Barat Foundation - Summer In Provence

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About Us

In 1996, after twenty years as entrepreneurs and business people, Chandri and Gary Barat decided to change their lives. Gary's health had become a serious issue, and the couple decided that it was now or never if they were to pursue their lifelong dreams of exploring new educational concepts and returning to their creative roots.

Chandri looked to France for inspiration. As a college student, she had spent her junior year in Paris at the Sorbonne and the Political Science Institute. Now the mother of two adolescent girls, she wanted to share this experience and introduce young people to the expansion of mind and heart she experienced as a student abroad. To this end she traveled to the south of France in the summer of 1996 with her family and a teenage friend of her elder daughter, to explore the possibility of creating a summer program for high school students in Provence.

This intimate and personal experience would serve as the model for a more formal academic program that would develop over the following years. The Barats made friends and became immersed in French culture. Inspired by France, and the Impressionist painters, Gary pursued his lifelong dream of composing poetry with a camera. Since that time he has developed a body of photographic work that has been exhibited in galleries on both sides of the Atlantic, in New York at the Alliance Francaise, and in Arles and Avignon, France.

In 1997 the Barats founded the Barat Foundation, a not for profit educational corporation dedicated to expanding creative opportunities through immersion programs designed to maximize artistic and intellectual achievement and personal growth.

The Barat Foundation Summer program in Provence has established itself as one of the premier high school foreign language and cultural immersion programs abroad, attracting students from all over the world. The Barats have also developed a scholarship fund to help gifted and talented, economically challenged students benefit from foundation programs.

As Jean Xavier Brager, academic director of the Barat Foundation for a period of four years, and recently university and linguistic attaché to the French Consulate states, "not only was the Foundation able to meet rigorous French expectations in terms of curriculum, academic standards and the quality of teachers, but it also gave the participants the opportunity to have an authentic insight into cross-cultural differences through a well planned calendar of artistic outings, field excursions, master classes, and workshops."

The Barat Foundation Staff

Our award winning French staff is comprised of young and talented, French nationals from esteemed academic institutions, prestigious contemporary art schools, and the leading edge of the European artistic community. They specialize in a range of artistic and academic disciplines including, but not limited to, photography, modern dance choreography, film and video, theatre and performance art, fashion design, creative writing, European history, architecture, art history, music, and philosophy.

Past professors' work has been featured in exhibitions and performances in leading capitals of the world, and featured in leading European periodicals. Our teachers are well traveled, experienced, and dedicated to the intellectual growth of their students. As our staff not only teaches with us, but moreover lives with us, learning encompasses the large and small aspects of everyday life, from illuminating complex concepts in contemporary art to helping students master the art of the French laundromat.

About Us

The Barat Foundation Staff

LINKS

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