Why Choose a Career as a Sociocultural Mediator?
Are you passionate about culture? About music, theater, or visual arts? Have you discovered that culture changed something in your life? Do you want to pass that discovery on to others who have not yet had the chance to make it; do you want to share it with others for whom it could be fundamental? You are made for the career of sociocultural mediator.
What skills are needed to become a sociocultural mediator?
The first skill is the desire to share knowledge, generosity. But it must be accompanied by a good understanding of the issues facing the audiences you address. It is therefore necessary to know how to identify the cultural, social, or religious questions they are asking themselves. And to know how to offer the right workshops to the right audiences according to their knowledge, their journey, and their possibilities.
There is therefore a real skill in adaptability, but also in creativity, in order to propose the mediation approaches and tools that will be best suited and most effective. Digital developments will allow you to considerably enrich your mediation offerings. You will build this adaptability through contact with the audiences you work with. This is perhaps the greatest appeal of this profession: enriching yourself by sharing knowledge and providing support!
Programs to Become a Socio-Cultural Mediator
Within our cultural mediation department at IESA arts&culture, we offer you a three-year program to acquire all the skills needed for this profession. You will take courses on the history of the visual arts, music, theater and film to gain a good knowledge of works of art. You will also study the audiences you will meet, their practices, questions, wishes and needs. You will learn to set up a mediation action, whether an exhibition tour, an art workshop or a discussion group about art or culture. You will create mediation tools adapted to the actions and to different audiences. And, as digital innovations today make it possible to invent more collaborative and participatory means of mediation, you will immerse yourself in this world in order to propose innovative and effective actions and tools!
IESA’s programs therefore allow you to acquire all the skills needed to become a socio-cultural mediator.
Bachelor in Cultural Mediation (Post-baccalaureate admission)
You will be able to continue with a Master at IESA arts&culture to acquire more skills in the field by joining the following program:
Master in Cultural Mediation Policy (Bac+3 admission)
Cultural Facilitator or Sociocultural Mediator: What’s the Difference?
Facilitation is at the heart of the cultural facilitator profession. You will work with different audiences: groups of young or not-so-young people, people in difficulty or living with a disability. With them, you will lead art workshops, introduce them to exhibitions or performances that you will have seen together, and get them to share the emotions they felt at a concert or in a museum. So yes, you will be a group facilitator, but you will be much more than that. The sociocultural mediator is the one who helps people understand, appropriate, and discover works of art. The one who accompanies others along the path they take through their encounters with these works. The one who invites everyone to sometimes become, for the length of a workshop, a creator, an artist. Cultural mediation is therefore much more than facilitation. It means sharing your own experience of culture so that others can in turn discover that it is necessary and beneficial to them. And it means supporting others in this process.
Who will you be a sociocultural mediator for?
It will be up to you to decide. If you believe as we do that culture is essential for everyone, that it is a plus for each person, then you can be a sociocultural mediator for extremely varied audiences. But you will have all the training to find out! Some will specialize in young audiences or even very young audiences! Others will choose teenage or adult audiences in difficulty who do not necessarily have access to all cultural fields. Others will specialize in mediation for the sick, in hospitals, or for people with disabilities. Finally, some may choose to bring culture to more closed institutions such as prisons. The audiences of sociocultural mediation are extremely varied since they are all women and men regardless of their situation.
In Which Type of Organization Will You Be a Sociocultural Mediator?
Culture is essential for social bonds. The sociocultural mediator profession has therefore never been as important as it is today. While neighborhood centers, associations, youth and cultural centers (MJC) and all the players in popular education are obviously natural employers, city halls, departments and regions are also hiring more and more young people. Finally, the mediation departments of museums and theaters are increasingly involved in the social field and need sociocultural mediators well trained for this profession.