Kanal Museum – Circular strategies in arts and production

During this ten-month mission (April 2024–January 2025), Rotor provided support to the programming and artistic teams at the Kanal Museum, Brussels. We helped them to integrate sustainability and circularity approaches into their current and future activities.

Throughout the mission, we addressed issues such as staff and artist travel, scenography design and materials, and transporting artworks, with the aim of balancing artistic freedom and openness to the world with respect for planetary boundaries.

A significant part of our work focused on strategies to extend the lifespan of scenography materials through reuse. These strategies involved reversible design, effective storage organisation, and collaboration with local salvagers.

We also helped Kanal adopt monitoring tools to assess the environmental impacts of their main activities, and prepare feedback strategies to prevent or mitigate them.

A notable feature of this mission was that, despite the teams being already wholly dedicated to preparing future exhibitions and events, the museum itself had not yet opened. In fact, the building that would house the museum was still under construction, so Kanal's teams had set up a temporary base right outside their future home.

This unique situation presented both challenges and opportunities. For example, we could not test all our ideas directly against the daily management of such a large facility. However, it was also the perfect time to establish good habits from the outset and discuss fundamental organisational aspects with Kanal.

Details

A project by

Gaspard Geerts, Michael Ghyoot, Sophie Boone, Corinne Leclerc, Valentin Guerineau

With the help of

Géraldine Durieux