Both kinds of visitors are joined during the summer months by art trekkers. The latter are drawn to the town's annual presentation of contemporary art and literature, an event with multiple, unconventional venues: homes, barns, churches, industrial buildings and the like. Visiting all of the showcases holds out the promise of a good walk or ride (bikes can be rented on site). On foot, the circuit easily fills an afternoon.

Poëziezomer (Poetry Summer), as the event used to be called, was founded in 1980 by the Flemish poet Gwy Mandelinck, who directed the project until last year. When he stepped down, it was feared that the festival might not survive. For the village, to which it contributes regular infusions of fresh energy and considerable business, the prospect of the programme's demise was dire.

A survival plan was devised and five curators - three from the visual arts and two from literature - were brought on board to organise exhibitions in eight venues. The results are a name change - the current edition is called Watou 2009: Tussen Taal en Beeld, Verzameled Verhalen #01, (‘Watou 2009: Between Language and Image, Collected Stories #01) - and a slight shift in weight from literature to visual art. The upshot is a vibrant plurality of voices and visions, but think polyphony, not cacophony.

Curatorial prowess and unusual settings used to full creative advantage give the event unexpected cogency.

The circuit starts, in fact, with a large group show titled Polyfonie. Organised by Hans Martens, director of Ghent's Academy of Fine Arts (HISK), the exhibition includes works by 28 artists who are either students or new alumni. Because of their high level of achievement, Martens refers to them as participants rather than students, and this show bears out his assessment.

Their works are displayed inside and out of a rickety old farm complex known as Grensland (border) on the edge of cultivated fields. Framing the view, Colin Waeghe's bisected children's swing (supporting frame and swing seat are split down the centre, their two halves separated by about a metre) suggests all manner of division and fragmentation: political, geographical, emotional and psychological.

Behind the building, Masashi Echigo has created a secluded area, its limits defined by a wall made from lining up a great variety of doors found on the property, which is occasionally used for flea markets. Unchanged by the artist, who has simply anchored them in the ground, some of the doors have inset windows which look out onto the French border. A few have mirrors that reflect your own image and the spot where you stand. Disconcertingly, it's possible to catch both views - forward and backward - in a single glance. One's sense of direction is confounded; space appears to fold into itself. And the motley crew of doors, with their heterogeneous appearances and shared identity, suggests not only that together we stand, but also that it's gateways, not barriers, that are needed in this world. The funny-looking, fragile-seeming wall formed by the shabby doors seems to point to the ludicrous futility of erecting socio-political fences in the first place. As the window-mirror effect demonstrates, the haven they create is a temporary illusion.

In his video "In the Company Of", HISK laureate Simon Gush, who is South African, reminds us that the immigrant experience in this country is anything but smooth. It documents a football game staged on railway tracks running through the Moscou suburb of Ghent by two teams of energetic, uniformed players, all immigrants. Communicating in broken Dutch, they manage to pass the ball, score points and enjoy themselves despite the devilish stumbling blocks that traverse their pitch. The ball ricochets in all directions off the rails, which the men hop over adroitly in order not to break a leg: it's amazing that none of them does.

Particularly apposite in its presentation, 2006 HISK laureate Adam Leech's video "Speech Bubble" parodies - in a poetic, mesmerising solo performance by the artist - the hubris, greed and techno-speak that, in 2001, drove the Lernout & Hauspie speech-recognition technology firm into bankruptcy and its executives into big trouble in a major fraud scandal. Based in Ypres, the company courted investors in West Flanders, and many of them incurred huge losses.

On Watou's main square, dubbed Hugo Clausplein after the celebrated writer, a proposed master plan for the town and its outlying areas is presented on the first floor of the former town hall. Office Kersten Geers David Van Severen architects, in collaboration with landscape architects Bureau Bas Smets, have come up with an ingenious way to help preserve open spaces and discourage the kind of ribbon development that's becoming ubiquitous in much of the rest of Flanders. Enlightened and non-invasive, the plan, if adopted, might just keep cyclists rolling into Watou for decades to come.

Inside Sint-Bavo's church across the square, a revolving baggage carrousel ("Lost Baggage") by the Scandinavian duo Elmgreen & Dragset and a colourful minimalist canopy echoing the transparency and rich palette of stained glass by Liam Gillick, give a foretaste of the big-name international work on view in a former rest home nearby.

Selected by Dhondt-Dhaenens Museum director Joost Declercq from the Vanmoerkerke collection (a private repository of post-conceptual art kept in Ostend) "Who's Afraid of Red , Yellow and Blue" is delightful, and anything but restful. The title comes from Barnett Newman's once controversial - and still radically confrontational - painting, and each room in the rest home has been painted in one of those primary colours. Hardly a neutral foil for the art also hanging there. But the works are anything but meek and can compete with any amount of background noise.

American artist Sam Durant's light boxes - illuminated, high-key monochromes overlaid with pithy phrases - are scattered through the building's long corridors and stairwells, like a trail of breadcrumbs to the rest, which include top-notch pieces by Hans-Peter Feldmann, Roni Horn and Jack Pierson, among others. The show extends into the garden, where Elmgreen & Dragset's facing pair of urinals will remind some people of Duchamp, others of risqué trysts, and displays the artists' ironic humour to good advantage.

Non-Dutch speakers can enjoy the show's literary components without deciphering a single word. This is especially true of the exhibition curated by writer Peter Verhelst in the outbuildings of a farm on the outskirts of town. Sculptures and large charcoal drawings have narrative qualities that can be appreciated without the slightest assistance from texts.

As for getting the most out of the multitude of the contemporary poems selected by Willy Tibergien and printed on white helium balloons in the brewery, it's probably best to brush up your Dutch beforehand.

www.watou2009.be