The candidacy

Since 2018, the candidature of Rouen has been constructed step by step. In 2022, we entered the phase of structuring and drafting the project which will lead to the submission of our application dossier to the European Union.

It is up to us to write a story that tells of our territory. This candidature is an opportunity for us to draw on new sources for inspiration while questioning the challenges which to be faced, such as industrial and climatic risks. It has set up a dialogue of historic, natural and countryside heritages. And it federates around the shared action of imagining where we are dreaming of going.

This adventure has three structural axes: an application of the Seine Normande, for future generations around shared knowledge!

Science and shared knowhow

The application aims to help everyone to take an interest in all forms of knowledge and knowhow, with their demands and their transmission, to place them at the service of a shared European project.

Around culture, Rouen Seine Normande 2028 will associate the sciences and science-fiction, pedagogy and journalism, the applied arts and university research, exchanges of lessons and the sharing of skills, good practices and big ideas, controversies and utopias, etc.

Let’s join together and open up around a project in which everyone will learn from everyone else.
Based on different forms of knowledge, that of experts but also amateurs, universities or
else our neighbours, the European Capital of Culture will bring us all together around labour practices, such as industrial memories, as well as technical, manual and intellectual skills.

With art and culture at the heart of this process, conceiving and producing together an ideal city with and for the future generation will help us to think beyond the event, with 2038 as the horizon, which will incite multiple partnerships around the transmission of knowledge.

For future generations

Let’s take a coming generation and construct an application with and for future generations. The application of Rouen Seine Normande 2028 is an opportunity for us to place ourselves at the service of children and youth, with the help of their young parents, grandparents, as well as all the specialists and lovers of the territory.

Rather than thinking for them, let’s ask our children and teenagers to place themselves at the heart of the transformation process of the territory, to design futures that will reinvent it and prepare it for the challenges of the century.

This will require us to heighten our inventiveness, creativity and utopias to view our streets, countryside and the Seine with fresh eyes, and awaken imaginaries aimed towards childhood and youth, by inspiring ourselves from them. We have everything to gain.
Let the future generations have the power to change their lives, with us at their service.

The Seine at the heart

The river lies at the heart of the Rouen Seine Normande 2028 project and stands as far more than a decor or an object to be exploited, but as a subject in itself. It is a territory of imaginaries, partnerships and activities, with a life in motion.

Pass through its meanders, wander along its banks, appreciate its twists and turns, recover its past, help it to define its future, recognise it as an entity in its own right: to sum up, try to understand what we can give, and how culture can be regenerated at its contact – such are the territorial challenges of this candidature.
It is a space which is not just the “Seine axis”. Its political and economic dimensions have been enriched by its sensitive elements: landscapes and movements, tales in small and great stories.

A space in which the sciences contribute to its understanding and protection, where cycle paths and green lanes allow for its discovery over time. It is a shared space to be handed down as a heritage to future generations.

So, what if it was in fact the Seine Normande that was the candidate?

Around Rouen, the candidature’s “home port”, the communities bordering the Seine enter into the application process via the “embarkment quays” that symbolise and represent the Capital right along the Seine.