Representing residents, animating campus life, setting up competitive collective projects… This is the role of the Residents’ Committees and an enriching experience to help spend your time at the Cité internationale to the full. Every house’s committee, elected at the start of the year, brings the residents’ initiatives to the level of the building and the campus. Every committee chooses between two delegates that sit in the Residents’ Bureau (BDR). They represent the interests of their peers and sit on the board of administration for the National Foundation Cité internationale universitaire de Paris. The BDR organises numerous events and is also involved in the Fête de la Cité. The events weekend of cultural diversity and sharing is the time to celebrate different cultures around the world.
In order to allow residents to bring their artistic, cultural, civic or even sporting projects to life, the Cité internationale calls for projects to support resident initiatives twice a year. It allows chosen projects to benefit from financial aid from the Residents’ initiative fund (FIR). The projects can be about various topics such as peace, sport, digital technology, culture, citizenship, the environment or solidarity. They must involve several campus houses in order to encourage meetings and exchanges.
The Cité internationale is a springboard, we don’t realise just how many interesting people there are here or the number of projects that are born here.
The Cité internationale has always been a pioneer in every period of its history. As a place for the numerous young, talented people of tomorrow, the Cité internationale aims to be a place for reflection and debate, a place where you can reflect on solutions for modern issues. It encourages resident engagement in collective projects and the organisation of events.
The Cité internationale’s houses are places of opportunities. They look to create an environment where meetings between residents can give rise to collaborative projects. They can be very simple, such as a shared cooking project around national holidays, or more complex ones in the form of artistic, cultural, ecological, solidarity projects, that are sometimes campus wide.
In order to celebrate collective living, one of the founding values of the Cité internationale, the campus holds a festival every year on the last weekend of May. Over three days, the residents share their cultures through a rhythmic programme: dance shows, trying dishes from around world, arts, theatre, concerts, siestes électroniques, exhibitions, workshops… Sports activities and a book fair also liven up the event.
The fruit of communal work, the Jardin du Monde has become a place that is emblematic of the Cité internationale. Learn to garden, help understand nature and its needs but also spend time together, over a beer (brewed on campus!) or a barbecue: this is the collaborative project.
The Flying Bike was the first participatory workshop at the Cité internationale concerning a practical and ecological mode of transport: the bike! The project was born in 2015 from a simple idea: to help cyclists and to encourage assistance for cycling.
The Cité internationale constitutes a community with a unique cultural background and immense savoir-faire. Students of political science, doctors in history, writers and journalists from around the world get together to share their point of view in their domain. The campus’s residents’ journal, Cité Unie, fits into this context.
Since its creation the Cité internationale has welcomed several generations of determined writers who became major intellectual figures such as Sartre, Aimé Césaire or even Tahar Ben Jelloun. The project “J’écris ma maison” follows in this tradition of artistic creation. Launched in 2016 on the initiative of 4 residents, the aim of this project was to respond to residents’ aspirations in terms of literary creation and publishing.
For 5 consecutive years, the Cité internationale’s residents have organised l’Université de la paix, one week of debates on major challenges to be tackled in order to promote peace and collective living. It is the opportunity for some 12,000 residents living on campus, and the general public, to debate in the presence of researchers and celebrities. The 5th edition, in 2019, focused on the climate crisis.
The Cneai= (Centre National Edition Art Image) is a contemporary arts centre housed at the Cité internationale. A place of research, production and dissemination of art, the centre also allows residents to participate in a number of activities: exhibitions, events, collections and cultural and educational actions.
The Cité internationale’s theatre organises workshops allowing residents to practice artistic disciplines linked to the stage. They are accompanied by resident artists or external speakers.