MEDIATING, IMAGINING APPRENTICESHIPS
Mélusine Blondel studied at the École du Louvre. In 2019, she becomes an associate of ART KIDS Paris, which promotes art initiation for children. In 2020, she joins the AIRE Learning Sciences master's program at CRI (now Learning Planet Institute), where she studies digital sciences and practices in education. Today, Mélusine is an educational engineer at the University of Cergy, which she met through an internship at CRI. Meet Mélusine.
Mélusine Blondel was born into a family of teachers, and transmission has always attracted her: «I was looking for any way I could to be in the classroom without being a teacher, she quips. Mélusine chose to study art history in high school, and fell in love with it. In higher education, she entered the prestigious École du Louvre, first in art history and archaeology, then in museology/museum studies and cultural mediation. At the same time, she completed a Master's degree at Paris 8 in cultural policy and management in Europe.
«Art is a medium I love very much. I really wanted to convey that.», explains Mélusine. As a student, she also worked at ART KIDS Paris, which introduces children aged 6 to 12 to art. The structure offers both guided tours and more «hands-on» activities to develop children's sense of observation and bring art to life. Mélusine organizes fun guided tours, workshops and educational materials for children.
«I tend to think that you can learn with different approaches».»
«After my studies, I had the idea of doing cultural mediation, but I felt a huge frustration: mediation, in our courses, was very separate from education. It was totally absurd!. Mélusine has thus acquired a great deal of knowledge about museums, but nothing about how the brain works in general, and how we learn and integrate knowledge. «Yet I tend to think that you can learn with different approaches.», she explains.
In 2016, she took over responsibility for educational content at ART KIDS Paris. Mélusine is in her element: she designs content for individuals and structures, manages partnerships with schools, companies and associations, and recruits mediators, a position she previously held. One thing led to another, and Mélusine became Associate CEO of ART KIDS Paris in 2019. «We had a team of around fifteen people. We had to manage school outings, visits to museums and galleries, exhibitions, contemporary art fairs... It was all very exciting!»
Even if ART KIDS Paris comes to an end in 2020, Mélusine wants to capitalize on her teaching experience and train to complete her studies in cultural mediation. «I'd heard of CRI before, but I stumbled across the AIRE Learning Sciences master's program a bit by chance. She has been accepted into the 2020-2021 class of this training in learning sciences («CRI's least «hard sciences» program»)»), and has fond memories of the experience, despite the health context which forces students to take most courses by distance learning.
Education, critical thinking, project management, game design and digital technology at the heart of the AIRE Learning Sciences Master's program
«We were about fifteen different nationalities. There was a Colombian, a Puerto Rican, a Japanese, some Americans, a Thai in the class... There were three of us from France». Mélusine revels in this diversity, which is relative to the École du Louvre: «Overall, it wasn't diverse at all. 90% of the students were French girls from CSP+ backgrounds».
At CRI, working conditions are pleasant, and the atmosphere in the Master's program is excellent, despite the fact that almost all courses are online. In the course of her training, Mélusine studies the major theories of learning, and works with her fellow students on educational issues, critical thinking, project management, and even the game design. «The link between games and learning was very much explored, which was interesting. According to Mélusine, adapting to digital issues is also a key challenge, and she explains that master's degree training is very much based on the ’digital world".’Ikigai : «They show us how important it is to know where we're going.
As part of her Master's degree at CRI, Mélusine is doing an internship in pedagogical and training engineering with Matthieu Cisel, a teacher-researcher at the University of Cergy (CY Cergy Paris Université). «During my internship, we created a MOOC on critical thinking, data science, digital publishing... The topics were hyper varied. I learned a lot of different things», she enthuses. During this experience, Mélusine acquired new skills, including communication, a new string to her bow.
Thanks to this internship, and after a stint as a Office Manager in a medical start-up incubator, Mélusine now works as an educational engineer at the University of Cergy, and seems both fulfilled and stimulated by her missions. On the one hand, she continues to work with Matthieu Cisel on the design of a MOOC, but she also manages the curriculum for a new forensics training course, CY Forensic School (which integrates various subjects such as law and biology). «I'm also going to create a face-to-face program, with a hybrid component.», she enthuses.
A portrait of Marie OLLIVIER
