“Bäerbelendag mat de Kanner” (Saint Barbara’s Day with the Children) is a school and intergenerational project by the CNCI (Centre national de la culture industrielle), which allowed students in Esch-sur-Alzette to discover the traditions of Saint Barbara’s Day and Luxembourg’s mining heritage.

From November 24 to December 3, 2025, creative and educational workshops introduced children to the meaning and symbols of this celebration before they participated in the parade on December 4 through the city streets. This project fostered cultural transmission and strengthened intergenerational bonds through this tradition, which has been listed in the National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage in the category of social customs since November 30, 2022.

The multidisciplinary project based on Maurice Ravel’s opera “L’Enfant et les sortilèges” brought together students, teachers, professional artists, and local partners in an ambitious artistic creation blending music, theater, and dance. Led by the Conservatoire du Nord in collaboration with the Centre des Arts Pluriels, this educational and cultural project aimed to make opera accessible to all while promoting inclusion and professional development for the participants.

Three public performances, including one for schools, reached a wide audience, with the participation of students aged 8 to 65. Guided by performing arts professionals, the young artists experienced the realities of stage production and developed essential artistic and interpersonal skills.

As part of the project ‘Forgotten Victims – What Now?’, students from ENAD (National School for Adults) carried out an interdisciplinary theatre project in collaboration with their teacher and professional artists under the direction of theatre educator Laetitia Lang.

The project is based on an in-depth reflection on the ‘forgotten victims’ of Nazism, highlighting groups that have long been marginalised: homosexuals, people of non-Christian faiths, Sinti and Roma, black people, and people living on the streets.

The students designed the play largely independently: writing the texts, creating the scenes, and recording the sound. Their work combined historical research with reflection on current societal issues.

Through a collective artistic approach, the project aimed to raise awareness of human rights, historical memory and social responsibility. It took the form of a play, which revealed the progress made by the students in their creative and research process.

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Since 2022, the Sommer Foundation has supported the artistic approach developed by photographer Cristina Nuñez, particularly in her work with young people. Through the project “The Self-Portrait Experience (SPEX)”, followed by the “EMoSEE” initiative, she seeks to provide secondary school teachers with methods and tools to engage students in exploring their relationship to images, to themselves, and to others. By promoting the self-portrait over the selfie—which often distorts identity through filters and by rejecting images that do not conform to certain beauty or happiness standards—she works with teenagers on the concept of self-acceptance. At an age when self-perception is especially challenging, she trains professionals in educational settings to guide high school students along a path of self-recognition and openness to others.

This time, we have chosen to support a new stage in the artist’s work. Although Cristina Nuñez has already worked in prisons in other countries, she had never had the opportunity in Luxembourg to engage with young people placed in institutions by judicial order. For the past year, she has been in discussion with the socio-educational center of Dreiborn to explore the possibility of such an intervention. Designed in close collaboration with the institution’s leadership, the project will run from August to December, beginning with an open-setting phase followed by work in a closed environment. Naturally, the theme is particularly relevant to this young audience, many of whom face complex, even critical, situations and experience deep self-doubt.

While artistic activities have already taken place in Dreiborn, the Foundation’s support now makes it possible to envision a longer-term program with hoped-for positive impacts on the targeted population.

“Rise in Bloom” is a participatory community project that invites young people aged 12 to 20 to engage in an interdisciplinary creative process. In collaboration with professional artists, the participants develop a 15-minute pre-performance, presented ahead of the premiere of the choreographic production “Florescence in Decay”, at the CAPE in Ettelbrück.

At the heart of this project is not only the final result, but above all, the creative and collective process. Guided by four workshop leaders with diverse expertise — David Laplant (video), Anja Di Bartolomeo (writing), Natercia Rebelo (set design), and Elisabeth Schilling (choreography) — the young participants are accompanied throughout the entire creative journey.

Over the course of the project, the young people conduct interviews with local communities, associations, and groups in Ettelbrück, focusing on universal themes such as nature, metamorphosis, utopia, and the cycle of life — themes that are also explored in “Florescence in Decay”. During the creation phase, they also come into contact with professional dancers.

The collected material is transformed into two artistic formats:

• A visual installation, composed of video footage, audio recordings, and written statements from the interviews, exhibited in the CAPE’s public spaces.

• An interdisciplinary performance, emerging from the imagination and experiences of the young participants, performed as a pre-show before the main production.

“Rise in Bloom” builds on the success of a community project carried out in 2024 with the same artistic team. The enthusiasm of the previous participants — and even their parents, who expressed the wish to see such an initiative continue — led to the decision to build on this proven interdisciplinary format rather than starting from scratch.

The project is also part of the celebrations marking 25 years of the CAPE, and contributes to the cultural revitalization of Ettelbrück, by encouraging civic participation and fostering social connection. It offers young people a unique opportunity to express their creativity, build self-confidence, meet new people from diverse backgrounds, and learn to embrace difference.

The Sommer Foundation supports “Rise in Bloom” because the project reflects values it holds dear: access to culture for young people, active participation, and the promotion of cultural life in regional areas. Having already supported two large-scale participatory projects led by the same partner, the Foundation has established a lasting relationship of trust with the CAPE — a committed institution rooted in its community.

By encouraging young people to express themselves through a collaborative, interdisciplinary process, “Rise in Bloom”contributes to the vitality of local cultural life while nurturing creativity, critical thinking, and openness among its participants.