Community and culture

For SUEZ ENVIRONNEMENT, access to culture is a priority and must not be contingent on resource availability, age or social milieu. The Group encourages cultural exchange through various sponsorship projects.

• The CENTQUATRE. The Group is one of the founding members of the endowment fund established to support the activity of this 39,000 m² space devoted to the contemporary arts, located in the 19^th arrondissement of Paris.

• Support for the Friends of Magnum Photos organisation, which is behind the new Le Bal exhibition space in Paris devoted to all forms of photography and documentary images: photography, video and new media. An educational platform called “The Making of an Image” has been established there to educate nearly 4,000 middle- and high-school students from low-income neighbourhoods in the Île-de-France region on reading and critically analysing images. Among the programmes offered by this educational platform, SUEZ ENVIRONNEMENT supports “My Journal of the World”, an extracurricular workshop held in middle schools. This workshop offers middle-school students a chance to learn about and experiment with the entire process of producing, broadcasting and receiving an image in 10 training sessions.

• Partnership with the Estuaire 2007-2009-2012 Nantes – Saint-Nazaire cultural demonstration. On this occasion, the Group supports the perennial work of Gilles Clément entitled “The Garden of the Third Landscape”, an ever-changing park on the roof of the Saint-Nazaire submarine base.
  
• Support for the creation of the Arthothèque, in partnership with the city of Strasbourg. This complex is designed to educate the general public about contemporary art by giving everyone a chance to borrow and take home, for a maximum of 1 month, one of the 500 engravings, paintings or photographs available. The purpose of this place is also to democratise access to art thanks to scheduled exhibits, performances and exhibit previews in the city’s public spaces. Through its acquisitions and its mediation work, the Arthothèque encourages the creation of contemporary art.

Contributing to the social and economic growth of regions

SUEZ ENVIRONNEMENT has encouraged economical land development and since 2009 has sponsored a research chair at the Institut d’Etudes Avancées (IEA) in Nantes. The goal is to develop a new kind of relationship between researchers from the countries of the South and those from the North.

The main themes of the work done in connection with the chair are urban and land use planning. This work is intended to contribute to a better understanding of the land, the behaviour of its inhabitants, and the expectations and challenges stemming from their development.