Festival du Conte

A traveling festival in the heart of Indre's libraries

The Festival du Conte is a traveling cultural event supported by the Bibliothèque départementale de l'Indre (BD Indre). Each year, for about a week spread over two weekends, the festival takes over about ten libraries throughout the Indre department to offer the public accessible and free storytelling and shadow theater performances.

Shadow theater, an ancestral art of narration

Shadow theater is at the heart of the festival's programming. This ancestral art, which consists of projecting cut-out silhouettes onto an illuminated screen to tell stories, fascinates young and old with its visual poetry and evocative power. The companies invited by BD Indre master this delicate art and offer performances that combine narration, manipulation of shadow puppets, music, and visual effects to create dreamlike and captivating universes.

The festival also programs traditional storytelling sessions, readings aloud, and introductory workshops on shadow theater, allowing the public to try their hand at this fascinating art and create their own shadow figures.

Bringing rural libraries to life

One of the essential missions of the Festival du Conte is to bring the department's library network to life, especially in rural communities. By investing these local cultural venues, the festival attracts an audience that does not always frequent cultural facilities and creates moments of meeting and sharing around words and imagination. The free admission to all performances and activities guarantees the accessibility of the event to all audiences.

The Bibliothèque départementale de l'Indre, located in Châteauroux, supports the 95 libraries and reading points in towns with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants in the department on a daily basis. The Festival du Conte is part of this mission of cultural dissemination and promotion of reading and orality throughout the territory.

A festival for all ages

The festival's program is designed for all audiences, with performances specially adapted for young children and others for adults. School sessions organized in conjunction with local schools help to introduce young people to the art of storytelling and shadow theater, while evening performances offer adults moments of contemplation and poetic escape.