Relying on associative actors and the voluntary commitment of certain establishments, the reuse economy has not yet found a viable economic model and remains constrained by legislative barriers.
Since the Covid-19 crisis, the spirit of the short circuit is no longer marginal in museums. There are few public institutions that do not take the path of reusing scenographic materials, out of ecological desire or economic strength. From 2021, a real turning point has taken place with pioneering museums communicating on the success of their experiences and sharing their good practices: the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille, which held the exhibition “The Goya Experience” the opportunity to write a guide for the eco-design of exhibitions; the MAMC+ in Saint-Étienne, which was pleased the same year for not having made a single wood order in three and a half years and thirteen exhibitions; the Paris Museums network, whose experiments carried out since 2017 have resulted in a series of practical fact sheets on the circular economy in cultural places. These successful experiments, carried out within establishments or networks of establishments, were based on the initiative of their teams, their managers or their supervisors. But at the time of establishing circuits on a national scale and solidifying an economic sector of reuse, progress seems more fragile than post-covid enthusiasm would suggest.
Une circularité à optimiserÂ
To understand it, you have to go to Montreuil, to a warehouse in the north of the city occupied since August 2024 by the La Réserve des Arts association. “The very evening we found this premises, I had to sign the liquidation of the association,” remembers Charlène Legendre-Dronne, then president (Simon Jacquemin has since taken over). Specializing in the reuse of waste from event and cultural scenographies, La Réserve des Arts came close to disappearing when it was forced to quitter its warehouse located in Pantin. The association is then in the process of reorientation: based on the provision of scenography materials to professional individuals, the place is well known to artists and Fine Arts students who obtain their supplies there at little cost. “We then noted that circularity needed to be optimized, well beyond …
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