The new Youngsters project, developed with the Arba and Catteau schools in partnership with the Brigittines, brings together this year two 5th-grade classes in a shared artistic journey. Throughout the year, 17 students meet regularly in the studio with members of the collective to explore, through practice, a central question:
what does it require to trust someone?
Following the encounter with the 4th-grade students of the Maritime Plurielle school, which led to a performance on the main stage of the Théâtre National during the À la scène comme à la ville festival, the collective returns to working with young people from Brussels, supporting them and facilitating what they wish to shape and embody.
Through sessions of research, experimentation, and discussion, participants are invited to experience and question notions of trust, collaboration, vulnerability, and responsibility, both within artistic work and in their relationships with others. The studio thus becomes a space for trial, dialogue, and co-construction, where each person can find their place.
Alongside this studio work, the group of students closely follows the creation process of the performance After Hannibal, whose premiere is scheduled for March 2026 at the Brigittines. The students thereby discover the different stages of a professional creative process, in close contact with the artists involved, enriching their reflections through direct exchanges with the contemporary artistic field.
The project will conclude with a moment of sharing on May 19, 2026, at the Brigittines. The young participants will present what has emerged from their experience: encounters, questions, gestures, narratives, or other artistic forms. The framework for this presentation will be entirely imagined and shaped by them, following a logic of autonomy and trust.
Youngsters thus positions itself as a space for sensitive and collective learning, where artistic practice becomes a lever for thinking together about relationships, otherness, and trust — on stage as in life.
