The Research Centre for Human Potential, formerly known as CRITAC, is collaborating with cinEXmedia to bring together experts in cinema and the performing arts with a view to social innovation.
Olivier Du Ruisseau
Recently, the Research Centre for Human Potential (HUPR), connected to the National Circus School, has become a cinEXmedia partner. The two organizations now intend to bring together experts in cinema and the performing arts with the goal of optimizing the social impact of their respective disciplines. Following the founding of this new partnership, we spoke with members of the HUPR team to better understand how they work.
In addition to its research into the visual arts and “human potential”, HUPR “provides technical assistance and training to support professionals and organizations in the field”, remarks Marianella Michaud, Project Manager for Development and Innovation at HUPR. “The organization’s four fields of research – digital technology, human performance, equipment design and social innovation – make it possible for each project carried out at the centre to gauge the tangible impact of live performance. By anticipating the challenges of a world in constant evolution, HUPR is committed to conceiving bold and innovative solutions. Since its founding, the research centre has demonstrated that the impossible can be achieved when innovation, science and the arts converge”.
Michaud gives as an example a project carried out with a hand-to-hand duo. “The performers reversed the roles of a male carrier and a female acrobat in their act”, she explains. “Using an ethnographic approach, we inquired into the origins of gender roles in this kind of act. We are now going to hold outreach workshops, in particular to gauge the impact on audiences of changes made to traditional shows, but also to analyze what this gave rise to from the point of view of the performers”.
Emmanuel Bochud, Director of Development and Innovation, remarks moreover that “all research carried out at HUPR is applied research”. “We are connected to the National Circus School, but we basically work for the performing arts industry, the entire cultural sector and the general public with a view to social innovation”.
Parkinson’s Disease: “Beyond Tremors”
The project Piece of Mind (2021), by the post-doctoral researcher Naila Kuhlmann (HUPR) reflects the organization’s mission, which seeks to become more involved in its community. “This was my first post-doctoral project”, she explains. “I brought together people suffering from Parkinson’s disease, neuroscientists and artists to facilitate the exchange of knowledge to create a show that would communicate both scientific research and how the disease is experienced. The project came out of my doctoral degree in neurosciences, in which I had studied Parkinson’s, but which had provided me with very little contact with people affected by it”.
“At each working session”, she continues, “we addressed a different topic, from the point of view of both science and the individual’s experience. It was a true co-creation experience, that incorporated the contributions of each person consulted. Our goal was to depict the illness beyond tremors. For example, we created a slackline act around a poem entitled “Sur le fil” (On the Wire”), in which a woman living with Parkinson’s uses the metaphor of the tightrope walker to share her experience. We also incorporated more comic scenes, including one in which a person with Parkinson’s illustrates his or her symptoms by reversing roles with the other performers. We then conducted qualitative research into the participants’ experience in the co-creation and its effect on the audience”.
This show was filmed in 2021 and presented in the Agora of the Coeur des sciences at the Université du Québec à Montréal in 2022 and then at the Atlanta Science Festival in 2024. A series of audiovisual reports on behind-the-scenes activities for the project is also available on the YouTube page of the Piece of Mind collective. Naila Kuhlmann has in addition co-authored scholarly articles on the project’s conclusions, including one published last year with Aliki Thomas, Rebecca Barnstaple and Stefanie Blain-Moraes, her research supervisor, in the International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts. More recently, she co-authored another article for the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
From CRITAC to the HUPR Centre
Before being called HUPR, the organization was known as the Centre for Research, Innovation and Knowledge Transfer in Circus Arts (CRITAC). The change of name became necessary, Emmanuel Bochud explains, in order to open up the centre’s activities to other disciplines: “Our approach to the performing arts can very easily be transferred to other fields involving human performance in a broad sense”.
The HUPR team was busy changing its name last autumn, at the precise moment that it began the process of becoming a partner of cinEXmedia. “The two organizations have several things in common”, Bochud explains. “They both work on rhythm from an intersectoral perspective, and both have projects involving social innovation”.
This is why, Naila Kuhlmann remarks, “we wish to bring together experts in cinema and the performing arts, at a conference for example, in order to better understand how these disciplines can work together for therapeutic purposes, particularly for the elderly”. The HUPR and cinEXmedia teams will meet later this year to prepare this joint project.
