Art students join mass school protests across France
Art school students joined hundreds of thousands of people on the streets of France on 17 October in protests over schools, police tactics and university admissions.
Ahead of the nationwide demonstrations, The Art Newspaper spoke to students at art schools across France about why they felt compelled to take a stand. Their complaints were concrete. They want more teachers, repairs to crumbling school buildings and an end to Parcoursup, the online system introduced in 2018 that allocates places in post-secondary education.
The marches were large and tense. France's Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez put the Paris turnout at 550,000. Organisers put it at 800,000. A further 300,000 people joined demonstrations in Marseille, the port city in the south.
In Paris, protesters climbed the Marianne statue at Place de la République, the monument to the female symbol of the French Republic, and dressed it in a yellow vest. The reference was to the gilets jaunes, the yellow-vest protest movement of 2018-20. The vest carried the slogan '2026, the police mutilates high-schoolers'.
That language has spread. The school pupil and student movement is now widely described as the gilets jeunes, or young vests. The label captures an alliance between students and older yellow-vest supporters.
The cost of the day was heavy. More than 2,400 people were arrested. Nearly 1,000 police officers and first responders were wounded. In Saint-Etienne, a city in central-eastern France, a 17-year-old protester reportedly lost a hand to a grenade.
Buildings were hit too. In Limoges, in central France, the historic town hall, inaugurated in 1883, was described by city officials as almost 100% destroyed after fire brought down its roof and belfry. In Lyon, in the southeast, a tourism office burned down and 162 local businesses were reportedly destroyed.
Culture felt the disruption directly. The Jeu de Paume in Paris, the art centre known for photography and lens-based work, had to delay the opening of its exhibition of work by Canadian artist Stan Douglas because of the unrest.
The movement built quickly. Pupils in the French overseas territories of Guyana and Mayotte began protesting in late August. Protests at the Lycée Antoine-de-Saint-Exupéry in Créteil, a secondary school southeast of Paris, in mid-September are cited as the trigger for the wider wave in mainland France.
For readers outside France, the picture is this. What started as school blockades over staffing and buildings has grown into a national confrontation, with art students among the most visible marchers.
