Vézelay, January 16, 2020
Dear friends, dear visitors
To you, whom we have known for a long time or whom we met during a visit or a workshop in Vézelay, we are happy at the beginning of the year to share the page that opens in history of the Visitor's House.
The metaphor that echoes the image of our greeting card, “The Book is closed, everything has been said. The book is open, everything is to be born ”, expresses well the beginning of a new stage, that of the realization of the“ scriptorium project ”about which we spoke to you personally or during our last general assembly. For some of you, this is probably also a first piece of information.
We have just found a house in the heights of Vézelay which fulfills our expectations by its qualities: space, nobility of materials and silence, as well as by its location: a few minutes from the Basilica and very close to the Visitor's House.
This house will be able to accommodate the permanent team of the Visitor's House as well as those who collaborate in our work of animation, creation and research. Equipped with a vaulted living room that we foresee as the ideal place for the library, a large convivial room with a beautiful stone fireplace, a very healthy cellar in which one could imagine a beautiful workshop, a few bedrooms in both last floors, we see a possible deployment of the scriptorium, a sort of backstage of our activity, the “backstage of the theater” in a way, where the most suitable cultural proposals are created and created for our audiences.
A purchase proposal has already been initiated and within a few weeks the act of sale will be signed. This means that we are selling the original house, the one at the bottom of the hill which housed the various teams and their work for thirty-five years. It is therefore a big move that awaits us this year but also the design of a master plan to make good use of the spaces and undertake the necessary interior fittings. To this house is added an old barn of modest size but whose volume while high lets us imagine a very interesting extension. This barn and the cellar will require structural work.
The purchase of the house will be assumed mainly by the sale of the one below supplemented by an already existing private contribution. On the other hand, we are already working to write a file for the research of financing of the works of arrangement, the barn and the cellar. The time has come to imagine how to ask, how to search, how to communicate. Your sound advice on this matter will be invaluable to us.
The Visitor's House is always more alive. We have transformed our website to improve our communication. The feedback we have from the film on the great eardrum, “The Dance of the New Adam”, is generally very good. They encourage us to translate it into English and German. The improvement of the seating of the benches and the renewal of the audiovisual equipment greatly contribute to the quality of the screenings. We sincerely thank all of you who were able to participate in this investment last year.
As we have had the joy of doing every year since the opening of the Visitor's House, we offer training in cultural mediation to anyone interested (students, retirees, workers) between Easter and All Saints' Day. This training articulates the animation of the visits with the discovery and the deepening of the Roman symbolism. Last summer we welcomed a passionate young student, Gaspard, who has been a wonderful collaborator.
If you yourself feel challenged or if you think of someone, do not hesitate to notify us so that we get to know in advance.
In spring 2020, after eighteen months of work, the Basilica will be equipped with a fully restored front nave. The stone has regained its blondness, the facade sculptures and the eardrums have been carefully consolidated. We therefore invite you to come back to Vézelay to discover the results of this work and once again contemplate the large XNUMXth century tympanum.
We take the liberty of attaching a membership form to our letter thanking you in advance for your support for the cultural action that we are leading from Vézelay and which you know is a social issue. Each membership encourages us to stay the course of this work of updating the Roman stone whose harmony and sculpted words are generous fountains for all the pilgrims that we are.
Download the membership form ou pay my subscription online
Receive our friendly greeting while waiting to receive you again or to get to know your friends.
Hélène Ramin, Elisabeth Toulet, Véronique Feugère,
Veronique Roche, Jean-Noel André, Christopher Kelly
The Visitor's House Place Guillon 89450 Vézelay (F)
Phone: 03 86 32 35 65 maisonduvisiteur@orange.fr www.vezelay-visiteur.com