Watermael-Boitsfort, Brussels — project partner
One organisation, two accreditations
La Vénerie is both the Cultural Centre and the Centre for Expression and Creativity of Watermael-Boitsfort. It offers a wide range of participatory and cultural projects: a cinema programme, performing arts, creative workshops and exhibitions.
Its activities unfold across two sites — the Espace Delvaux, on rue Gratès, and the Écuries, on place Gilson — and it explores still other spaces to bring out local cultural heritage and to build with everyone. Three priorities guide its work in the coming years: encouraging the involvement and participation of young people; being present everywhere across its peri-urban territory and in its untapped spaces, with particular attention to natural areas and our relationship to the living world; and giving priority to inclusion while questioning relations of domination.
The Cultural Centre
Accredited under the Wallonia-Brussels Federation decree on Cultural Centres, La Vénerie runs a cultural-action project built together with the stakeholders and residents of its territory.
Governance bodies
The non-profit’s governing bodies are the General Assembly, the Board and day-to-day management, the latter entrusted to the director. The Board is made up half of private members and half of public members appointed by the Municipality of Watermael-Boitsfort. To these are added, in accordance with articles 88, 89 and 90 of the accreditation decree, a Management Committee and a Steering Council. The latter carries out the ongoing self-evaluation of the cultural-action project.It was this body — bringing together residents, neighbourhood associations, the CPAS, the library, the community centres and board members — that the project’s first action-research cycle took as its ground for observation.
The Centre for Expression and Creativity
A CEC is a structured association that belongs to the field of “éducation permanente” (lifelong community education). Its rationale is the need, for groups and individuals, to have a tool — the use of artistic practice as a language — that allows them to grow within relationships of autonomy and freedom. The Ateliers Vénerie have been accredited as a CEC since 1984.
The workshops welcome children, teenagers and adults. Some projects are built with long-standing groups, such as Au nom du chœur, run with young people with intellectual disabilities, or Fragment(s) de Territoire(s), led by the adult theatre workshop.The CEC also has its own sound-production unit, the source of the project’s three podcasts.
In alternARTives
La Vénerie hosted two of the three action-research cycles: the first in December 2025, on forms of governance and self-evaluation, and the third in June 2026, on participation and access.
Drawing on its experience of European programmes, it supported [la fabrique francophone] in running its first Erasmus+ project. Its self-evaluation approach — the “Boussole” (Compass) and its grid — served as a foundation for the relational questionnaire co-built during the project.
Espace Delvaux — rue Gratès 3, 1170 Watermael-Boitsfort
Écuries — place Gilson 3, 1170 Watermael-Boitsfort