“Nothing Dramatic”: students at Centrale Nantes are using fiction as a tool to raise awareness of discrimination

A comment on an accent, a homophobic joke, an assumed background, a misunderstood learning difficulty… Nothing dramatic (published in French) portrays these everyday situations which may seem trivial to some, but are anything but for those who experience them.
United under the name ‘Collectif de la Main’, five first-year students in the 2025/2026 academic year – Ela, Emna, Juliette, Sarah and Valentin – took part, alongside Sophie Adriansen, in every stage of creating this choral drama, as part of an ambitious arts and cultural education project devised by Centrale Nantes and La Mutinerie médiation et littérature.

Several months of creative collaboration

The project began with a meeting with André Ndobo, a professor of social psychology and coordinator of the ‘Origins and Mechanisms of Discrimination’ research group at the University of Nantes, to discuss the mechanisms and subtle signs of discrimination.

The pupils also met with various stakeholders involved in prevention, support and reporting schemes, before embarking on several months of creative mentoring with Sophie Adriansen and La Mutinerie.

As part of the tutored partner project ‘A Story to Raise Awareness and Combat Discrimination’, they took part in the various stages of creating the story: drafting the synopsis, developing the character guide, researching artwork for the cover, and considering the blurb, as well as the publication and distribution of the book and the outreach activities that might accompany its reading.

Fiction has enabled us to put ourselves in the shoes of various characters and to understand situations that we might not necessarily have perceived in the same way in everyday life. That is what we would like readers to experience in turn

explains a member of the Collectif de la Main.

The choice to use fiction lies at the heart of the approach: by depicting the same day through the eyes of several characters, Nothing dramatic highlights behaviours that are sometimes taken for granted and their effects on those who experience them, without drawing on individual accounts or portraying real-life situations.

From a novel to an awareness-raising tool

The project does not end with the publication of the story: the pupils have also worked on designing outreach activities designed to support readers and encourage discussion. The book will also be used in French as a foreign language lessons, in order to involve international students in the project and to engage them in a discussion about the situations depicted.

With Nothing dramatic, we wanted to complement our prevention programmes with a tool designed, first and foremost, to get the conversation started. The story illustrates real-life situations; the accompanying guidance is then intended to help everyone recognise these situations, respond appropriately and know who to turn to

Marta Herrera, Référente égalité diversité inclusion à Centrale Nantes.

Centrale Nantes and La Mutinerie are currently exploring the conditions under which other higher education institutions could in turn use Nothing dramatic as a tool for raising awareness and outreach.

The production of Nothing dramatic was made possible thanks to the support of the Vaillant Group, the project’s sponsor.