Level Five - Artist Cooperative Brussels

Level Five is a cooperative studio community for and by artists. We collectively organise and take care of our spaces and the people making use of them. In this way we create a supportive environment for each of our artistic practices and initiatives.

Through cooperation, Level Five rethinks the organisational and economic structures of the arts, redefines what it means to be an artist, and rehearses potential fair practices that could take root in the locality we live and work in. As such our community develops an understanding of what it stands for and how we see ourselves, which prepares us for solidarity and coalitions with others in different situations but similar struggles. In this way collectively organising as artists is repoliticising being an artist. Level Five can be seen as a search for an alternative; a prefigurative practice, not a utopia—a continuous process of readjusting and working through difficulties to come to a new world in the shell of the old.

Established by artists in 2019, Level Five currently runs 3 studio buildings across 3 Brussels municipalities, providing artist studios for more than 100 members. All the members of Level Five are able to participate in the Lumbung Practice programme. Some participate on a regular basis others more sporadically. This is made possible by the support of de Brakke Grond. Currently, Rori from Level Five is in Amsterdam for a year to coordinate and participate in the Lumbung trajectory, in the second year the aim is to put our findings and developed tools to use in Brussels at Level Five.