Student Outreach at Festival Transamériques (FTA): a cultural mediation experience that stimulates personal transformation

Abstract: The purpose of this article is to present the educational spinoffs of the Student Outreach program of the Festival Transamériques (FTA), a festival devoted to the creation of contemporary theatre and dance performance in Québec. A first field investigation was conducted in 2010 with fifty adolescents, followed by another in 2014 to validate its results. The research showed that the event acts as a kind of rite of passage for young people, serving as a source of self-discovery as much as well as generating openness to others at an aesthetic level and on a cultural and socio-political plan.