For five weeks this spring, a former school on the banks of the St. Lawrence River transformed into a living studio a place where language, landscape, and artistic practice blurred into one another.
Members of the inaugural Studio Baie-Saint-Paul cohort gather after five weeks of artistic creation and French-language immersion. | Photo: Émile Dontigny.
Inside the Musée d'art contemporain de Baie-Saint-Paul (MACBSP), 18 emerging artists and students from Concordia worked together as members of the first cohort of Studio Baie-Saint-Paul. The ambitious new residency immerses students from Concordia in a fully francophone artistic environment in the heart of Charlevoix.
The project is a collaboration between MACBSP, Concordia's Faculty of Fine Arts, Réussir en français, and the Département d'études françaises.
"The people of Baie-Saint-Paul warmly welcomed us into their community of creatives," says undergraduate participant Arielle Longo. "Throughout the program we were encouraged by our French teachers, who thoughtfully curated their courses to be relevant to our artistic disciplines."
From artist talks and museum visits to nature hikes, Longo says the students spent five weeks "completely immersed in inspiration."
"The program has transformed my understanding and appreciation of pedagogy, and I hope that many more students at Concordia will have the opportunity to experience this amazing educational experience."
'A deep dive into the culture'
Designed for anglophone and allophone students in the Faculty of Fine Arts, Studio Baie-Saint-Paul integrates language learning directly into artistic production treating French not as a separate skill, but as part of the creative process itself.
Throughout the residency, students navigated critiques, collaboration, and artistic research in French, building both fluency and confidence in a professional cultural context.
"Studio Baie-Saint-Paul has been a wonderful experience and extremely helpful in my development as a curator working in Montreal," says PhD student Casper Sutton-Fosman.
"I came to this program knowing that improving my French would be deeply valuable for me as a curator and a scholar in working with [francophone] artists. It was especially helpful to learn specialised language that will support my integration into a bilingual art world,"
Set against the picturesque landscape of Baie-Saint-Paul, the residency encouraged participants to be inspired by the surrounding environment.
"The land, the river, and the people welcomed us in with their stories and ways of working it was a deep dive into the culture that was powered by our mornings in the classroom, studying French, then living it," said MJ Thompson, a professor in Concordia's Department of Studio Arts, who led the residency.
"We carried this into our studio work and I think we all learned a lot in ways that just aren't possible in a classroom setting."
A model program
The final presentations on June 12 transformed the former school into a site of public encounter, featuring works-in-progress, open studios, and informal exchanges with visitors and local artists all in French.
Studio Baie Saint Paul is expected to become an annual residency, strengthening ties between Concordia, Baie-Saint-Paul, and Quebec's broader Francophone cultural landscape, and potentially inspiring similar initiatives in other regions.
Learn more about Studio Baie-Saint-Paul at Concordia University.
