ESA Saint-Luc Brussels

Mission Statement

ESA Saint-Luc Brussels is an art school aiming to shape creative talents in a way both coherent and challenging, overseen by academics, researchers and professors from relevant academic disciplines. Combining genuine education and training to creation, ESA Saint-Luc Brussels offers programmes in design, habitat and interior design, ecodesign, innovative policies, new forms of graphic and visual communications, as well as contemporary narration. Programmes which stimulate not only artistic practice, but also reflection and research, in view of providing students with general culture, critical sense and commitment to rigor.

ESA Saint-Luc Brussels is a school that denies neither hard work nor high expectations, without disavowing the occasional delirium. ESA Saint-Luc Brussels strives to help students flourish, without misleading them as to their future employment opportunities, nor luring them into art, embracing its role as a relay towards autonomy and production. An institution conscious of its responsibility to prepare students for the trades they will practice in the future. In order to build connections between academic institutions and cultural operators, the school has signed agreements with other establishments and universities, both in Belgium and abroad. These collaborations bring in more diversity, and trigger stimulating dynamics.

In addition, ESA Saint-Luc Brussels organises lectures by outside guests, workshops, trips, exhibitions, conferences as well as site visits.

An administrative team support these efforts on a daily basis. Technical workshops, a cafeteria / gallery, and a large interior courtyard are hospitable spaces for connecting. The large and bright building overlooks a square and the city, offering a working environment open on the neighbourhood and the city.

International Role

With a presence abroad through festivals such as those of Angoulême or Fumetto in Lucerne, fairs and networks such as Cumulus and Icomos, which contribute to its international influence, ESA St-Luc Brussels also encourages student mobility for study and internship purposes, as well as the mobility of its professors for interdisciplinary and research projects.

The school organises on a regular basis international workshops and welcomes many external speakers and teachers each year.

Development cooperation is also part of ESA Saint-Luc’s international vision. For instance, students from the Master’s degree in Interior Architecture, with a focus on built heritage, have benefited in 2019 from a national grant for the rehabilitation of a former prison in Cap Haitien into a cultural centre. This project was in collaboration with the State University of Haiti.

ESA Saint-Luc Brussels participates in a pilot project in Dakar, starting in January 2022, to provide remotely artistic and theoretical courses to Senegalese artists.

All these initiatives offer our students the opportunity to experience different pedagogical approaches, to open up to a transboundary world and to be aware of current and future changes. International experiences give them the chance to strengthen their intellectual curiosity, to evolve in a different cultural context and to develop their personal and artistic network.

See our partners schools: http://www.stluc-bruxelles-esa.be/Partners-schools

National Role

ESA Saint-Luc Brussels collaborates regularly with other institutions on a national level: universities, galleries, private companies, public authorities… The school is anchored in its territory and reflects with local organisations on the issues of hospitality and living together through design.

Main Focus

Interior Design, Interior architecture, Social Innovation Design, Graphic Design, Illustration, Comics, Advertising, Digital Arts, Scenography, Heritage.