Eating and Being Eaten: A Look Back at a Project Conducted in Detention

Throughout 2025, librarians from the Petite Bibliothèque Ronde of Clamart and the Heure Joyeuse heritage collection worked weekly with a group of men and women detained at the Centre pénitentiaire sud-Francilien in Réau. Accompanied by the SPIP 77 (Seine-et-Marne Integration and Probation Service), they raised awareness and introduced the group to children's literature, inviting them to become curators of an original exhibition, drawing works from the collections of the Heure Joyeuse heritage fund. Throughout the sessions and meetings with various cultural participants (children's publisher, literary critic, heritage curator, lighting designer, graphic designer, public writer, artists, etc.), the inmate-curators gradually chose a theme, the pieces to be exhibited, the wall colors, built a narrative and a path, a space design, and a visitor's guide booklet that they wrote. Then, they brought the exhibition created in detention to life, showing it to their fellow inmates and families, prison staff, and some outsiders, and mediated all the exhibited pieces from February 18 to April 30, 2026.

The inmate-curators chose to explore the theme Eating and Being Eaten, the Great Feast of Stories. The path across 4 rooms brought together about 150 works and invited visitors to taste an entire menu:

• The nourishing story of life offers as an appetizer a reflection on nurturing nature;
• then What are we eating? brings as a starter a reflection on agriculture, from the vegetable garden to the plate, socialization through the table, gluttony;
• Rare or well-done? Wolf fillet hunter sauce and its gingerbread financier makes the main course a focus on the tales Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel;
• Finally Mille-feuille of dreams on a cloud of milk provides as dessert delights for the imagination.

In the fall of 2026, the children's libraries of the Paris network chose to take up the theme worked on by the inmate-curators again, in echo of this project.

In resonance with the exhibition Prisoners: The Last Years of Saint-Lazare Prison, 1919-1932, dealing with the carceral past of the Françoise Sagan media library, this round table aims to retrace the genesis of this extraordinary project with some of the participants, and to talk about detention today through this example of a cultural project.

With cultural contributors to the detainees:

Brigitte Morel, Les Grandes personnes editions

Sylvie Kha, public writer (and former librarian)

Sophie Van Der Linden, author and critic, specialist in children's literature

And librarians involved in the project:

Roxane Schaeffer, Michèle Valentines, La Petite Bibliothèque Ronde,

Hélène Valotteau, Heure Joyeuse heritage fund - Françoise Sagan media library

In addition, discover a selection of works chosen by the inmate-curators in November-December in the library network:

• In the 20 display cases and on the walls of the children's and Heure Joyeuse heritage sections of the Françoise Sagan media library, on the 1st floor;
• at the Heure Joyeuse in the 5th arrondissement, with a focus on Little Red Riding Hood;
• at the Hergé library.

Now they all sit in a circle around the fireplace. They tell jokes, they discuss. The hen exclaims: "How pleasant it is to be all together! We should have dinners more often!"

Anaïs Vaugelade, Stone Soup, l'école des loisirs, 2000,

To learn more:

- the exhibition press kit

- information about the project on the Petite Bibliothèque Ronde website

- the visitor's guide booklet designed by the inmates for the exhibition Eating and Being Eaten: The Great Feast of Stories, which was held from February 18 to April 30, 2026 at the Centre pénitentiaire sud-francilien

Exhibition Eating and Being Eaten, Centre pénitentiaire sud-francilien, 2026 ; Credits : Lucile CasanovaExhibition Eating and Being Eaten, Centre pénitentiaire sud-francilien, 2026 ; Credits : Lucile CasanovaExhibition Eating and Being Eaten, Centre pénitentiaire sud-francilien, 2026 ; Credits : Lucile CasanovaExhibition Eating and Being Eaten, Centre pénitentiaire sud-francilien, 2026 ; Credits : Lucile CasanovaExhibition Eating and Being Eaten, Centre pénitentiaire sud-francilien, 2026 ; Credits : Lucile CasanovaExhibition Eating and Being Eaten, Centre pénitentiaire sud-francilien, 2026 ; Credits : Lucile CasanovaExhibition Eating and Being Eaten, Centre pénitentiaire sud-francilien, 2026 ; Credits : Lucile CasanovaExhibition Eating and Being Eaten, Centre pénitentiaire sud-francilien, 2026 ; Credits : Lucile Casanova