Opened in June 2016, the Cité du Vin The Cité du Vin de Bordeaux offers visitors a 3,000 m² permanent tour, comprising 18 modules divided into 6 thematic universes. Following the renewal of this tour, inaugurated at the beginning of February 2023, Antoine Roland spoke to Karine Marchadour, head of cultural mediation and accessibility at the Cité du Vin, about the challenges involved and how the new permanent exhibition was created.
AR – WHAT WERE THE CHALLENGES INVOLVED IN REDESIGNING YOUR PERMANENT ITINERARY?
KM – Since the Cité du Vin opened in 2016, our biggest challenge has been to satisfy our visitors. However, with the health crisis, we felt that audiences needed more materiality, things experienced and emotions. In addition, Cité du vin ‘s scientific and cultural project has been enriched in recent years under the impetus of Véronique Lemoine, our scientific manager. In line with this cultural project, we felt it was necessary to put the living world and the human/nature link back at the heart of our tour, as well as the challenges posed by climate change. Finally, we were given the financial opportunity to envisage the gradual overhaul of our permanent tour via the Region and the mobilization of the React-EU fund (with the condition of finalizing this overhaul in 2023!).
Three reasons that have led to the decision in 2021 to readjust this itinerary to better satisfy our audiences and make them want to (re)come and discover the Cité du Vin thanks to a more accessible, participative and fun visitor experience.
We also felt it essential to maintain the creative and technological leap we had already made when we opened Cité du vin.
Finally, this new Permanent Exhibition was an opportunity to rebalance the structure of the entire tour, while maintaining overall aesthetic coherence. Until now, the tour had begun with too much content and too little time, which prevented visitors from taking full advantage of the richness of the entire exhibition…
AR – HOW AND WITH WHOM DID YOU WORK ON THE REDESIGN?
KM – First of all, we carried out a series of qualitative and quantitative audience surveys. From a quantitative point of view, our visit companion enabled us to identify the length of time spent by our visitors and their areas of interest. In parallel with this analysis, students from Kedge Business School conducted numerous qualitative post-visit interviews. Finally, focus groups with Bordeaux and non-Bordeaux visitors were conducted by 100% quali, to gain a better understanding of their perception of Cité du vin: what they had visited, what remained of their visit, what they wanted to find there.
This basis enabled us to analyze, note and imagine new experiences to be implemented, characterizing them according to their types of input: cognitive, emotional, bodily or aesthetic. From the outset, this work was carried out with three complementary viewpoints: the scientific (Véronique Lemoine), the more museographical (Marion Eybert and Laura Dubosc) and the public mediation and accessibility viewpoints. This committee analyzed and rewrote the museographic project, each time specifying the expected experience: the key messages, the museographic and scenographic avenues to be considered, the type of entry to be favored (playful, physical, etc.)…
Once the museographic project had been defined, various service providers were recruited, on the one hand to renew the content of 8 modules without altering their scenography, and on the other to renew the scenography of 7 modules. Renewing part of the scenography cost around 1.8 million euros, and audiovisual production around 1.2 million.
A number of companies were called in to help with the content: Sim&Sam and Maud Martinot (scenography) for the “A table” module, The Mill for “Le vin à la conquête du monde”, Clap 35 for the “Terroirs du monde” module, Blue Yeti for “Six familles de vin” and Films d’ici for “Ca tourne!”, “Ca peut servir!”, “Allée des tendances” and “Saga de Bordeaux”.
For the “Content + scenography” project, a design-build contract was awarded to Clémence Farrel, Ich&Kar (art direction), The Mill (audiovisual production) and Illusio (interactive). To set up these new modules, the Cité had to close for a month in January.
Last but not least, the visitor companion has been developed by our DNSI team (10 people). Our new tour companion makes it easy for visitors to personalize their tour: they can select their language (8 possible languages), the length of their tour (between 1h and 3h) and the choice of themes that interest them, as well as their disability if required (audiodescription, transcription and easy language).
AR – WHAT CHARACTERIZES THIS NEW ROUTE?
KM – It’s more accessible, clearer and warmer. We’ve made it easier to access content, and from early feedback, visitors really appreciate this.
Among those we wanted to develop:
We have reduced and eliminated the use of screens to give greater space to a material and emotional approach. In this respect, we reduced the number of screens in favor of a multiplication of different projection surfaces. We were also keen to bring tangible elements back into the journey: soil, bunches of wax grapes, and so on.
We also had to redeploy content in our different visitor areas and work on their distribution in the space to make the visitor’s journey more fluid. This was the case for content that had previously been presented on the mezzanine floor, covering a wide range of subjects. We have harmonized them and focused on a single theme, the art of living, approached in different ways.
Without necessarily eliminating any subjects, we also wanted to deal with them more effectively, to make them easier to understand. This is the case, for example, with the wine-making process, which until now had been divided into three different sections. It has now been brought together in a complete and clear experience for the visitor, which physically illustrates the process (from the cellar to the vat).
Finally, in line with our CSR policy, we have chosen to give associations and cultural organizations the opportunity to recover scenographic elements from our old exhibition, while actively considering the energy consumption of the new exhibition (fewer servers, fewer screens, etc.).
Many thanks to Karine Marchadour for her time and availability.
