Curieux Baz'art

Curieux Baz'art: Live Art Invades the Streets of Gaillac

Since the summer of 2025, Gaillac has hosted a new open-air artistic and family event: Curieux Baz'art. Organized by the City of Gaillac and the Gaillac-Graulhet agglomeration, this free festival takes place every year in June and transforms the town center into a giant stage for live arts in all their forms.

The Legacy of Papillonnez

Curieux Baz'art continues the spirit of the Papillonnez festival, a family cultural event that had won over the residents of Gaillac over the years. This new name marks an artistic evolution while retaining the founding values: complete freeness, accessibility for all audiences, artistic pluridisciplinarity, and integration into the city's public spaces.

The name change reflects a renewed ambition: a more "curious," more surprising, more audacious festival in its artistic offerings, but always just as open and friendly.

Live Arts in Unusual Places

What sets Curieux Baz'art apart from traditional festivals is its ability to occupy unexpected locations: shop windows, inner courtyards, gardens, museums, squares, and street corners become ephemeral stages. Spectators wander from one place to another, discovering performances, installations, and shows along the way that they wouldn't have imagined finding there.

This open approach to culture is at the heart of the festival's philosophy: art doesn't wait for the audience in a closed room; it goes out to meet them in daily life, around a corner, in a lively square.

A Pluridisciplinary Program for All Ages

Curieux Baz'art offers a resolutely pluridisciplinary program that embraces all forms of live arts:

• Street Arts: parades, installations, performances in public spaces
• Contemporary Circus: acrobatics, balancing acts, creations blending body and poetry
• Musical Theater: shows combining dramatic acting, singing, and instruments
• Dance: participatory performances, nature dances guided by a soundtrack
• Music: street concerts, live music for all tastes
• Workshops: plastic arts creations, artistic games for the youngest

The 1st Edition in June 2025

The first edition of Curieux Baz'art took place on June 14 and 15, 2025, in the town center of Gaillac. For two days, several artistic companies took over the city's squares, streets, and unusual locations for astonishing and accessible performances for everyone.

The program for this inaugural edition notably featured giant instruments and sound machines, an exhibition blending storytelling, science, and mystery in a reinvented museum space, a participatory dance in nature guided by a soundtrack, acrobatics on an unstable mast, musical theater with puppets and Breton music, as well as spectacular high-flying acrobatics.

The atmosphere described by participants was that of a joyful, offbeat, and friendly popular festival, driven by the creative energy of companies from all over France.

A Festival Supported by the Occitanie Region

From its very first edition, Curieux Baz'art has benefited from the support of the Occitanie Region, which welcomed the creation of this new free and family-friendly cultural festival in the Tarn. This institutional support demonstrates the project's ambition: to make Gaillac a shining cultural hub in Occitanie, accessible to the greatest number.