Created at the initiative of the Maisons du Monde Foundation, the first edition of Aux Arbres! will be held on Friday 8 and Saturday 9 June 2018 at the Machines de l’île, in Nantes. Over the course of two days, Aux Arbres! will bring together professionals, associations, public authorities and citizens to celebrate the forest, biodiversity and the climate, with a view to uniting all those concerned in a common cause and initiating new actions to preserve trees and forests.
Aux Arbres! presents the programme for these two days which will combine immersive experiences, projections, debates and round tables, bringing together experts, businesses and NGOs, highlighting initiatives to imagine, create, learn about and take action with regard to developing projects to preserve forests.
At the heart of this first edition programme
- A plenary session entitled "Views from Key Figures" which will give the floor to well-known speakers in the field, including Johanna Rolland, Mayor of Nantes and President of Nantes Métropole, Audrey Pulvar, President of the Nature et l’Homme Foundation, Tristan Lecomte, founder of PUR PROJET, Shubhendu Sharma, founder of Afforest, which specializes in "tiny forests”, capable of growing 300 trees in an area roughly the size of six parking spaces, the Franco-Tunisian businesswomen Sarah Toumi, leader of the 1millionTreesforTunisia movement, and exceptional guest speakers who will give talks over the two days, such as the botanist Francis Hallé, the “earth doctors” Lydia and Claude Bourguignon and Maxime de Rostolan, the founder of the Fermes d’Avenir (Farms of the Future) and participant in the recent documentary On a 20 ans pour changer le monde (We’ve got 20 years to change the world).
- More than a dozen round tables, for discussions and solutions in response to the current challenges facing forests including:
- Connected Forests: how artificial intelligence, drones and the IOT are helping forests. This round table will focus on new technologies available to protect forests and will present a prototype developed by Topher White, founder of Rainforest Connection, that can detect the illegal felling of trees in real time.
- The challenges and risks currently threatening French forests and solutions to preserve their biodiversity. A round table to highlight projects by actors in the field, and by associations, such as the NGO Coeur de Forêt (Heart of the Forest), which supports small private owners in the sustainable, “gentle” management their forests, through the planting of trees that enables the diversification of species among other actions.
- The surprising medical properties of trees, a round table about the health benefits of trees highlighting the latest discoveries in “sylvotherapy” and forest intelligence, revealing how to look after yourself physically and mentally thanks to the remarkable healing powers of trees. For example, in Senegal, the Nebeday Association supports women’s co-operatives in the production of powder from the Moringa, known as the tree of life, a superfood that helps combat diabetes and malnutrition.
- Immersive experiences through workshops: such as DIY workshops to learn about how to recycle wooden objects, sessions on making seed bombs, nesting boxes for birds, growing mini forests, or using virtual reality to experience the forest through an animal’s eyes… a range of interactive, immersive experiences that will transform the Machines de l’île into a village-style presentation of solutions to raise awareness about the problems of deforestation and how to combat it.
For more information on the attached full programme, please visit the website aux-arbres.com.
