Raffaella Benanti, Grande Halle de la Villette: "The soul of culture is creating something meaningful"

At SIPAM 2026, Raffaella Benanti, artistic advisor and project manager at the Grande Halle de la Villette in Paris, reflected on the memory and future of cultural spaces, the challenges of working in former industrial buildings, and the changing conditions for outdoor arts in a time of climate instability. Specialising in circus, street arts and puppetry, Benanti spoke about La Villette as a place of experimentation, accessibility and cultural diversity, but also as a site where history, architecture, audiences and environmental realities must constantly be renegotiated.

For me, it would be a mix of the initial ideas and images projected by the people who made a place, and then, little by little, the thoughts, feelings and emotions of the people, or living beings, who have used it. I think the soul of architecture changes over time. It becomes richer, more complex, and it evolves with the passing of time.

On the same note, what is the soul of culture?

I think the meaning of our work, the purpose of our work, is to create something meaningful. When I present works of art, I always try to find in them a kind of necessity, something necessary at some level. It can be political, aesthetic, social, or simply beauty. It can be very different, but there has to be something strong inside it. So I think the soul of culture is creating something meaningful, allowing people to discover things and, perhaps, creating some common ground.

During SIPAM, there was a discussion about the future of arts spaces. From your experience at La Villette, what has been the greatest challenge: restoring the building, programming it, or keeping it relevant for different types of audiences?

I have not been there from the beginning, because La Villette is a project that started around 50 years ago. I have been there for 14 and a half years, which is not nothing, but it is still not 50 years. I think the challenges have changed over time. In the beginning, the challenge was how to imagine something totally new in a place that had not been made for that. It was also the 1970s, a moment when there were still few projects of this kind. It was about completely changing the perception of space.

Another challenge was bringing different audiences together. La Villette was in the north of Paris, and at that time people from the city centre were not used to going there. So it was also about mixing people and creating a place for the democratisation of culture.

Over time, things changed. Today, one of the main challenges is still to make it a place where different audiences can meet, in every sense of the word. It is a place of diversity and inclusion.

We try to offer cultural projects and artworks that can be accessible to everyone, in every meaning of the term: physically accessible, but also understandable and meaningful for many people.

One of our challenges is how to create a common ground, where very different audiences can meet and enjoy the same proposal. La Villette is also a park, so there are people who come only for a picnic or for a walk, and others who come specifically for performances. The question is how we can make people who come for a picnic stay for something else.

Another challenge is that La Villette is a very diverse place. As a public organisation, we are in charge of a large part of it: the open and green spaces, many buildings and areas. But there are also other institutions, such as the Philharmonie de Paris, the Science Museum, smaller private concert halls, and the Zenith, which is a huge rock concert hall. For the audience, it is not always clear how all these places relate to each other. So another challenge is how we work together with the other institutions to create what in France we call an esprit de site, something unique to La Villette, without competing with one another, but by collaborating.

Do you have a special programme, exhibition or project connected to the memory of the space?

We do not have it anymore in the way we once did. One of the buildings, which had previously been connected to the veterinary side of the site, because La Villette was a slaughterhouse and cattle market, used to host an exhibition about the history of La Villette, with old photographs. We no longer have that physical exhibition, although the history is available on our website.

We are also very glad about a project called Micro-Folie. I remember when it opened, although I was not there yet, everyone at La Villette was delighted. I think there should be something there about the history of La Villette, although I am not completely sure.

Yes. We are going to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the park. When I mentioned 50 years, I was referring to the beginning of the project, the moment when it was first imagined. But the park itself will celebrate 40 years, and we are working on that now. I think there will be many projects, both outdoors and indoors, about the history of the place and about the people who come every day.

There are many people who live in the neighbourhood and who came as children, and who still come now as spectators or with their own children. Sometimes it is very beautiful, because you meet them during an installation or an exhibition and they give us feedback connected to their memories. This anniversary, which is still being conceived, will be an opportunity to make this more visible.

Many cities are now trying to reimagine former industrial spaces, especially in Europe, where heavy industry has changed or disappeared. Do you think these spaces should be preserved and given another life, or should we invest more in new buildings?

I think reuse is always better, for environmental and historical reasons. If there is a beautiful or interesting building with a historical past, I always think it is a pity to tear it down and build something new. So I am completely in favour of reuse.

That said, industrial spaces are a real challenge because they were not built for culture. We see this every day. Our main venue, the Grande Halle, was the former cattle market. It is an iron-and-glass building of 26,000 square metres, so it is huge. It has already been renovated two or three times, but even now we are planning the next renovation.

In terms of weather, light, heating and energy, it was simply not designed for this use. It is extremely expensive, extremely hot in summer and extremely cold in winter. Light comes through, which makes performances difficult. Because it was such a huge open space, and because we did not want to cut it up too much, we kept it open and used temporary partitions depending on what we did. That means sound passes from one part to another. There are many problems, and from an environmental point of view it is not adapted: it is too expensive and uses too much energy. But it still has a past, and it would be a total shame to renounce that. It is not easy.

