Marine Catel

Sunny! That’s the first word that comes to mind when you come across Marine, that permanent, sincere smile that greets and captures you. She’s only 30, but she’s already had a remarkable career. Marine Catel is a designer specialising in creative processes and social innovation. Based in La Haye-Pesnel, the woman who initiated the “Accélérateur de transfo” week at Granville Terre & Mer has a head for ideas and puts other people’s ideas in order, the better to fertilise them.

The choice of

territory

Marine grew up between Barneville-Carteret and Jullouville, where her parents now live. After starting her career abroad, when Covid facilitated teleworking, she chose to settle in La Haye-Pesnel. Her home, a charming, tastefully decorated farmhouse, is ideally situated between the town centre and the green countryside. A haven of nature and calm, where this prolific early bird can recharge her batteries and breathe. It’s also a land of change, which suits her just as well. ” I love the tides. When I was in Switzerland, I had a great apartment overlooking the lake, but I never managed to get used to it because it didn’t move. Here, I really like the energy of movement, the way the weather and landscapes change so much. “As does the love of meeting other people: ” It’s a family environment here. People are really nice and simple. There’s a fairly natural connection with them, and a lot of great bonds are forged. “

A journey

out of the ordinary

Marine has a number of qualifications: a DSAA in product and service design, a Masters in innovation and design, and a PhD in engineering sciences from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Métiers.
She cut her teeth as a designer in research and innovation at Richemont in Switzerland, then as an employee experience manager at Cartier internationally.
She teaches innovation and creativity at a dozen business schools and MBAs in France and China.
She loves English and multiculturalism. She supports innovation projects and runs creative and collaborative workshops in London, Amsterdam and elsewhere.
She trains managers, runs seminars, etc.
She created the ” Accélérateur de transfo ” at Granville Terre & Mer: a week of immersion for design students at ENSAAMA (École nationale supérieure des Arts appliqués et des Métiers d’art).
She works with her hands (wood, paper, paint…) and does graphic facilitation.
She is vice-president of the APCI (Association for the Promotion of Design in France) and is committed to helping young designers find employment.
She created her You Tube channel on creativity and based her company – Fil d’inspiration – in La Haye-Pesnel.
She has opened a cosy and inspiring workshop/third place, with a breathtaking view of the countryside, chickens and sheep.

A duality

harmonious

If her energy seems inexhaustible, it’s perhaps because she knows how to alternate travelling and returning to her roots, that skilful blend of effervescence and serenity. For a woman who feeds off her surroundings as well as her encounters, and whose ideas are constantly flowing, breathing in Normandy is essential. Thanks to her Hayland pied-à-terre, Marine doesn’t let herself get carried away by the whirlwind of her life. This is undoubtedly also due to a combination of seemingly opposite character traits. Like this balancing act between calm and excitement, she is both heads and tails: at once alert and composed, cerebral and manual, free and structured. She creates a framework within which energy flows in all directions, and knows how to take it easy. ” I’ve sometimes pulled my punches, so I adjust to keep up with the flow of life. I like introspection, this idea of moving forward. I can see that I’m hyper-organised and that sometimes I could be more flexible. It’s a constant adjustment. “Brilliant and gifted with great sagacity, she is also very humble. This is reflected in the laughter that punctuates her words.

” People often say that I have two extremes. I love spirituality, shamanism, I’m open-minded and at the same time I’m doing a PhD in industrial engineering, ultra-cartesian with algorithms. There are so many forces at work here. With design, I’ve brought these aspects of my personality together. “

Solutions

creative

For this jack-of-all-trades whose vocation is to ” work within constraints ” and make the work of others easier, things come easily. Her former teachers call her back for occasional work, her former bosses for one-off assignments… And every encounter is a new opportunity. ” My assignments are very varied, but they’re fairly fluid and I leave room for the unexpected. I’m full of gratitude because everything happens quite naturally. “Specialising in creative processes and innovation, she works for a wide range of organisations, including local authorities, SMEs and major groups. She helps them, by involving their employees, to solve their problems and achieve their objectives, whether these involve social or ecological transition, or renewing their customer experience. ” There ‘ s more and more design in jobs where it’s not necessarily expected. “For Marine, design is“a problem-solving approach, centred on people, that enables us to understand uses, needs and contexts in order to create and prototype solutions that are useful, desirable and viable, in an iterative way “. She loves collaborating, helping teams to innovate, structuring their creative processes and bringing out the best in them. ” The designer creates systems that enable an idea to be preserved, materialised, tested and brought to life. “

The third place

in La Haye-Pesnel

Created three years ago in her home, this cosy space is as much about relaxing as it is about working. ” It was one of my dreams, I wanted a space dedicated to creativity, open to all kinds of collaboration: training or team-building workshops for companies, woodworking or weaving workshops for craftspeople, hire out to associations… I love meeting people, and being able to welcome them in a space where I feel at ease helps me to improve the quality of my work. “It’s also an invitation to create, with books on improvisation and the language of plants as well as prototype equipment and office supplies… And it’s here that Marine shoots her instructional videos for her You Tube channel.

Thread of inspiration

Creativity from every angle

Marine took advantage of the confinement to set up her YouTube channel and produce videos on creativity, an activity she counts as one of the ” little fun things ” that she is happy to be able to continue. From above her desk, she films her graphic facilitation notebook, to share books or topics that interest her about the creative process: morning routines, creative profiles, the art of slowing down… ” I did it without thinking, with zero ambition,” she smiles, ” but now that I have a bit more time, I’m producing a video a week and will soon pass 5,000 subscribers. “

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Marine Catel's YouTube channel

The

transformation

Marine initiated this project in 2024, and the name alone captures all the appeal of design. Afterinclusion (including work to improve the Tourist Office’s Chuchoteurs d’info platform), this year the subject was mental health. Following two months’ preparation with Marine, 32 ENSAAMA students spent a week immersed in eight local facilities, three of them inter-municipal (the Maison de la petite enfance crèche, the La Haye-Pesnel media library and the CLIC-Santé service). Involving residents and stakeholders, they looked for innovative solutions, which they then presented to around sixty people.

” I took on this project because it ticked all the boxes for what I like: the GTM area, which is close to my heart, social innovation issues, action research to experiment/test things out and push back the boundaries of what we’re used to doing. For organisations, it’s quite new and I’m pleased to be able to show students that there are possible forms of design in local areas. “

Doing things together

In the world of work, one project follows another, but they are all excuses for each of us to blossom, to find our little flame, to learn, to forge links. So discovering new ways of working and the complementarities between people is what working together is all about. As well as being productive, it’s about letting yourself be surprised by the unexpected, where everything happens.

Marine Catel