From the beginning, Quais du Polar’s Association has at heart to reach all audiences, especially audiences remote from cultural practices.

All year long, Quais du Polar offers schools different projects around the crime fiction genre.

On the festival, students will be able to participate in the Great City investigation, the Dark dictation and encounters with authors. This year, Serena Blasco, Guillaume Le Cornec, GioacchinoCriaco, MimmoGangemi, Philippe Jaenada, Craig Johnson and Deon Meyer will exchange with students on their works.

At the Hôtel de Ville, “Un certain regard” association will accompany the very young in artistic workshops around the theme of investigation and Saint-Jean librarians will offer hem fun readings.

The festival will also be the achievement of several projects set up with classes. Hence, pupils will attend the reward of the Youth Prize Quais du Polar/ Ville de Lyon, and secondary schools students will join in an oratory contact (Battle Polar), and high school students will participate in exchanges on cinematographic adaptation and translation.

In the frame of a collaborative writing project with children of the Foyer de l’Enfance de la

Métropole/ Metrpolitan Children’s Home (IDEF), lounges Hôtel de Ville will host young actors and their families on reading at full voice session of their crime fiction short stories.

For several years, Quais du Polar has been organizing with the partnership of the Auvergne Rhône-Alpes Region and the DRAC, the “Crime Fiction behind closed doors” action in the region’s prisons, as to promote reading and the crime fiction genre in prisons. In 2018, eight authors will attend penal institutions to allow prisoners to (re)discover noir literature and crime fiction. Encounters are prepared in advance by town and departmental libraries, education services of the establishments and the Label Vie d’ange Association.

This year, 8 institutions willparticipate in the Polarderrière les murs project:

• Franz Bartelt / La Talaudière Detention House in Saint-Etienne

• David Khara / Riom Detention Centre

• Marin Ledun / Lyon Detention House in Corbas

• Dominique Manotti / Roanne Detention Centre

• Odile Bouhier / Villefranche-sur-Saône Detention House
• Gilda Piersanti / ChambéryDetention House

• Gilda Piersanti / Chambéry Detention House
• Christian Roux / Bonneville Detention House

• Romain Slocombe / Saint-Quentin-Fallavier Penitentiary Centre

For the first time this year, prisoners from 5 penal institutions will participate in the jury for the Quais du Polar Readers’ Prize. A special mention will be created to highlight the novel of the selection which will receive the highest number of their votes.

Quais du Polar renews its actions in hospitals and will offer this year an encounter dedicated to hospitalized children of the Bron Hospital for Woman Mother Child, with the youth author and illustrator Serena Blasco. A literary walk in the Ferme du Vinatier Park will also be organized with HervéCommère and the GEIQ Theatre actors.

Since 2013, Quais du Polar in collaboration with the ANCLI/National Agency Against Illiteracy, offers two great Dark Dictations for schools and the general public. In an atmosphere of crime fiction and good mood, Romain Slocombe and Philippe Torreton will be this year’s readers of the dictations.

The 10th edition training day dedicated to teachers and librarians will take place in the Enssib, on Thursday 5^th of April. Will be scheduled:

A panorama of 2017-2018 crime fiction novelties, a conference on crime fiction novels for teenagers, examples of mediation around the genre, an encounter with new noir literature and crime fiction publishers and a discussion with literary translators specialized in noir.

The festival also develops a yearly program of events and expands its events to the regional scale around the noir genre and in collaboration with cinema theatres, bookstores, publishers and the distribution network.

Quais du Polar will once more organize in July events for young readers as part of the “Partiren Livre” (CNL) and “Tout l’Mondedehors” projects.

Every fall, Quais du Polar hosts an author for a debate-evening preceded by a large encounter with schools. In 2017 the Swedish authors and scriptwriters Cilla and Rolf Börjlind met the public of the festival.