European School Choir Competition
Poitiers • Futuroscope | June 3-7, 2027
The Clément Janequin Prize – European Competition for School Choirs is part of a strong ambition: to offer young European singers a framework of artistic excellence, educational and human, specifically designed for school choral practice, while making the encounter between young people a central lever for training, citizenship and cohesion.
Conceived as a structuring project on a national and European scale, the Clément Janequin Prize goes far beyond the simple logic of a competition. It constitutes a genuine mechanism for promoting arts and cultural education, fostering encounters between students from different cultures, languages, and educational systems. Through choral singing, a collective practice by its very nature, the project promotes intercultural dialogue, listening to others, cooperation, and the building of a sense of belonging to a European community of young artists.
The competition period is thus conceived as a shared living space: cross-rehearsals, joint workshops, informal gatherings, concerts, and convivial moments allow participants to meet, exchange ideas, and create lasting bonds that transcend borders. Singing becomes a common language, accessible to all, conveying values of peace, mutual respect, and fraternity.
Organized in Poitiers and at Futuroscope from June 3 to 7, 2027, the competition is fully aligned with the Festival des Arts à l’École (Festival of Arts at School), a leading event dedicated to artistic practices in schools. It extends the festival's ambition by affirming a strong European dimension, making the Clément Janequin Prize a concrete tool for building community and European citizenship, by and for young people.
PHILOSOPHY OF THE CLÉMENT JANEQUIN PRIZE
The Clément Janequin Prize was born from a shared observation among those involved in music education: despite the vitality of school choral singing in Europe, until now there was no European competition specifically dedicated to this practice in a school setting, conceived both as a space of artistic rigor and as a meeting place open to society.
The project is based on several fundamental principles:
- a kind competition, focused on the students' journey and progress;
- an assessment demanding but formative, in service of learning;
- a recognition of European cultural, linguistic and pedagogical diversity;
- a close link between artistic, educational, civic and territorial issues;
- the stated desire to develop a vibrant, playful choral singing culture aimed at the general public.
Through open concerts, shared experiences in public spaces, and accessible forms of dissemination, the Clément Janequin Prize helps to make choral singing an everyday art form, unifying and bringing people together, capable of reaching broad and diverse audiences. The school choir thus becomes a vehicle for social connection, shared joy, and cultural participation, resonating directly with the inhabitants of the regions hosting the competition.
The choice of the name Clément Janequin carries significant symbolic and territorial weight in this regard. A major figure of the French Renaissance and the choral repertoire, Clément Janequin was born in Châtellerault and worked as a youth choir director in Bordeaux, thus inscribing his career within the cultural history of the region. An internationally renowned composer, celebrated for the vitality, modernity, and accessibility of his vocal works, he embodies a humanist and popular heritage of French choral singing.
Giving one's name to this European competition is to affirm a strong regional focus, while also claiming an international openness and a strong artistic lineage: that of an expressive, inventive, profoundly collective choral singing resolutely focused on sharing, at the heart of the educational and European project of the Clément Janequin Prize.
