The Watou arts festival is returning after a year’s absence year due to a lack of funding. Support from the Flemish government is allowing the festival to take place again this year, with its traditional blend of visual arts and poetry. The programme was announced on Monday.
The festival, near Poperinge in West Flanders, will take place from 15 July to 30 August. More than 60 artists and 25 poets are taking part.
A grant from the region is making its return possible, but whether long-term funding will be forthcoming is not yet certain. “There are plans for the Flemish government to continue subsidising us, but those discussions are still ongoing,” says local councillor Loes Vandromme.
The theme of this edition is Gemene Wegen, or Shared Roads. In Watou runs the Gemenestraat, a road that forms the border between Belgium and France and is shared by two countries.
“A ‘shared road’ is a shared responsibility between multiple parties, a place of cooperation, but also of potential friction,” the curators say.
“The word ‘gemeen’ once meant ‘belonging to everyone’. Over the course of history, it shifted to mean ‘low’ and ‘bad’. That shift tells a story of what we have lost: forms of shared use in which responsibility arose from participation, not from ownership. This edition aims to practise that once again.”