Manger et être mangé : retour sur un projet mené en détention

Throughout the year 2025, librarians from the Petite Bibliothèque Ronde de Clamart and the patrimonial fund Heure Joyeuse intervened every week with a group of men and women detained at the Prison Center on Francilien, in Réau. Accompanied by the SPIP 77 (insertion and probation service of Seine et Marne), they sensitized and initiated the group to youth literature, and invited them to become curators of an original exhibition, drawing the works from the collections of the heritage fund Heure Joyeuse. Over the course of the sessions and meetings with various cultural stakeholders (youth editor, literary critic, heritage curator, lighting designer, graphic designer, public writer, artists,...) the curators-detainees have gradually chosen a theme, the exhibited rooms, the colors of the walls, built a speech and a path, a setting in space, a booklet to help the visit that they have written. Then, they took the exhibition created in detention to visit their fellow detainees and families, prison staff and some outsiders, and mediated all the exhibits from 18 February to 30 April 2026.

The commissioners-detainees chose to question the theme Eating and being eaten, the great feast of stories. The course on 4 rooms gathered about 150 works and invited visitors to taste a whole menu:

The nourishing history of life offers as an appetizer a reflection on nurturing nature;

Does Keskon eat? brings as an entrance a reflection on agriculture, from the vegetable garden to the plate, socialization by the table, gluttony;

Bleeding or in point? Wolf fillet hunter sauce and its gingerbread financier makes the dish of resistance a focus on the tales The Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel;

Enfin Mille-feuille of dreams on a cloud of milk brings in dessert delights for the imaginary.

In autumn 2026, the youth libraries of the Parisian network choose to take again the theme worked by the commissioners-detainees, echoing this project.

In resonance with the exhibition Prisoners: the last years of the prison Saint-Lazare, 1919-1932, dealing with the prison past of the médiathèque Françoise Sagan, this round table aims to trace the genesis of this extraordinary project with some of the speakers, and to talk about the detention today through this example of cultural project.

With cultural stakeholders for inmates:

- Brigitte Morel, editions Les Grandes personnes

- Joëlle Jolivet, author-illustrator

- Sylvie Kha, public writer (and former librarian)

- Sophie Van Der Linden, author and critic, specialist in children's literature

And librarians involved in the project:

- Roxane Schaeffer, Michèle Valentines, The Petite Bibliothèque Ronde,

- Hélène Valotteau, heritage fund Heure joyeuse - médiathèque Françoise Sagan

In addition, discover a selection of works chosen by the curators held in November-December in the library network:

In the 20 showcases and on the walls of the youth sections and heritage fund Heure Joyeuse of the médiathèque Françoise Sagan, on the 1st floor;

Heure Joyeuse in the 5th arrondissement, with a focus on the Little Red Riding Hood;

at the Hergé library, in December, a small hanging around gourmet heroes.

Now they all sit in a circle around the fireplace. They tell jokes, they talk. The hen exclaims: "How nice to be together! We should make dinners more often!"

Anaïs Vaugelade, A stone soup, the school of leisure, 2000,

For more information:

- the exhibition press kit

- Information about the project on the website of Petite Bibliothèque Ronde

- the visit assistance booklet designed by the inmates for exposition Manger and to be eaten: the great feast of stories, which was held from 18 February to 30 April 2026 at the South-Francilian Prison Center

Exposition Manger and be eaten, South African prison, 2026; Credits: Lucile Casanova

Exposition Manger and to be eaten, South African prison, 2026; Credits: Lucile Casanova

Exposition Manger and be eaten, South African prison, 2026; Credits: Lucile Casanova

Exposition Manger and to be eaten, South-French prison, 2026; Credits: Lucile Casanova

Exposition Manger and to be eaten, South African prison, 2026; Credits: Lucile Casanova

Exposition Manger and to be eaten, South African prison, 2026; Credits: Lucile Casanova

Exposition Manger and be eaten, South African prison, 2026; Credits: Lucile Casanova

Exposition Manger and to be eaten, South-French prison, 2026; Credits: Lucile Casanova