These guided walks link urban and gender issues to the specific experiences of women and LGBTQIA+ people.
They reveal the spaces that LGBTQIA+ communities have occupied in cosmopolitan Brussels, and how and why these locations have shifted over time. In the city centre, we will track the three locational phases of Brussels’ ‘rainbow village’, the concentration of lesbian/gay/queer venues with their changing bars, cafés and collective spaces, from the 1970s to the present day.
The tours also look at why this see-saw occupation of spaces in the city has proved particularly unfavourable to women and other minoritised social groups in the 21st century.
We will see how, while urban monuments and symbols for LGBTQI+ people have multiplied, they remain incomplete or normatively gendered when it comes to representing women.