
Sara Moonen
Singer, composer and musician at Whocat and SKIP (1982)
Describe yourself, your background and what you do today.
I’m a self-taught composer, singer and musician, member of bands Whocat and SKIP, and a production manager for musical production house MetX. I combine singing, playing music and performing with other missions such as a freelancer and this keeps me in a work-life balance that keeps evolving. Actually, work is my life, because I love what I do and due to the variety of my activities, I never get tired of it. After my studies in communication at Erasmushogeschool Brussel, I lived in Barcelona for a year and I travelled a lot. Then I moved back to Brussels and never left. I love being in the city but I also love to get out of it several times a week to ride horses. It’s like a breath of fresh air, my let-go time.
How has Brussels shaped you as an individual as well as your professional activities?
Brussels offered me the intimate yet extraverted and anonymous social and creative environment I was searching for after travelling around and meeting people from all over the world. It’s a small big city, with a strategic location for traveling. The fact that Brussels is the capital of a country with three official languages creates a melting pot of cultures. There is enough for everybody in Brussels and if you’ve lived here long enough, you become a Brusseleir. No need for roots to grow here. The city is a platform of encounters on every level. Brussels is a very generous, chaotic and humble city and I think it provides excellent humus to develop and realise crazy ideas.
List three things you like the most about Brussels.
- The diversity amongst its citizens.
- The gentle chaos and no-man’s-land feel – which can also really annoy me sometimes.
- The beautiful parks.
Brussels is a very generous, chaotic and humble city and I think it provides excellent humus to develop and realise crazy ideas.
List three deciding factors that converted you to bicycle use.
- Car-free Sundays.
- Endless traffic jams.
- The lack of coordination of public transport services.
List three favourite bike routes in Brussels and explain why.
- From Schaerbeek to Ixelles through the Maelbeek/Maalbeek, because it’s flat;
- Albert to the Marolles through Saint-Gilles/Sint-Gillis; because it’s my daily route and it goes downhill;
- The bicycle path in the canal zone, because it’s a nice view and it almost makes you believe there are more bikes than cars.