Free, registration required. In a society largely dominated by visuals and sounds, olfaction remains a discreet sense, often relegated to the background. Yet odours structure our behaviour, influence our emotions and shape our intimate relationship with the world. We instinctively know what smells 'good' or 'bad', but we lack the words to describe in detail what we perceive. This is not an individual problem: it's rooted in a lack of education in olfactory culture, shared tools and common references. As a result, many of us remain "dumb and mute" when it comes to naming what's happening under our noses.
This workshop invites us to explore this little-known frontier between language and feeling. Based on an overview of olfactory professions - perfumery, aroma chemistry, oenology, cooking, air quality control, etc. - we will discover how different experts describe odours, each with their own frame of reference. We will also see how researchers in cognitive science, linguistics and psychology approach the link between perception, memory, culture and vocabulary. This perspective will give us a better understanding of the obstacles, but also of the tremendous possibilities offered by collective work on odours.
Participants will then be invited to co-create a cultural tool designed to help them share their olfactory perceptions on a daily basis. This could be the beginnings of a lexicon, an alphabet, a sensory map, a scale, an object, a system of categories... or an entirely new format devised together. The aim is to design a simple, intuitive medium that can be used from an early age, to nurture olfactory awareness and create a common frame of reference.
By contributing to this workshop, you will be helping to develop the EVOLF project, an early olfactory awakening programme designed to give the sense of smell its rightful place in our learning and sensory experiences. Together, let's create a new culture of smelling, one that's more aware, more precise and more shared.
Speaker:
Maryse Delaunay, teacher-researcher at the LPCN (Caen Normandy Psychology Laboratory)
Partners: Thimotée Lebrun
Thimotée Lebrun from the Dôme, the Nez en Herbe association, which has just published the olfactory awakening manual, lecturer in education and training sciences (Sandra Cadiou, at the Université Catholique de l'Ouest, Niort), fellow designers (Mathieu Maldes and Anne-Charlotte Baudequin, PhD students, Université de Toulouse Jean-Jaurès), Valérie Pasmanian (co-creator of the p'tit sniff)) and the ATMONormandie association.
Date
| On Tuesday 07 April 2026 | |
| Tuesday | Open from 9h30 to 12h30 |
Prices
- Free for all
