A network that brings together Brussels artists, art workers, and artist-run initiatives for community building and exchanging knowledge. The ‘BARN Core Team’ facilitates, working for a culture of solidarity and empowerment.

WORK IN PROGRESS

This website is still in development. Please note that this is a bottom-up initiative with very limited funding. If there are mistakes, please bear with us :) Would you like to contribute? Let us know by writing us an email on contact@brusselsartistrun.net

Want to be part of the Telegram group? Here’s a link. This is a community platform with a variety of thematic ’topics’ (events, space for work, space to live, material shops & tools, jobs, etc). There are over 1300 users, and it’s growing rapidly.

Have fun, on behalf of the ‘BARN Core Team’, Est (Level Five), Sophie (Level Five), Mariana (Level Five), Jesse (Jubilee), Milan (Domesticity), Eszter (Artist Commons). Please join us if you like!

* JOIN US ON TELEGRAM *

The Brussels Artist-Run Network was founded in 2020 to connect artists, art workers, and artist-run initiatives in Brussels. Operating without a structure of formal membership, the network in principle includes all artists and initiatives in Brussels who engage with its resources and events. The Brussels artist-run scene is a rich, wild, diverse and hyperactive universe that isn’t always easy to navigate – even for those who are part of it. From the start, the Brussels Artist-Run telegram group has been a central forum to find out what events are going on, to ask questions and come up with answers, to offer and find workspace, housing, jobs, residencies, to ask the community for help, etc. At the moment it has around 1400 members of all artistic disciplines, and continues growing rapidly. A monthly newsletter goes out to 144 independent artist-run and curator-run initiatives and a wealth of individuals.

The ‘BARN Core Team’ facilitates dynamics on this broad network, working for a culture of solidarity and empowerment by focusing on four key areas: Sharing information and resources, Community building, Research, and Advocacy.

By developing and refining productive forms of gathering tools and knowledge and other collective proposals for work and reflection, the BARN Core Team does long-term practice-based research across the entire body of the network. Collective intelligence is channeled iteratively through the circulation of knowledge, strategies, needs, dreams and survival tactics of artist-run initiatives. Through the evolving network of connections and information, the BARN Core Team aims to function as facilitators, creating time, space and opportunities for artists, art workers and artist-run initiatives to connect.

1. Sharing information and resources

We facilitate the exchange of information, resources, and knowledge both locally and internationally. Our initiatives include:

  • A monthly newsletter that highlights public moments as well as non-event announcements by the broader network. There is a separate section for news and announcements by the BARN Core Team.
  • A rapidly growing, vivid Telegram group forms and supports the community and actualises the agency of the network. It has many subgroups (events, jobs, working space, living space, knowledge sharing, the art workers attest, residencies, subsidies, parenthood, etc).
  • An interactive open-source website showcasing news, mapping artist-run initiatives, and sharing research by the BARN core team.

2. Community building

We create time and space for artists to come together, fostering environments of solidarity, trust, and care. Activities include:

  • Biking/walking tours visiting two to four different artist-run spaces in a neighbourhood.
  • Hangouts without specific programme, easy access occasions to hang out and get to know other people.
  • International get-togethers with other artist-run networks.

3. Research

We research the artist-run scene: what initiatives exist, how do they work, what can we learn from them, what can we help them with? Activities include:

  • A living cartography of Brussels’ artist-run initiatives, mapping spaces, financial and legal setups, and community dynamics.
  • Research linked to the Artist Workspace Memorandum 2025-2030 (see below): statistics and experience of the strengths and needs of Brussels’ artist scene, policy gaps in Brussels, policy in other cities, good and bad practices, etc.
  • Brussels Artist-Run Reader: compiled to give context to the importance of affordable, qualitative and long-term workspace for artists in Brussels, a city that is becoming increasingly expensive.

4. Advocacy

We explore ways to unite actors so that we can speak with one voice on critical issues. Initiatives include:

  • Spaces for Spaces: The Value of Space for Artistic work, a series of thematic conversations with artist interventions. Presently focusing on mapping the value of workspaces from artistic and social rather than financial points of view.
  • A collective Artist Workspace Memorandum 2025-2030 to send to elected officials and municipal administrations (later also to regional ones), asking to develop policy for workspaces for artists and arts workers, studio collectives, laboratories and so on. Such policies around our places of production hardly exist yet. We are working on a much more profound Policy Support Document too.

BARN Core Team

The BARN Core Team is a group of people who want to help making things happen for the wider, amorphous artistic scene – the ‘Brussels Artist-Run Network’. Currently Est Fantuzzi, Milan Gillard, Eszter Némethi, Mariana Pechackova, and Jesse Van Winden form the BARN Core Team. Please note that this is a bottom-up initiative with only occasional funding for events. If there are mistakes, please bear with us :)

We are always looking for team members! Contact us on contact@brusselsartistrun.net!

Website

Many thanks to Leo Leyens and Johanna Gratzer to create this website – together with the BARN Core Team

Typefaces

Publi Fluor hand-cut by Chrystel Crickx from 1973 to 2000, wildely vectorized by Hammerfonts in 2001, published by Speculoos/Open Source Publishing in 2011, released again by Crickx research group in 2024.

Garamon(d/t) designed in 2016 by Paul Tubert, published in January 2020 by fonderie.download.

Fluxisch-Else designed in 2016 by Paul Tubert, published in January 2020 by fonderie.download.

Illustration by Mladen Bundalo