Some of the teaching staff at Vernoux-en-Vivarais secondary school commissioned a work to “give visible form to their optimism”.
The rural secondary school of Vernoux-en-Vivarais is well established and recognised in its community and supported by a team driven by clear and evident educational creativity. Yet, at the start of each new school year, the teachers observe a lack of confidence and ambition among pupils from highly disadvantaged backgrounds, for whom the school is the only gateway to culture. The commissioning team’s wish for the artist was to “make their optimism visible” – the most powerful stance for opening up new possibilities. The playground, a space of togetherness by nature, was chosen as the site of intervention for Jan Kopp, the artist selected for the generosity and deeply contextual nature of his practice.
Although the project was significantly slowed down by the health crisis in 2020 and 2021, the connection between the artist and the school was never broken. Jan Kopp designed a living artwork, conceived as a tool to encourage openness to the world and greater self-confidence. And what better image of optimism than the plant world, which thrives on sunlight and transforms its own waste into the seeds of new life? From this came the idea of turning the playground into a garden, leading to the collaboration between Jan Kopp and the landscape designers of Atelier Bivouac.
Not only does the garden carry strong symbolic meaning, but it also responds directly to many requests expressed by pupils: shade, places to sit, spaces where they can come together in groups, large and small, areas to retreat to and room to play. The entire project has been developed with an ethos of simplicity, repurposing of materials, and, above all, generosity.
