It is between desirable futures and a deep attention to the territory of Artois, to its history, that the daily life of Margherita Balzerani, the director of the Louvre Lens Vallée, is combined. For 15 years, it has been detecting, supporting and promoting creative talents.

Resolutely, viscerally European, she likes to push back the borders, to free herself from any "limit". Always on the lookout for the future and with a wide eye, she benevolently builds fertile bridges between culture and entrepreneurship, culture and digital.

From her first "encounter" with the territory, she particularly remembers the one with "Liberty guiding the people", at the Louvre-Lens. Quite a symbol! This painting by Eugène Delacroix, highly symbolic for the art historian that she is, says it all, by her presence in Lens, of the desirable vision and future for the territory, with culture as its standard.

Margherita Balzerani is a native of Rome, the city-museum. This in no way prevents him from devoting a real admiration for the Mining Basin, its topography, its monuments, its inhabitants. It even identifies a number of parallels between the two territories. "The slag heaps are incredible! They are truly inexhaustible resources! Everything that is imagined and takes place there today demonstrates this well. Nature, Gaia, finds its rights there. UNESCO does not know deceived by listing the territory as a World Heritage Site."

Accountability to the territory

Margherita adores this territory. So naturally when we talk about the reasons for her loyalty, her attachment to it, she takes every word of our question to the letter: "you say set up here". And to specify the chain of ideas that this term inspires in him: "to settle, to plant, to germinate, to hatch... This territory allowed me, offered me all that!". It is therefore in a form of accountability, of reciprocity to be more precise, that it takes care in its own way to bring out new talents, new innovative projects, to re-enchant the world from here, from Artois.

A project leader is first and foremost a citizen

About eco-transition, Margherita makes these words of Mark Alizart her own: "Let's not dream of the world after, but let's fix this one well." In this collaborative place where we support companies that combine excellence and creation of meaning, she measures during each meeting how much the project leaders and entrepreneurs are today sensitive to this question and anxious to provide their answer. So she works with curiosity, enthusiasm, an energy and a contagious smile, to provide them with the means to carry out their approach to transform our lifestyles. It has a major ally to make for itself: this territory where innovation and eco-transition resonate like nowhere else.