Culture: with nearly €90 million in budget in Occitania for heritage and creation, the Drac is keeping a close watch

La restauration de la cathédrale Notre-Dame et Saint-Castor de Nîmes est le plus gros chantier en cours pour la Drac Occitanie. Midi Libre – Midi Libre

As many historical monuments as there are municipalities in Occitanie! More than 60,000 archaeological sites, 132 museums, support for creation, live entertainment… With a budget of nearly 90 million euros, the Occitanie Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs is at the head of a big machine.

A real liner. Not necessarily the most manageable but the solid kind to keep culture and heritage afloat. Are cultural credits decreasing ? "No !" assures the regional director of cultural affairs Michel Roussel, at a time when his organization publishes its activity report.

1. What is Drac??

The cultural affairs departments were created in 1977. Before, we took care of heritage and its conservation – Prosper Mérimée by being the pioneer – by heritage services attached to the prefects. The movement to deconcentrate the State, which accelerated in the Mitterrand years, was accompanied by a concern to boost creation and cultural action. In Montpellier, the Drac is based in the superb Hôtel de Grave, behind the Fabre museum. The merger of the regions will give rise to a single Drac for the 13 departments of Occitanie, whose headquarters are located in Montpellier. This decentralized service of the Ministry of Culture is placed under the authority of the regional prefect. The Drac does not act directly, it is involved in regulatory action, control and financing. One of its major missions concerns heritage, with the preservation of historical monuments, museums, archaeological excavations, while the other major aspect is support for artistic creation, which must be add artistic and cultural education.

2. Occitanie, rich in everything

The particularity of our region is its great wealth and diversity. Spared by the destruction of wars, Occitanie has an impressive number of buildings (4,735) and objects (33,699) classified as historic monuments, archaeological sites which number… 63 863 ! A figure that goes from the Neolithic posthole to the 1,400 Gallo-Roman tombs unearthed at the Roubine site in Narbonne. There are 10 sites inscribed on the Unesco Heritage list. The State, and therefore the Drac, directly manage the 14 cathedrals in the Region (including 2 in Aude).

With its 6.1 million inhabitants, Occitanie is also a land of artistic creation. Live entertainment abounds there, as does plastic art. 590 creative structures are supported and a thousand artistic and cultural education actions are supported.

3. How much does it cost?

In 2023, the budget of the Drac was 89.5 M€ (excluding payroll and operating allocation). 36 %, or 32 M€ concerned heritage, i.e. subsidies for 1,308 projects, the most expensive remaining the restoration of Nîmes Cathedral). Museums are also at the center of attention with the reopening of the modern art museum in Céret, or the Goya museum in Castres or the extension projects of the Fabre museum in Montpellier or Soulage in Rodez. The public establishment of Tautavel, both a museum and an archeology research center, is also the subject of a renovation project.

Support for creation represents a larger share with 39.10M€, or 44% of the budget for 358 projects (mainly live performance for 286, and for 72 of them, support for the production and dissemination of the visual arts).

In our region, 40% of the population lives in rural areas, which represents 92% of the municipalities and 80% of the surface area. The Drac is particularly attentive to rurality, and to also irrigate these territories, relies on other state devices: thus, the Saint-Fulcran cathedral in Lodève (which in reality is a church, therefore owned by the municipality) benefited from significant credits from the post-Covid recovery plan for the renovation of its bell tower. Another national plan, France 2030, sees the Drac subsidize for 51 M€ two film studio projects, four digital studios and five training courses, including eight around Montpellier, two in Toulouse and Soler in the Pyrénées-Orientales.

We could summarize that the Drac spends – or invests 14.68 € per capita.

A security plan for cathedrals

In principle, today there is only one cathedral, seat of the bishopric, per diocese. By habit of history, we continue to call cathedral buildings which were so in the past, at a time when our current departments had several dioceses within them. But the State only owns the cathedrals in title. Historical anomaly, there are two in Carcassonne, and the Drac therefore directly manages 14 cathedrals. The renovation of that in Nîmes, which will be completed in 2025, costs 3 M€.

The fire at Notre-Dame-de-Paris, however, pushed the State to launch a major diagnosis. This security plan made it possible to list 40 items or points of weakness, ranging from the partitioning of the attic to the electrical installations, including the furniture in the sacristies. "Gradually, we are updating everything, it's a big job, but Notre-Dame was a shock", assures the drac Michel Roussel.

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