Industrial spaces are often located on the periphery of cities, which can create problems of accessibility. When cultural conversations move to these spaces, does that also change the cultural landscape?

For us, the easy part is that the metro is nearby, and that makes things much easier. Still, in the past, and even now to some extent, La Villette can feel a little far from the city centre. I think this distance is more mental than real, because you can take the metro for 20 minutes and reach another part of the city quite easily. But for Parisians, this kind of mental geography matters.

The area was not empty. There were many buildings and people living around it, so La Villette created an offer for the people who were already there and who, at that time, had less access to culture. Things have changed. Now the area is completely part of Paris. You no longer have the feeling that you are going to the other side of the world.

Because La Villette also had a very unique cultural offer, including urban culture projects and contemporary circus, it became a place of experimentation. It was perhaps one of the first places in France where contemporary circus companies were presented. In the end, it also became an interesting place for more habitual cultural audiences. Now it is fully part of the cultural landscape.

There are also theatres in the suburbs of Paris that are part of the landscape because their programmes are so interesting that people go there. But the existence of a good metro network makes things easier. Without it, I do not think people would come in the same way. We see that fewer and fewer people come by car, and those who do often get lost or cannot find parking. Working with the city to create easier access can completely change things. Some theatres organise shuttle buses, although of course this costs money. I remember a theatre in Nanterre, outside Paris, that organised a shuttle so people could get there.

Would a shuttle system help audiences reach cultural spaces more easily?

Yes, I think so. Imagine if there were a bus waiting for people in the city centre: people buy their ticket, the bus brings them to the venue, and then maybe half an hour after the show they can go back. I think that would make things much easier. But it takes money.

Besides La Villette, are there other spaces in Paris where outdoor performances or contemporary circus can take place?

There are festivals. I would not say there is another venue like us, because our park is really dedicated to that, so there is no other project exactly like La Villette. But there are festivals that organise performances in different open spaces. We also work with many festivals, and sometimes they come to La Villette regularly, but they can also organise performances in another park, a square or other urban spaces.

The city can collaborate, and there are associations working in different neighbourhoods that present shows, performances and outdoor activities. Some associations are really focused on open-air work and use urban space, but it is not exactly the same as La Villette.

Climate change is making outdoor performance more complicated. At SIPAM, several outdoor events had to be cancelled because of heavy rain, and heat is becoming another major issue. How are you addressing this at La Villette?

We are thinking about it a lot, of course. This year has been very different. We already had two long episodes of very high temperatures: one at the end of May, over 30 degrees, and another in mid-June. When it reaches 41 degrees, it is simply impossible.

We have even had to cancel some indoor performances because the Grande Halle does not have air conditioning. Installing air conditioning would be unacceptable from an environmental point of view, so we do not do it. We usually provide hand fans and water, and we rent machines that spray water, but we resist air conditioning. We only use it for exhibitions where the artworks have to be protected.

Outdoors, until now, we have not usually had to cancel because of heat, because we normally programme performances later in the day: in the afternoon, late afternoon or evening. The main problem for our open-air programmes has been our open-air cinema festival. When it rains or when it is too windy, the screen cannot go up. It is an inflatable screen, so there is a risk it could break.

But things are changing. Right now, we have two beautiful installations in two small gardens. The idea is to let these gardens evolve naturally in terms of biodiversity and vegetation, and every two years new artists will create works for them. One of these projects is a sound installation, and we had to interrupt it for a few days because the sound system and computer were overheating. The computer was inside a protected wooden box, and inside it there was no way to make the temperature go down. So we decided to interrupt the installation for a few days.

I think we react to things when they happen and try to find long-term solutions. One of those solutions is the renovation of the Grande Halle, on which our General Director is working. We hope it will take place in a few years, so that the building can become a little more adaptable.

It seems clear that from now on we will have these very high temperatures more often.

Yes, that is certain. And we will also have more frequent episodes of very strong rain. It has always happened in France, but not as much as now.

It is not easy to be optimistic about the state of the world, in general, about anything. But when it comes to mental freedom, feelings, emotion, sharing meaningful things and making sense, I think humanity is always able to find ways to continue, even in dark times.

Yesterday, we listened to very strong testimonies from artists who live in conflict zones. Even in such difficult daily lives, art continues. I think we tend to talk more about art than culture, even if they are, of course, different. Art is closer to the expression of ourselves, while culture can, in some ways, be a construction. But I think these things cannot disappear.

The conditions can be difficult. It can become much more of a struggle than it has been in many countries until now, and we already see that: less money, fewer spaces, self-censorship, real censorship and oppression. I hope the world will become better, so that we can work and live more easily. But still, there will be a way. I hope so.