VIDEO. Toulouse: l’Écluse Saint-Pierre, a new cultural center in the city center
A long-term project that has now come to fruition, the Écluse Saint-Pierre will host shows and audiences from all walks of life in the heart of the city from March.
Impossible to go astray, the plaque bearing the logo “Écluse Saint-Pierre – 1,573 m from the lock of Ponts-Jumeaux” clearly indicates the address of the place in the making, set up close to Place Saint-Pierre, the quays of Garonne and the Brienne canal. The site, formerly the property of the Voies Navigables de France (VNF), however, does not depart from one of its primary purposes since it still houses the lock keeper who ensures good water circulation. But it is culture that we will soon have to talk here since, thanks to the action of enthusiasts, a performance hall, a restaurant, a bar will be created. “The cultural project has been written for a long time but the story began 7 years ago, confides the musician Rémi Sanchez (future director of the structure) accompanied by Laurent Nassiet (in charge of the catering and bar part), Joël Saurin (for the part programming), Daniel Passerini and Jérôme Delpech, when we won the call for projects. It was already good but we then had to set up the financial project. And there, the work with the design offices and the architects allowed to highlight the whole of the task to be accomplished. With a 240-year-old building, the renovation project has become pharaonic since it was necessary to change the frame, touch the walls, provide perfect sound insulation … “
Place of life
Objective and avowed dreams: “To create a place of life, not just a performance hall and not just a bar-restaurant as we experienced in our respective journeys during the 1990s, complete Rémi Sanchez, but a lively place that promotes diversity social, the mixture of generations and a great musical diversity, from baroque to barré! ” All the music will thus have the right of citizenship “but not only, our but being to have the maximum of artistic proposals going from the dance solo, of theater to that of circus, all adapted to the tonnage of 300 people of the room (and 100 more in the establishment). ” The multidisciplinarity, accessibility and social as well as generational diversity advocated here are all arguments that have had the good fortune to seduce the Haute-Garonne Departmental Council, which supports the project up to 320,000 euros out of a budget of more than 2 million euros including study costs, works. Will the other local authorities follow suit?