The aim of this proposal is to consider the partnership experienced through an artistic project on agroecology that took place in the North-Pas-de-Calais region in 2015-2016 in the eight highschools of the French Agricultural Training System. The Sensitive dimension of partnership through an artistic musical project has already been introduced (Covez, 2015). Since 2012, the agroecology has become the priority of the institution. Each agricultural region has therefore created an Educational and Agroecological Transitory Plan. The programs tend to contain it, as the basic line is to “otherwise producing learning and otherwise teaching learning”. The partnership in the framework of Sustainable Development has also been studied (Covez 2009) showing the intercultural competencies developed through a French/English circus practice. Now, as the French agricultural institution made of agroecology its priority, the aim of the project has been to introduce an artistic practice to better understand the concept of agroecology itself. This time the framework is the “human agroecology” that emphasises “the social representations that structure the relations between individuals, social groups, their practices and environments” (R. Audet, C. Gendron 2012). The systemic and critical agroecologies are actually not sufficient to analyse the representations and socio-cultural practices that have to be taken into account so as to modify them. Then the human agroecology has only been studied on cultural subjects, for instance collective gardens (Muramatsu 2010). Actually the question is related to the human ecology which has rarely explored the social and cultural representations and practices that could be influenced, changed or improved by another approach (Audet 2012). So, this is also an international challenge for human agroecology . Besides thanks to the agroecology based on the territory and the people, our aim is to approach in some measures the “Partnership Action-Research” that showed in different countries how to empower the communities and to develop the collective autonomy (Faure & alii 2010). PAR elaborated so as “to produce new knowledge, solve a problem identified by the actors and reinforce the actors’ capacities to a bigger autonomy” (Selemna 2010), seems to perfectly correspond to the agroecological transition.

So the question is: “Does an artistic practice partnership contribute to an agroecology education ?”. Actually there is no definition of agroecological education as such. The focus is on training to realise change in different agricultural producing areas. For us, transition to agroecology would therefore mean training to a internationaly interesting constant collective change. Besides, this artistic partnership has been selected as project of the future by the French Ministry for the 50^th anniversary of the “animators-teachers” responsible for the project.

The hypothesis is that artistic partnership represents a tool for educational change in respect to agroecology. On the one hand, the representations may change the understanding of the complex agroecological concept. On the other hand, the artistic partnership may help creating an educational situation that can enable the awareness of the need of change. The expected benefits are cognitive, social and friendly-environmental with intellectual but also sensitive aspects. Whereas the impacts of the agroecological programs are aimed to be more technical, professional or economical, the contribution through an artistic purpose is more socio-cultural. Actually we would like to get a better understanding of this artistic and educational practice and its educational perceptions of agroecology through art, as a change of way of living. The difficulty lies on the tension to get open to sensitivity and intellectually complex dimension of agroecology. Accepting the sensitive process inside us enriches but also provoke some unbalance and change that we have to face to keep on partnering, acting and creating. Accepting the systemic agroecology is quite demanding too.

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