Tony is a fashion designer from Togo. Enna is a creative contributor/project manager at Beeldenstorm vzw. Together they led Batik workshops with people from all ages from the neighbourhood. A Batik installation was created evoking a place where everybody can feel at home.

The project spoke to us immediately because of the underlying, shared ideology: to promote inclusion through art & culture. Our theatre costum & fashion department was a natural fit for the textile artist assigned to us, Tony Bland, with whom we did research, technically and creatively, on how to bring out the best in various batik techniques within the given theme.

The participants, a very culturally mixed intergenerational group from our neighbourhood and participants of our ceramic’s atelier, initiated the creative process by discussing what “homelands” means to them personally. The end result of the ateliers comes forth out of the answer to this question, namely that the majority feels very much at home at Beeldenstorm and as such were interested in making the location even more attractive.

The enthusiasm of the participants made it so that each person felt completely involved in the creative process, a place where everybody and their ideas were welcome, a “homeland”.