On Friday 6 and Saturday 7 March, the Centre des Métiers d’Art (CMA) located in the artisanal zone of Bergevin in Pointe-à-Pitre organized its traditional Open Days dedicated to its preparatory Art & Design class which celebrates this year its 25 years of existence and which has already admitted more than 430 students.
It has become a ritual, every year at the same time, the administration, the students and all the teachers of the Art and Design preparatory class welcome the public. On March 6 and 7, all were available to future students and their parents to answer all questions about this Art & Design preparatory class, the registration conditions to take the courses, artistic professions, etc. This seduction operation that lasted two days was also an “art exhibition” (sketches, drawings, paintings, photos, models etc.) because visitors could see the artistic productions made in situ by the students of the 2019-2020 promotion.
It should be noted that the Centre des Métiers d’Art opened its doors in 1973 and offered arts and craft workshops to its members. “Before, we had an arts school and young people who had failed at school were directed to us, art was not well regarded. The students helped the craftsmen, they had a multidisciplinary training, they learned drawing but also the wood crafts, clay crafts for example. Some of them succeeded: a week ago, I found a letter dated 1981 where three young people (Tirolien Cornélie, Jean-Claude Sylvestre and Clarisse Idi) informed the CMA that they had passed the entrance examination to the Beaux-Arts in Paris”, said Martine Céraphe-Ardens, the director of the Centre des Métiers d’Art.
More than 430 students in 25 years of existence
In 1995, the Preparatory Art & Design Class of the CMA was born. “It was Marguerite Beille, a trainer of the Centre, who redid the program and selected the teachers (…) Right from the beginning, our goal was supervise our young people the time it would take for them to pass entrance exams to the very best art schools. Today, there is a plethora of artists who come from our preparatory class”, Martine Céraphe-Ardens told with a bit of pride.
This prep class is a unique training in Guadeloupe, it recruits on competitive exams (written and oral examination, academic record and works in plastic arts) high school graduates who wish to enroll in art schools, fine arts, arts and design schools (ESAD), national schools of architecture as well as all disciplines of the artistic and visual field. Since its creation, 25 years ago, the Art & Design prep class of the CMA has already admitted more than 430 students from Guadeloupe, St. Martin and Martinique, many were accepted to art schools, especially in France, in other European countries or Canada and are now working in various fields of art, design and culture.
Intense work
The competition to integrate the CMA Art & Design prep class will take place next June, after the written tests for the Baccalauréat. The classes will begin mid-August 2020 with about ten disciplines, namely: applied arts, perspective architecture, computer graphics, art history, photography, semiology, general culture, technique of drawing, plastic expression and English. This represents 35 hours of lessons per week, in addition to homework and the management of the establishment warns that “the work is much more intense than in high school and you must be aware of this change of pace if you want to follow the path of art”.
The courses will be completed in April 2021 but from December 2020, students will have to take steps to pass the art school competitions, prepare their visual files, their “book” as well as their personal projects.
