The publication Mon Journal du Monde is a yearly collaboration between large groups of eleven- to fifteen-year olds and professional artists made possible by Paris design studio MaxiSouk and Le Bal, an arts centre housed in a renovated former dance hall, Chez Isis, in north Paris’s 18th arrondissement.
Each edition begins with weekly workshops for pupils, run by invited artists and local teachers. The schoolchildren create shared stories using photos they have taken or collected, and define the journal’s editorial emphasis, layout and its interconnections between photography and text.
‘Each year, the theme changes and allows young people to ask themselves about the meaning and power of contemporary images … and the role of images in their own lives,’ says Le Bal’s Eve Escofet Miro. Maxime Bersweiler and Soukvilay Cordier, the duo behind MaxiSouk, add that each project aims to challenge a young audience about ‘what goes on in the making of an image.’
Digital printing was an obvious way to achieve the project’s ambitions for its participants, since there are several different versions each year (nine in 2018-19, five in 2019-20).
‘We needed the flexibility to make each issue without the economic pressure of the numbers of copies you need to make offset worthwhile,’ explained the designers. Escofet Miro says: ‘The quality of the publication is an important factor in the success of the project.’
MaxiSouk’s Bersweiler and Soukvilay say that ‘a thorough look at each project’s colour rendering and quality’ was made possible through partnerships with local printers, who gave them enough time to run tests before printing.
The publication is wire-stitched, which makes possible the narrow outer covers, with a front page that reveals the edition’s title and the Mon Journal du Monde masthead on the wider inner pages. Monochrome pictures on the inside covers show the schoolchildren in action.
‘Each year we pick a new paper colour to represent the new theme; the first year was Woodstock Blu Intenso; the second was Sirio Flamingo Rough,’ say Bersweiler and Cordier.
The theme of the first edition (2018-19) was ‘Image de soi, Image des autres, Créer ensemble’ [‘Self-image, Images of otherness, Creating together’]. ‘Nous sommes là’ [‘We are here’] was made by eight young people from a Non-Institutional Educational Action (AEMO) in Beauvais with artist Léa Neuville. ‘Manières d’êtres’ [‘Forms of being’] was made by twelve young people – ‘Les jeunes du Dispositif Pass’Foot’ in Sarcelles – with artist Safouane Ben Slama.
The 2019-20 edition’s theme was ‘Image et Geste’ [‘Image and gesture’]. 120 young people worked on the theme with artists Emma Cossée Cruz, Céline Drouin Laroche, Juliette Mancini, Kim lan Nguyên Thi and Alexandra Serrano and Léa Neuville.
The ambitious 2020-21 edition, delayed by the pandemic, has the theme ‘Voir c’est croire, la preuve par l’image? [‘Seeing is believing, proof through images?’] and will involve 100 students from five institutions.
Mon Journal du Monde was awarded an ‘Art pour Grandir’ [‘Art for growth’] certificate by the City of Paris.