Interview with Hélène Fournier, secretary of Nez en Herbe.

What is your professional background and how did you come to set up the Nez en Herbe association?

I’ve been a French teacher for 15 years, and I’ve been putting my “nose everywhere” since childhood. When I was little, I used to pick flowers and macerate them in bottles to try and preserve the smells I liked. I’ve always enjoyed smelling everything around me. I later trained in olfactotherapy. I already sensed the close links between smells, memory and emotions. So training and olfaction became my fields of action.

During an interview with Roland Salesse, I discovered the Nez en Herbe association. We got together and became friends. Since then, I’ve been running workshops and becoming a member so that I can make my own contribution. As secretary of the association since 2022, I felt that Nez en Herbe was the ideal place to share and develop these two passions. It was also the best place for me to pass on to children a taste for scents.

The association brings together people from a wide range of backgrounds: researchers, perfumers, olfactotherapists, doctors, people with a passion for the sense of smell, and so on

Their shared passion is obviously linked to their interest in smells. They all want to share their knowledge with a young audience. The members of Nez en Herbe have often felt that there is a lack of education in this sense. So they wanted to develop activities for children. Some of them have made this their profession, and others are contributing to this momentum.

By bringing together everyone’s skills, the association is growing and opening up new perspectives.

Why is olfactory awakening and education important for the very young?

Although it’s right in the middle of the picture, the nose, or rather the olfactory sense, is not exploited at school. Sight and hearing are used instead.

Through the following four examples, we believe that early olfactory education can benefit both individuals and society.

– Integrating olfactory awareness to encourage cognitive development and learning.

– Make future consumers aware of odour and taste messages to encourage diversity and quality in food for health, well-being and pleasure.

– Because research is progressing on the olfactory diagnosis of illnesses and the effect of odours on the psycho-physiological state. We need to prepare the ground for the medicine and well-being of the future.

– Because every culture needs an awakening: opening the way to new aesthetic pleasures.

The Nez en herbe association is now over 6 years old. How would you define its evolution and what are its main objectives?

The raison of being of the Nez en Herbe association is to create a programme to develop olfaction in schools. Since its creation, Nez en Herbe has been involved in fun and educational workshops.

New members are joining the association and helping to roll out the activities.

The main aim is to use olfactory awareness to encourage cognitive development and learning.

In fact, working on our sense of smell to make it more effective could be particularly important from an early age.

What recommendations and types of activities would you suggest for olfactory stimulation in the very young?

Introduce children to smelling by concentrating, identifying odorants and enjoying playing with their noses.

For several years now, our olfactory creator members have been taking on a real challenge every month: creating scented preparations for the crèches in the Cap Enfants network, illustrating various countries around the world in olfactory terms.

In nursery schools, we run fun and educational workshops that help children become aware of the powers of their noses, using their sense of smell to open up to their environment and their own emotions and sensations.

An example of an activity with toddlers: first, a fruit (e.g. strawberry) is presented and smelled. Next, the fruit is hidden in a tea ball, presented with other balls containing another fruit or an aromatic herb. The child is then asked to identify the ball containing the reference fruit. After this training in the use of smell, the child can be asked to recognise them by smell alone and to name them.

Successful olfactory stimulation ultimately comes down to teaching children to perceive smells. In this way, memory and emotions are stimulated and refined.

Why have you chosen to work in partnership with 5 senses for kids Foundation?

The olfactory dimension resonates with the other senses. Since its creation, Nez en Herbe has worked closely with the Cap Enfants group of crèches. Cap Enfants’s educational approach is based on exploratory play around the discovery of the 5 senses. We then naturally joined forces with 5 senses for kids Foundation, created by the same founder.

Exploring the sense of smell also means realising that without it, a dimension is missing.

The Japanese call it “listening to a smell”, which means paying attention to what we bring close to our nose. In fact, we often instinctively close our eyes when we breathe in a pleasant scent, to take full advantage of the pleasure. Touch is also present in our workshops, as we explore the textures of the products we smell.

To know more about Nez en Herbe, click here

To know more about olfaction, click here