The Viel Audon project : thirty years of group culture

When new phenomena appear, one realises that there had been previous signs of their existence in fact for some time, but they were inconspicuous and more or less idealistic. In the small village of Le Viel Audon, situated in the Ardèche gorges, ten thousand young people took turns over thirty years to work on a 'building site, open to the public'. By rebuilding houses which were in ruins, they were actually acquiring a talent which would prove to be crucial in the global village, the ability to work together. Béatrice and Gérard Barras, who founded the project, tell us the exceptional story of this 'laboratory' where each generation of young people works together to share its savoir-faire and organisational knowledge with subsequent generations, and where one can discover the extraordinary accomplishments of group action by simply using one's physical and mental capacities.