Latitude 50 is rebuilding a dismantled Mouscron house in Marchin as residency housing for artists with children

La Rotonde is a timber building that Latitude 50 took apart in Mouscron and is putting back up behind Le Cirque, its own performance space in Marchin. The organisation's wording on its venues page is short: a wooden building with four bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen and a living room, dedicated to Latitude 50's parenthood project. Inauguration is now set for spring 2028.

This week's newsletter names the partners on the rebuild, the Commune of Marchin and CISP Devenirs, and confirms the project is still in progress.

The reason it exists was laid out when RTBF visited the site in December 2023. Leaving for a creation residency is the part of the job that does not bend around a young family, so the house is meant to let a parent bring the children along: children able to move around the site, facilities adapted to small children and infants, and arrangements with local schools to place a child for a week or two while a parent works.

Olivier Minet, then Latitude 50's director, described the building to RTBF as a sort of wooden and glazed yurt that they went to dismantle in Mouscron with help from the commune of Marchin. The juggler Gaëlle Coppée, talking about what it would mean for her, called it hyperbienveillant et encadrant pour une jeune maman. Those interviews are nearly three years old, so the titles were accurate then.

The dates tell their own story. RTBF reported in December 2023 that the house would open at the start of the following season, in September 2024. Latitude 50's own page now says spring 2028. Both facts come from the people involved, and the second one supersedes the first.

What is not published anywhere is how an artist gets in. No application, no window, no selection process for La Rotonde appears on the site or in the newsletter. Worth asking Latitude 50 directly if a residency with children is what you need, rather than waiting for a call that may never be advertised.