Jean-Marie Bloqueau writes:

Every two years, the Com’MonLy media library network of the Monts du Lyonnais community of municipalities organizes a literary prize on a theme related to a continent or country. For its fifth edition, the prize focused on Oceania. Ambroisine, coordinator of the network and the prize, contacted La Neylière, which has a remarkable museum of Oceania that is known beyond the Lyon region. The volunteers who run the museum immediately took an interest in the project and invested in it. On Friday, February 27, from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., La Neylière welcomed between 150 and 200 people from across the region to hear the results of the prize.

For the occasion, volunteers from the Com’MonLy network and La Neylière pooled their enthusiasm to offer various workshops to the many visitors. Among them were: Māori music and songs by children and adults from the three music schools in the large chapel, Oceanian tattoo workshops, Oceanian bouquet and braid making, museum tours and treasure hunts, discovering Oceania through various creative games and stories, an exhibition of tapas presented by museum guides, Haitian dances, and more. It was a new public that got to know our place. Most of them were visiting for the first time, and they were much younger than the people we usually welcome.

It was a joyful and fruitful collaboration between the Neylière volunteer network (Les Amis de la Neylière, the Oceania Museum animation group, Neylière-Avenir, the Marist community) and the network of volunteers and professionals from the Municipality (libraries and music schools). We got to know each other during the preparation of this literary event and we all enjoyed working together. For the record, the prize was awarded to The White Girl by Tony Birch, a very popular Australian author of Aboriginal origin.

I thought back to the Marist mission entrusted to La Neylière: “The raison d’être of La Neylière is, first, to facilitate access to the Marist heritage today in a living community and tradition; Secondly, to offer opportunities for encounter, formation, and spirituality; and thirdly, to be at the service of the local community at large, as appropriate.”  The meeting on February 27 fulfilled these three objectives.  For the Marists of La Neylière, both lay people and religious, it was an opportunity to broaden their horizons. We hope it will be promising in terms of local networking. As people left, many said, “We will return to La Neylière! We will work together again.”