Art and Culture in the Service of Psychosocial Skills

On November 27, 2025, the Limousin Regional Directorate of PJJ brought together its teams for a half-day of collective reflection on psychosocial skills, the first step in a three-year initiative.

An institutional framework with ambitious goals

In Limoges, on this Thursday in November, some sixty professionals from the Judicial Protection of Youth gathered for an afternoon marking the launch of a structuring project. The initiative falls within the framework of the Culture-Justice partnership, jointly led by the Limousin Regional PJJ Directorate and the DRAC Nouvelle-Aquitaine, with support from Promotion Santé Nouvelle-Aquitaine. This work is grounded in current public policies, particularly since the interministerial instruction of August 19, 2022, establishing a national strategy for developing psychosocial skills in children and young people.

Psychosocial skills, as defined by the World Health Organization as early as 1993, refer to all the abilities that enable an individual to meet the demands of everyday life. Santé publique France updated them in 2022 according to three broad categories:

1. cognitive skills (self-awareness, critical thinking, decision-making),
2. emotional skills (identification and regulation of emotions, stress management),
3. social skills (communication, empathy, conflict resolution).

For young people under PJJ supervision, often marked by histories of disruption, these abilities constitute both an area of vulnerability and a lever for intervention.
The project led by the Limousin regional directorate stands out through its distinctive positioning: placing art and culture at the heart of psychosocial skills development. This approach deliberately differs from the sometimes dominant normative approaches in media education, favoring instead a humanistic and creative vision. The working hypothesis is based on the capacity of artistic experience to engage the sensory, the emotional, and critical thinking, thereby creating spaces for expression and recognition conducive to personal development.

A co-construction born from professional encounters

The genesis of this seminar dates back to a year of reflection and exchanges. During a day of cultural project presentations in Bordeaux in 2024, Samera Zemani, technical advisor in health promotion at the Limousin DTPJJ, and Benoît Labourdette, filmmaker and educator, began a dialogue that would gradually take shape. This encounter was enriched by the impetus of David Redon, justice-culture liaison at DRAC Nouvelle-Aquitaine, who had for several years been eager to intersect the question of psychosocial skills with cultural mediation.

Benoît Labourdette brings to this project an expertise forged over more than twenty-five years of engagement with PJJ audiences. A filmmaker by training, he was president of the national coordination of Passeurs d’images, an emblematic national program for visual education. His approach articulates artistic creation, participatory pedagogy, and attention to processes of self-construction. Drawing on this background, he ensured the co-design of this day with the regional directorate team, bringing together Samera Zemani, Nora Bennouna (secularism-citizenship liaison), David Nguyen (regional technical advisor), and Amandine Guyon from Promotion Santé Nouvelle-Aquitaine.

The collaboration with Dr. Marie-Noëlle Clément, child psychiatrist and founding member of the 3-6-9-12+ Association, helped anchor the discussion in scientific rigor. Working alongside Serge Tisseron for many years on questions of empathy and child development, she directs the day hospital at CEREP in Paris, where she supports children with severe psychiatric disorders. Her presentation provided the theoretical foundations essential to understanding the psychological mechanisms at play in work on psychosocial skills.

Empathy as the foundation of psychosocial development

Dr. Marie-Noëlle Clément opened her presentation by introducing the framework of her work. Her participation in the federation of Petits Laboratoires d’Empathie (Small Empathy Laboratories), founded by Serge Tisseron, allows her to develop several recognized programs, including the “Game of Three Figures,” an evidence-based program used in bullying prevention in schools. She also mentioned her involvement with the association “3-6-9-12+, Taming Screens and Growing Up,” which works on preventing risks related to excessive screen use, an issue directly linked to the development of empathy in children.

Her remarks helped illuminate the connections between the different components of psychosocial skills. Emotional regulation, the identification of emotions, and the ability to put oneself in another’s place without losing oneself are skills that develop from early childhood, in a favorable and secure environment. Young people under PJJ supervision often show deficiencies in this development, linked to life paths marked by disruptions, abuse, or neglect. Dr. Clément emphasized the importance of sometimes revisiting very early stages of development with adolescents, through activities that allow them to identify and name emotions.

She also addressed the question of guilt and awareness of one’s actions, a particularly sensitive subject in the context of juvenile justice. Some young people find themselves unable to perceive the impact of their actions on others, which is precisely the terrain for working on psychosocial skills. Exchanges with the professionals present made it possible to articulate these theoretical contributions with field realities, particularly on the question of developmental “windows” and the possibility of reopening them even later in life. Research in developmental psychology has demonstrated the effectiveness of psychosocial skills development programs across several dimensions: improvement of psychological well-being, reduction of risk behaviors, and decrease in violent and addictive behaviors (Psychosocial Skills: A Framework for Deployment with Children and Young People, Santé publique France, 2022).

A creative workshop to experience emotions firsthand

Following the theoretical presentation, Benoît Labourdette offered participants a participatory creation workshop, the pivotal moment of the afternoon. The exercise consisted of forming groups of five to six people and creating together, in less than ten minutes, a creative photograph on the theme of psychosocial skills. A deliberately open but technically precise instruction, leaving room for interpretation and collective creativity. The photograph could be abstract, symbolic, show faces or only hands, use elements found in the immediate environment.

