The Bondy Blog: My city will stay

As part of the edu­ca­tional and cul­tural ini­tia­tives " Support for occa­sional artistic and cul­tural edu­ca­tion (EAC)" and "Once upon a time, there was my high­school", launched by the Île-de-France region for high school stu­dents, Bétonsalon - center for art and research pro­poses a tour in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Bondy Blog. The pro­ject is based on the ambi­tion to work col­lec­tively on a tex­tual and visual device for rewriting sto­ries, rumors and urban legends.

"My city will stay" is imag­ined by the Bondy Blog as a par­tic­i­pa­tive column for high school stu­dents, designed to ini­tiate media edu­ca­tion. During five ses­sions con­ducted with the STMG junior class of the Lycée Julie-Victoire Daubié (jour­nalist and first woman to obtain the bac­calau­reate in 1861), the ques­tions of the jour­nalist pro­fes­sion, the man­u­fac­ture of the infor­ma­tion, the rela­tion­ship of each person to the media and social net­works, but also and espe­cially their city, Argenteuil, were dis­cussed in turn.

Combining times of dis­cus­sion and debate on cur­rent events, Latifa Oulkhouir, director of the Bondy Blog, allowed high school stu­dents to crit­i­cally read the infor­ma­tion they con­sume: diver­si­fying and com­paring its sources while con­stantly ques­tioning the reli­a­bility of the press, this was the first step in each of the first three ses­sions. Then came the time for writing.

In order to become aware of the rich­ness of their daily lives, Latifa sug­gested to the stu­dents that they approach, through writing, themes that are close to their indi­vidual hearts and linked to their neigh­bour­hood. From this col­lec­tion of mem­o­ries was born the real­iza­tion of a short film punc­tu­ated by sto­ries inter­twining per­sonal sto­ries and the his­tory of the city in the set­ting of the school.

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PRESENTATION
Bondy Blog is an online medium cre­ated at the time of the urban revolts of November 2005, the Bondy Blog aims to give a voice to the inhab­i­tants of working class neigh­bour­hoods. This objec­tive - telling the daily story of those who are not heard or whose voices are dis­torted, stig­ma­tized, in a minority – is pur­sued by opening its edi­to­rial office to some twenty reporters, and not only pro­fes­sionals but also jour­nal­ists in training, in search of employ­ment, at the begin­ning of their careers or even retired, forming a team whose second voca­tion is media edu­ca­tion.

Since 2007, the Bondy Blog has been orga­nizing mas­ter­classes run by media pro­fes­sionals and open to all. In 2009, the Bondy Blog ini­ti­ated the cre­ation of a "equal oppor­tu­nity prepa­ra­tion" class for jour­nalism school entrance exams ded­i­cated to schol­ar­ship stu­dents, in part­ner­ship with the École de Journalisme de Lille. Finally, since 2013, the Bondy Blog reporters have been speaking at schools across France to raise young people’s aware­ness of the media, making them observers of their own reality, encour­aging them to step back and become once again the actors of their lives.

Since January 1st, 2019, the Bondy Blog has been headed by Latifa Oulkhouir, director, and Ilyes Ramdani, editor-in-chief.