25

The author studies a programme for the democratization of the teaching of artistic practices, the School Orchestra, implemented in a primary school in a disadvantaged neighbourhood with a high immigrant population, in a socially vulnerable area in a large French city. This programme is intensely valorised by the students, without the objectives situating the action within the town’s policy of democratization being clear, homogenous among all participants, or even concretely implemented. This paradox is the crucial point enabling an understanding of the programme’s ambivalence between artistic and educational requirements.