Action-research no. 3 — Brussels, June 2026
Havelange, in search of the Giants — Episode 3
A portrait.
Produced by Léa-Anaïs Machado / Collectif Forêt NoireThis one doesn’t tell the story of the week. It tells the story of a person. Momo ran the Havelange Cultural Centre from its very beginning, deep in the Walloon countryside, far from the schemes and the symposia. We listened to her talk about what cultural rights mean when you are the only venue for thirty kilometres around. It is the project’s final episode — and probably the one that says the most
Getting started
Five days in Watermael-Boitsfort, six months after the first stage, for the project’s final round of action-/relational research. A wish to explore: participation and access, tested in the field rather than in a meeting room.It opened at Watermael station with the “Au nom du chœur” workshops — a run-through of the work in progress, followed by a collective review of the Cahors session and a sharing of expectations for this final week.
The territory through the lens of participation
A walk across Watermael-Boitsfort starting from the youth centre (Maison des jeunes), guided by one question: in what ways, and how, do these various places build relationships across a territory?In the afternoon, a meeting at Le Boson with the Syndicat des Immenses, on the joyful, contagious creativity that fuels their fight to put an end to “homelessness” — what they call sans-chez-soirisme, a coinage that reframes it as a lack of a home of one’s own rather than a personal failing.
Pathways into participation
A meeting with the teenagers of the show Frites, Mensonges et Trahisons and their parents, at the Espace Delvaux bar. The conversation traced the path that leads to a theatre workshop: the reasons to join, to keep going, to want to stop, to persevere. The group then attended the performance.
Inspiring encounters
At Article 27 — access to the institutional cultural offer for people living in hardship, and cultural mediation as a way of mobilising groups around the injustices they experience.
At the Havelange Cultural Centre — cultural rights in a rural setting, through the cultural initiative “Les Géant·es” (The Giants). It was from this unplanned encounter with “Momo”, the centre’s former director, that the third podcast was born.
At the Écuries — the open Monday-evening adult theatre workshop, Fragment(s) de Territoire(s).
Collective reading (arpentage)
The final day was given over to an arpentage — a collaborative, shared-out reading — of the Carnet Découverte des droits culturels, written by Astrac, the Cultural Rights Observation Platform and Culture & Démocratie. A playful exercise in which each person questions the framework through the account of their own practice, alternating between plenary and small groups.
So what came of it?
Relationship is the very substance of the work, rather than its means.Here the project reached its third step — being with — the culmination of a journey rich in encounters and in avenues for future work, as well as in lessons for cultural organisations and public policy.
