Contes et Rencontres Festival

Storytelling Shared in Villages

The Contes et Rencontres Festival is a unique cultural event, born in 1988 in the Provençal Baronnies. For nearly four decades, this traveling festival has brought storytelling to the villages of Drôme and northern Vaucluse, transforming every village hall, every village cafe, every market square into a performance and meeting space for the ancient art of storytelling.

Five Weekends of Stories and Encounters

Each autumn, from November to December, the festival offers five weekends of storytelling performances that travel through the villages of the Baronnies and Haut Vaucluse. Professional storytellers, from all over France and sometimes beyond, journey along the winding roads of this rural territory to meet residents and visitors. Each edition renews its program around various themes exploring the richness of oral traditions: stories from here and elsewhere, nomadic tales, Provençal legends, stories from around the world.

Traveling is at the heart of the festival's identity. Rather than concentrating performances in a single location, Contes et Rencontres chooses to disperse performances across multiple villages, bringing culture to areas where cultural facilities are scarce and where the public does not always have access to live performance. This approach of proximity and cultural decentralization gives the festival a human and warm dimension that makes it unique.

A Living Art for All Audiences

Storytelling, an art of living speech and shared imagination, is at the heart of the festival's programming. The performances are for all audiences: sessions specially designed for children are alongside storytelling evenings for adults, while some performances bring all generations together in the shared pleasure of listening and storytelling. The invited storytellers bring very different styles and universes, from traditional Provençal or Occitan tales to contemporary stories, from adventure narratives to philosophical tales.

An Association Dedicated to Spoken Word

The festival is supported by the association Contes et Rencontres, a non-profit organization recognized for its public service, based in Nyons. Since its creation, the association has worked to promote and disseminate the art of storytelling in rural areas, convinced that storytelling is a powerful vehicle for social connection, cultural transmission, and living together. Over the years, the festival has built a dense network of local partners—municipalities, associations, libraries—that host performances and help keep this unique event alive.