Carré Pointu: A Participatory Newspaper for Children

Carré Pointu

• The Seriously Funny Little Newspaper : a unique, general-interest newspaper, edited, written, and illustrated by professionals as well as children, teens, and adults.

Project Partners

Design and development: Association Carré Pointu, a nonprofit organization, Lausanne.

Institutional Partners: Mobilet, Globlivres, Carré d’As, Swiss Museum of Games, Gymnase Lausanne, CHUV, Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS)

General Framework

Carré Pointu publishes three issues of its newspaper per year, and its website offers free access to it.

A unifying, inclusive, and community-oriented cultural project: everyone contributes their skills.

The journal encourages shared reading between children and adults. Individual and social diversity is encouraged to ensure the enrichment of both the project and each participant.

The newspaper explores the world through a variety of voices: fiction, cooking, art, photography, economics, Roman history, games, life stories, and soon philosophy and science—as well as a new online publication created by high school students.

 Proposals for this project 

 Launch of an editorial office in Lausanne modeled after an expanded editorial board. Anyone interested in the newspaper—children and adults alike—is invited to participate in these meetings. Discussions during these sessions will focus on two themes:

1. Feedback and suggestions regarding the newspaper’s editorial content, distribution, and development plan.

2. Carré Pointu will provide 4 editorial pages for each of the three issues starting with Issue 5. The assembly will discuss proposals made by anyone regarding how to allocate these pages and organize their content, and

Publication dates: Nos. 6, 7, and 8—June, October 23, and February 24.

Editorial meetings to develop the project will be held in January, March, May, September, and November (final dates to be decided collectively at the first meeting)

This project complements the production of the current issues of Carré Pointu; therefore, the requested budget is solely for the printing costs of four pages per issue. (Quote from AFIRO Ecublens [a social institution providing training and support for the professional integration of youth and adults, which prints our newspaper].

Collaboration with local stakeholders—neighborhood centers, libraries, residents’ associations, etc.—is encouraged, and neighborhoods with high concentrations of children and youth, such as La Bourdonnette or Praz-Séchaud, will be given priority.

Through this project, Carré Pointu aims to foster critical thinking, reading, and writing skills, as well as a form of debate that benefits all children and families, and contributes to the development of the newspaper. It also helps build connections directly within neighborhoods.

Carré Pointu volunteers, who bring a diverse range of professional experience, can effectively manage groups of children, youth, and adults and ensure the transfer of knowledge necessary to achieve the set goals.

Proposed Budget

Meeting room for assemblies:                     

Provided free of charge by the City of Lausanne, ideally in a different neighborhood each time.

Organizational costs: five sessions, 5 × 100 CHF, for a total of 500 CHF

Layout and graphic design fees for the 3 issues: 3 x 150 CHF, for a total of 450 CHF

Printing costs for 4 pages included in issues 6, 7, and 8 of Carré Pointu: 750 CHF per issue, or 2,250 CHF

Total: 3,000 CHF

Support from the Lausanne Office for Families would be a plus for targeting and developing this project in close collaboration with the community and Lausanne families. (Partnership to be determined jointly)

 Currently, each issue of *Carré Pointu* costs approximately 2,100 francs to produce, including design, article writing, illustrations, printing, distribution, the website, and overall organizational management. Furthermore, a large portion of the work is done on a volunteer basis. The funds raised will be used to add 4 editorial pages to each issue, not to finance the newspaper in its original form.