A French city under the gaze of Italian communicators

The request from Stefania Berreta, Erasmus+ project coordinator for the Ligurian Order of Journalists, related to institutional and diplomatic communication. “As part of this, I think it was really interesting to plan a meeting with the Cap’Com network to understand what it does and what its working methods are.” In addition to their interest in the Cap’Com cooperative, the 14 members of the delegation all expressed the wish to “meet local French public communicators to see how they work, what their training path is and observe them in their day-to-day work”. Their host was Anne-Caroline Poincarré, a member of the Cap’Com Steering Committee and Director of Communications in Guyancourt. Over the course of a busy morning, she presented her department’s responsibilities, the challenges of communications at this level and the functional relationships involved. She rounded off her presentation with a tour of the town hall. This was followed by a presentation by the Managing Director of Cap’Com, who gave an overview of how the French public communicators’ network works, followed by a look at current developments. At the end of the session, François Morton, Mayor of Guyancourt (27 801 residents), came to greet the Italian visitors and answer their questions.

During the discussions, the Italian journalists, most of whom work in press relations for local authorities or public service companies, asked a number of very practical questions, such as: “Are you doing anything to promote media libraries and reading?” They also showed a great deal of interest in issues relating to changes in our professions (artificial intelligence, new methods of citizen consultation) and were able to describe similar practices in Italy, such as the platform used by local civil servants to share their experiences: https://comunivirtuosi.org/. This last example attracted a great deal of attention from the French participants.