Gronsky Expo, Détours de chant, Children’s Book Festival, Reading Nights, theater… Here are our Top 5 weekend outings in and around Toulouse

• The Détours de Chant Festival

The 24^e edition of the Détours de Chant festival begins this weekend with around ten concerts across the city and the Toulouse area. French song will give voice to La Cabane with Leïla Huissoud, at the Alban-Minville cultural center where Baro Wati will perform, while the Salle de l’Escale in Tournefeuille will welcome Claire Diterzi in symphony for two new concerts.

Capable of all metamorphoses, considering her records as so many projects followed by stage creations, Claire Diterzi shifts genres and addresses all audiences. Here is his wish granted to see his songs adorned with symphonic orchestration. Saturday and Sunday, she will be accompanied by the Tournefeuille Symphony Orchestra conducted by Claude Puysségur.

Also read:
Nach, Claire Diterzi, Carmen Maria Vega… women give voice to the Détours de chant festival in Toulouse

• L’expo d’Alexander Gronsky

Le Château d’Eau presents photographer Alexander Gronsky through an exhibition covering 14 years of work in Russia and China. Gronsky explores the relationship between man and landscape in photographs combining poetry, austerity and experimentation, questioning the limits of landscape photography. The artist, born in Tallinn in 1980, favors images over discourse, creating visual puzzles where reportage, documentary and fiction intersect. With digital techniques and innovative framing, he disrupts perceptions, transforming reality into illusion. His works reveal expanding post-Soviet peri-urban spaces, populated by characters oscillating between conformity and rebellion.

Also read:
Why you have to go see the snowy photos of Russian Alexander Gronsky at the Château d’Eau gallery in Toulouse

• Children’s Book Festival

The Occitanie Children’s Book Festival is back in Saint-Orens de Gameville for its 23rd edition. Called “Who are these heroes?”, the event offers workshops, exhibitions, readings, shows and meetings with around thirty renowned authors and illustrators, such as Gilles Bachelet Jo Witek, Florence Thinard and Ghislaine Herbera.

This weekend will be the highlight with activities organized throughout the day at the Pierre-Paul Riquet high school, to celebrate the beautiful creativity of children’s literature. We will notably remember a musical reading with Jean-Claude Mourlevat, the show “Le mystique Léon Plouhinec” by the Cie des Étourneaux, a pop-up workshop to create a 3D map, a comic workshop with Margo Renard or the show “La tribu which grows” by the Cie La Collective.

• Reading nights: science and poetry at the Hôtel d’Assézat

As part of the Nuits de la lecture, the Hôtel d’Assézat in Toulouse is offering two unique evenings celebrating science and poetry. Friday, January 24 at 6 p.m., poets from the Académie des Jeux floralaux will offer a choral reading of their works. The next day, Saturday January 25 at 6 p.m., scientific and literary texts will be read in pairs, alternating famous authors such as Fermat and Darwin with literary figures such as Balzac and Proust. These readings will take place in the Clémence Isaure room, in the heart of one of the most beautiful Renaissance hotels. Entrance upon registration for the first evening; free access for the second.

• 30 years of theater with Esquisse

“Le RDV Molière en 2025” at the Altigone hall in Saint-Orens de Gameville is an opportunity for the L’Esquisse theater company to celebrate its 30th anniversary. In January 1995, its current artistic director Jérôme Jalabert professionalized L’Esquisse, a student theater company, originally created in 1984 and which he joined in 1989. After more than 1,000 performances of “Médecin despite him ” and “Fourberies de Scapin”, more than 500 for “Public or not Public”, “Le Malade Imaginaire” and “L’Avare”, in front of more than 400,000 students, L’Esquisse has sixteen participations at the Avignon festival… This meeting with Molière continues on Saturday with “Les Fourberies de Scapin”.