DC RECONCILIATION Operation Dynamo

The students prepared for a journalism competition organised by the city and the ‘Nord Littoral’ newspaper in Dunkirk on the occasion of the 85th anniversary of Operation Dynamo and the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Dunkirk. First, they met with a journalist who introduced them to his job, explained the expectations for the chosen competition format (podcast), gave them advice on how to structure their project, and proposed two games : one consisting of naming French journalists from photos, and the other consisting of writing/reading a podcast from the day's weather forecast. They then did some general research about the Operation Dynamo and divided  into groups of four to five to create a scenario based on one of the aspects of the event specified by the competition (the historical context, survivors' testimonies, memories and commemorations related to the operation, military strategy, the history of the boats involved, and the reconstruction of the city after the operation). A single scenario was chosen, based on the competition criteria : relevance in the treatment of the topic, quality of research and sources, structure and clarity of production, journalistic style, creativity and originality. Once the script was chosen, the five students whose script was selected took turns speaking, trained finding the right tone and pace for reading their script, and then met with a cultural mediator from the Halle aux Sucres to help them choose the sound effects and music to include in the podcast, before recording it.

The results of the competition were announced at the end of the 6th International Symposium of the Cities of Remembrance Network, which brought together 17 cities that, like Dunkirk, have managed to rise from the ashes after chaos. After the conference, they attended a screening of ‘Memory of Failures : When Memory Fades, History Repeats Itself,’ which explores the mechanisms behind the rise to power of extremists and the dramatic chain of events that follows, and a guided tour of the exhibition ‘Resistance : Memories of Yesterday and Today’, which highlights the many forms of resistance (individual, collective, symbolic) through the prism of contemporary art. A cultural mediator explained to them how the exhibited works question the mechanisms of memory, the traces of history and the contemporary echoes of commitment, and then invited them to reflect on our past and consider the forms of resistance that permeate our present.