This proposal is part of an approach where art is not considered a mere illustrative support but as an experience in its own right. As Benoît Labourdette emphasized, artistic creation is not imitation, but adventure. The goal was not to produce a perfect image or convey an explicit message, but to live together an emotional experience: that of the instruction, of collective negotiation, of choices to be made within a constrained timeframe, of committing oneself in a social space. Dewey’s work on learning through experience (1938) has shown that this type of situation mobilizes skills that cannot be developed through theoretical transmission alone.

The sharing moment revealed all the richness of this approach. Groups were forbidden to comment on their own production; only other participants could express what they perceived, felt, or understood when looking at the image. This reversal of usual roles created a safe space where the gaze of others came to establish the work rather than judge it. Each photograph was signed with the first names of its authors, recognition of each person’s dignity and their contribution to the collective effort. The images projected on the large screen evoked varied emotions, interpretations sometimes surprising for their creators, discoveries about the richness of what they had produced without being fully aware of it.

Benoît Labourdette took time to explain the pedagogical mechanisms of this exercise. The act of naming the emotions felt when viewing an image constitutes learning in itself, the difficulty of which participants were able to appreciate. The benevolent gaze of peers allows one to feel recognized, to better understand what one has created oneself, to understand through lived experience that there are multiple interpretations of the same image, of the same situation, that entering into the perspective of others is constructive, and can plant a small seed of self-confidence. The entire process, from instruction to collective viewing, mobilizes psychosocial skills in a concrete and embodied way. This approach draws on work related to experiential learning, which shows that emotional engagement promotes the anchoring of learning (Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development, D.A. Kolb, 1984).

Field testimonials that inspire

The last part of the afternoon was devoted to feedback from professionals. Amandine Guyon from Promotion Santé Nouvelle-Aquitaine presented the actions carried out in 2023-2024, notably a pedagogical week and sessions with young people co-facilitated with Addiction France. These experiments helped identify obstacles, such as the mixing of structures that does not always foster the creation of bonds between young people, or the lack of preparation beforehand. They also revealed levers, notably the willingness of professionals to engage in a co-construction approach and to introduce complementary workshops around sports, convivial meals, or prevention of cyber-violence.

Caroline Besse, technical teacher at the open environment unit in Guéret, delivered a particularly illuminating testimony on the evolution of her practices. Faced with young people aged 13 to 16 who had dropped out of school, were angry, and convinced they were “failures,” she had to completely rethink her approach. A turning point: in 2022, a young person whose cognitive, emotional, and behavioral difficulties exceeded all usual methods. With the support of her supervisor and the psychologist, she built a secure space with rituals, physical protections, a withdrawal chair never used but reassuring by its mere presence. She self-trained in psychosocial skills, working on interpersonal skills and know-how before any academic learning objective.

Her use of visual arts as a mode of expression and empowerment produced tangible results. A young girl in great difficulty was able, through painting, to externalize in twenty minutes what she could not verbalize, an unblocking that opened the way to subsequent learning. Another, who said she was incapable of anything, went from fear of coloring to completing full boards, eventually joining a qualifying training program. These testimonials concretely illustrate what working on psychosocial skills makes possible: achievable objectives, comprehensible instructions, a right to fail that is no longer experienced as a condemnation but as a step forward.

Nora Bennouna presented the Romance Theater project, which uses theater as an educational medium in the context of radicalization prevention. This project illustrates how artistic mediations allow young people to develop their cognitive skills (consulting a voice, arguing, accepting disagreement without discrediting the other), emotional skills (expressing and managing their emotions in a secure framework), and social skills (interacting with others, finding their place in a collective). Theater helps deconstruct stereotypes linked to culture perceived as elitist, by promoting access to art as a tool for citizenship.

A three-year dynamic begins

This half-day constitutes the first step of a project embedded in duration. The regional directorate presented to participants the perspectives for the years 2025-2027. An inter-institutional and inter-professional seminar is scheduled for January 12, 2026, open to partners of the Regional Committee: ARS, National Education, DRAJES, Departmental Councils, SPIP, media education associations, and cultural actors in the territory. The ambition is to create a territorial community of practice, a space for reflection and sharing different from a traditional working group, where each person brings their material, their questions, their experiments.

Benoît Labourdette presented the training-action program that will unfold in several stages: collective training sessions, field experiments with young people, then reflective feedback to capitalize on and improve practices. This methodology, based on alternation between theory and practice, allows professionals to truly appropriate the tools rather than passively receive knowledge. Collective actions directed at young people are envisioned for Easter vacation 2026, a period that would allow bringing together both schooled and non-schooled youth.

The participatory closing session gathered the desires and availability of professionals. Through a digital contribution tool, participants were able to indicate their wish to join communities of practice, to participate in the training-action around culture and PSS, or to explore other themes such as sports, integration, or citizenship. The mind map projected live showed names gradually registering on the different perspectives: the January seminar, actions with young people, training-actions, communities of practice. About twenty professionals expressed their interest in pursuing this dynamic.

At the end of this afternoon, something was set in motion. Not a revolution of practices, but the beginning of a path. As Benoît Labourdette recalled in conclusion, we only plant seeds. Working on psychosocial skills is a journey, both for the young people and for the professionals who accompany them. Each small exercise, each moment of shared creation, each benevolent gaze cast upon a production constitutes a step on this path. The Limousin PJJ Regional Directorate laid, on this November 27, 2025, the first stone of a collective construction that will continue in the years to come.