps them decipher this cultural practice. The class is supplied with a body of literature including magazines, reports, accounts, etc. The students analyse the models and discuss their characteristics. The contributor introduces the way in which tuning flirts with design and the ways in which it differs. The students learn the codes. The class goes to a bicycle sale to choose, by group, their future bikes. Back in class, each group carefully analyses its bike: pedalling system, wheels, handlebars and frame. Each student needs in-depth knowledge of its characteristics and potential. The groups then have to define their project and decide upon the main focus they wish to give their bikes. The students discuss and defend aesthetics, use and price and have to specify the main parameters they consider important to enhance their creation. They sketch their preliminary designs.

Phase 2
DIY, tweaking and subversion are the key words of the project’s second phase. The classroom is turned into a design studio and manufacturing workshop. Instead of two wheels, what about six wheels, three seats and a lot of accessories? The initial ideas materialise and the sketches begin to take shape. The students polish chrome, cut frames and extend handlebars. The groups subvert the rules and give free rein to their creativity, welding, extending, shortening, deploying, building and dismantling. An initial diagnostic is made. Since they cannot do everything in the classroom, the students call upon the tuning community, which comes to their assistance to make some of their ideas become reality and to improve their bikes’ performance. Depending on the budget, some of their ideas must be abandoned and new solutions found. The final adjustments are made.

Participating Schools:
- ALBERT CAMUS, ROSNY SOUS BOIS
- PIERRE SEMARD, DRANCY
- LUCIE AUBRAC, VILLETANEUSE

Photos:PIERRE ANTOINE