Culture is yours!
Here, we make culture everyone's business! Whether you live in the city or the country, whether you're 7 or 77, we want to make culture accessible to everyone and close to home. Concerts, festivals, exhibitions... In our area, culture is multi-faceted and stretches to the four corners of the territory, to help us grow and build ourselves, but also because we see it as a formidable vehicle for bringing people together.
A fast-paced calendar
It's hard to be exhaustive, there are so many! Here, we're all about collective action and we love imagining and building things together, especially when it comes to culture, festivals and sharing! To help you make sense of it all, we've put together a small selection of the major events that punctuate the year in the Pays d'Ancenis!
Shows within easy reach
There's no need to travel miles to enjoy a good play, laugh at a children's show or enjoy a jazz concert! Our three theatres and six cultural venues in Ancenis-Saint-Géréon, of course, but also Couffé, le Cellier, Ligné, Mésangers, Riaillé, Tellier, Vallon-de-L'Erdre and Varades are proof that we want culture to be close and accessible.
MAT is bath!
Spotlight on contemporary art! The MAT's project is perfectly in tune with the desire to make culture accessible to all that we defend in the Pays d'Ancenis. As well as giving people the chance to get up close and personal with the best contemporary art in the area, Le MAT (Montrelais Art Territoire) encourages creative activity by pursuing an active policy of supporting artists, forging links between artists and the public through meetings and workshops, and encouraging amateur artistic practice. Open all year round at two venues: Chapelle des Ursulines in Ancenis-Saint-Géréon and Place de l'Abbaye in Montrelais.
Culture on the move
The monumental sculpture park at Teillé-Mouzeil
Combine the pleasures of a walk with cultural discoveries - that's the idea behind our three artistic trails around the region. Starting with the most famous, the monumental sculpture park at Teillé-Mouzeil. Thirteen hectares sown with the works of contemporary sculptor Jean-Claude Lambert. Between nature and sculpture, you'll discover the largest alignment of megaliths in the world, an olfactory garden, an open-air theatre and a series of monumental works in wood and granite.
The Oudon sculpture trail
It all began in 1996 with the first sculpture created in front of the public by Jean-Claude Lambert, the world-renowned local artist mentioned above. Entitled " Mémoire de sable" ("Memory of Sand "), the work was acquired by the municipality and installed in the harbour. Given its success, the following year the town invited five sculptors to create new works in the courtyard of the château. The result was the International Symposium on Monumental Sculpture, which has been taking place in the harbour since 2001, and has given rise to a veritable trail of some thirty sculptures to date.
See a film
Cinema is the favourite cultural activity of the inhabitants of the Pays d'Ancenis! So, where do you go to watch a film here? In one of the three cinemas in the Pays d'Ancenis, including the Cinéma Eden in Ancenis-Saint-Géréon, with its three arthouse cinemas.
Men, women and landscapes of the cinema
Film and TV director Bernard Toublanc-Michel and costume designer Jacqueline Moreau(who even won a César in 1988 for "La passion Béatrice") both hail from the Pays d'Ancenis. Not forgetting, of course, Louis de Funès, buried at Le Cellier, whose wife owned the Château de Clermont. There is a museum dedicated to him in the château's orangery. The landscapes of the Ancenis region inspired Bernard Toublanc-Michel, of course, for "Adolphe ou l'âge tendre" (1967). The Ancenis region has also been the subject of numerous films, including Vincent Malandrin 's "Caillotte" (1989), films by Angevin filmmaker Jean-Paul Gislard, particularly about the Loire, and a TV documentary about the Bouhyer foundry.
Since 2005, the Ciné-Paumé association in Saint-Mars-la-Jaille has also been involved in film-making in the Ancenis region.
Learning about art through art!
Our local authority has made artistic and cultural education a major focus of our regional cultural project. We are convinced that access to culture from an early age promotes success and personal fulfilment by developing independence, creativity, knowledge, skills and values. As a result, in each of our areas of activity (public reading, the"Ce soir, je sors mes parents" festival, visual arts, the Harpes au Max festival, music and dance at school, etc.), we offer a wide range of activities to schools in the area.
A thousand and one faces, a collective cultural adventure
"A Thousand and One Facesis a successful example of a collaborative cultural project in the Pays d'Ancenis. Initiated around the theme of reading, in conjunction with our library network and numerous partners in the region, it was aimed at schoolchildren, library readers and, more broadly, all local residents. The artist Olivier Letellier, a well-known figure on the European children's theatre scene, worked with them to devise an artistic and cultural itinerary based on four shows performed in Ancenis-Saint-Géréon, Ligné, Loireauxence (Varades) and Saint-Mars-la-Jaille in 2018. The programme combined writing workshops, digital art and sound art workshops, performances, speech gathering and mapping (projections on volume).