The carte blanche events

Rêver pour de vrai offers an experience that combines poetry, performance and collective fiction. Its aim is to transform our way of living in the world. Since summer 2025, the dreams of the people of La Chaux-de-Fonds have found their way into public spaces. Banners and slogans have appeared on windows and balconies, while dreams and stories have been gathered by the handful at La Plage des Six Pompes. As the culmination of this long-term project, the January installation promises to be an immersive work. A shared breath that awakens aspirations and invites action.

For its carte blanche, the BARAMÔMES association has created a unique project for families. A space that celebrates creativity, solidarity and free play while, along the way, reshuffling the balance of power in favour of children. Seven multi-sensory spaces invite them to explore, invent and share. Colours, shapes, textures, sound, light: here, everything is designed to let the imagination run free, whatever your age. And when the play areas disappear beneath the winter snow, magic takes over – and works its spell – within the walls of QG.

There is no alternative (T.I.N.A) aims to bring La Chaux-de-Fonds’ alternative music scene to life at the heart of the Anciens Abattoirs. For one month, musicians, guest artists and audiences will inhabit and transform the Frigo 1 space together, turning it into a living laboratory for creativity. Improvisations, performances, encounters, workshops and sonic experiments unfold in a constantly evolving space, free from hierarchy and open to all forms of curiosity. A collective residency for creating, sharing and listening.

Coordinated by Assamoi Rose Lièvre, the carte blanche by the Fédération Africaine des Montagnes Neuchâteloises brings together artists and craftspeople from various African countries. Dances, storytelling, ceremonies, exhibitions, workshops and screenings celebrate the diversity and vitality of La Chaux-de-Fonds’ African cultures. A space for connection and knowledge sharing, where stories, know-how and flavours are shared. Never forgetting the essential spirit of celebration.

Who hasn’t dreamt of leaping over the Mona Lisa or climbing a Jeff Koons? Hyperdrome transforms the central alley of the Anciens Abbatoirs into a fantastical racecourse where contemporary art becomes a playground. Here, artworks are obstacles to be overcome, changing as the public passes through. Part gymkhana, part sporting spectacle and part artistic creation, a fully immersive experience. Funny and irreverent. Where the aim is not to be the fastest, but rather the most stylish.

As the first to move into the Anciens Abbatoirs 25 years ago, the skatepark is a core part of its history. This community build invites you to celebrate this heritage – and the DIY culture that goes with it – by literally getting your hands dirty. On the programme: creating a mosaic mural and building skateable modules inspired by Le Corbusier. Not to mention an anniversary exhibition and a whole host of workshops where people of all ages can learn to build, customise and, of course, ride.

Take twelve musician-handymen, put them within the four walls of an old forge and let them get to work for a month. No one can truly predict what the outcome of this experiment will be, and that is precisely what makes it so interesting. This should give rise to a work – let’s call it a machine for now – that will engage in dialogue with the Watchmaking Metropolis Orchestra (Watch, for short) and its exuberant music. Whether Watch will serve the machine or the other way round is still uncertain. Only time will tell.

Génisse en fuite (heifer on the loose) revives the history of the Anciens Abattoirs through a sensitive and unpredictable installation inspired by a surge of life in the face of a preordained fate. Somewhere between memory, resistance and rebirth, the site becomes the setting for a ritual in motion. Suspended from the rails that once distributed carcasses throughout the space, objects encased in ice emerge and gradually break free from their frozen confines. A slow and symbolic metamorphosis that reveals the history of the building and the people who passed through it.

What if you stepped behind the screen to discover the unseen world of cinema? With L’Envers du décor, the central alley of the Anciens Abattoirs is transformed into an image-making workshop, combining a pop-up studio with a screening space. Workshops, shoots, editing, film screenings, talks and immersive experiences encourage public participation in the creative process. A collective, accessible and dynamic project driven by the region’s film community.

Not far from the Anciens Abattoirs, the Cimetière des Eplatures continues to be decommissioned: graves are dismantled and bodies exhumed. What could have remained an administrative procedure is transformed into narrative and artistic material. Through archives, stories, sculptures and photographs, Julie Houriez Salomon and Virginie Rebetez give voice to forgotten lives, honouring them one last time in a contemporary ritual where flashes of the present subtly dialogue with fragments of the past.

Through organic sculptures and sound and video work, Pop-mortem explores flesh, transformation and memory, in an ongoing dialogue with the history of the Anciens Abattoirs. An immersive exhibition that blends changing materials, decomposing bodies, pop culture and acts of care, gently drawing us into intimate, complex and profound questions.