10–18 September 2026 | Prosperpolder – Doel – Beveren

First walk, then read? Jump straight to the day-by-day programme

In 2016, Made of Walking gathered more than twenty-five artists, researchers, performers and walkers from across the world in Delphi, Greece. It became one of the first international encounters devoted entirely to walking as artistic, research and social practice. More importantly, it initiated conversations, collaborations and friendships that have continued to unfold long after the event itself.

Ten years later, after travelling around the globe, Made of Walking returns to Belgium, in Prosperpolder.

Belgium provides a fitting place for this return. Situated at the crossroads of Europe, Prosperpolder embodies many of the questions that Made of Walking has explored over the past decade: borders and flows, ecology and industry, heritage and transformation, local communities and planetary processes. It is a landscape where the future of walking arts emerges through encounters between people, places and more-than-human worlds.

Its return is not simply an anniversary, but a continuation. Over the past decade, both walking arts and the ecological, political and social realities in which they unfold have changed considerably. Questions of community, migration, hospitality, ecological transition and our relationship with the more-than-human world have become inseparable from contemporary walking practice. Rather than revisiting the past, Made of Walking 2026 asks what walking can become today.

Hosted by The Milena Principle within the Creative Europe Cooperation Project Walking Arts and Local Communities (WALC), the Belgian edition is conceived as an international residency, open laboratory and collective journey. It brings together artists, researchers, local residents, environmental organisations and walkers to explore walking not simply as movement through landscape but as a way of cultivating relationships between people, places and more-than-human worlds.

Common Ground: Corresponding with Place

The 2026 residency unfolds under the theme Common Ground: Corresponding with Place.

Over nine days participants will walk, live and work together across the border landscapes of Prosperpolder, Doel, Fort Liefkenshoek, Melsele and the Verdronken Land van Saeftinghe. Rather than approaching these places as sites for artistic production, six resident artists invite participants to enter into an ongoing correspondence with them. Walking becomes less a route towards an artistic outcome than a process of discovering how landscapes gradually shape perception, conversation and artistic imagination.

This border landscape is a place of striking contrasts, where tidal wetlands, polders, nature reserves and centuries-old villages exist alongside one of Europe’s largest port and industrial complexes. Here, container terminals neighbour grazing sheep, petrochemical installations rise beyond dikes and reed beds, and cargo ships pass landscapes inhabited by migratory birds. Agriculture, logistics, industry, ecology and heritage coexist in unexpected ways, creating a territory that is simultaneously inhabited and fragile, intensely managed yet remarkably wild.

This coexistence gives Prosperpolder an almost surreal atmosphere. It is a landscape shaped simultaneously by human engineering and natural forces, by economic acceleration and ecological rhythms, by abandonment and renewal. Villages such as Doel stand as powerful reminders of these tensions, where contested histories of displacement, resistance and community unfold alongside internationally protected wetlands that ignore political and economic boundaries.

Rather than treating this complexity as a problem to be resolved, Made of Walking approaches it as an invitation. For nine days artists, researchers, residents and visitors inhabit this layered territory together. Rather than simply responding to the landscape, they allow it to shape the artistic process. Prosperpolder becomes not merely the setting of the residency but one of its principal collaborators.

Walking therefore becomes a collective artistic practice of attention, imagination and relation. Performance, storytelling, collaborative mapping, sound, drawing, conversation, shared meals, ecological observation and spontaneous actions are understood not as separate disciplines but as complementary ways of exploring a place. Knowledge emerges through movement, through encounters and through the gradual accumulation of shared experience.

A Living Laboratory

Made of Walking has always functioned as an open laboratory rather than a conventional arts event. The 2026 edition continues that tradition through collective performances, walkshops, artistic research, ecological explorations, collaborative mapping, installations, lectures, community encounters and public actions.

The six resident artists each offer a distinct way of corresponding with place. Their practices range from performance and social practice to locative media, participatory art, ecological storytelling and embodied research, together forming a rich constellation of approaches to walking as artistic practice.

• Katerina Drakopoulou (Greece) revisits 22 Stops, first developed during the original Made of Walking in Delphi and now reimagined collectively in the abandoned village of Doel.
• Ienke Kastelein (Netherlands) explores plant ecologies, perception and embodied presence within the wetlands of Prosperpolder.
• Simone Etter (Switzerland) develops social walking practices with young people across the peri-urban landscape.
• Alba Sauleda (Spain) works with participants from De Bron and De Stroom through the figure of Io, exploring wellbeing, dreaming and inclusion.
• Fred Adam (France) presents Microcosmos and The Mobile Wetland, connecting microscopic life, locative media and planetary imagination.
• Marc Dhaenens (Belgium) investigates memory, landscape and the layered histories surrounding Fort Liefkenshoek.

Throughout the week visitors can also participate in guided walks, storytelling sessions, artistic interventions, Gigacircus’ Migrating VOICES, collaborative workshops, presentations by WALC partners and numerous informal opportunities to walk, converse and simply spend time together.

From Place to Planet

The residency also marks the beginning of From Place to Planet, a longer trajectory that asks how careful attention to one landscape may open onto wider ecological relationships.

If the 2026 residency is rooted in one place, the following year expands that conversation. In September 2027 Prosperpolder will host an international symposium and Walking Commons expedition bringing together artists, researchers, ecologists, educators and local communities for a week of walking, dialogue and artistic exchange. Together, the residency and symposium form a two-year trajectory exploring how careful attention to one place can open onto wider ecological and planetary relationships.

Rather than understanding Made of Walking as a sequence of events, we see it as part of a living ecology of encounters that continues to evolve through return, friendship and collaboration, culminating in the WALC project.

Join Us

Made of Walking has never been only about walking.

It is about journeys together, becoming temporarily lost, discovering unfamiliar remote places through unfamiliar eyes, and allowing conversations, artworks and communities to emerge along the way.

Whether you are an artist, researcher, student, educator, environmental practitioner or simply curious about walking as a way of engaging with the world, we warmly invite you to join us in Belgium this September.

Come as a visitor for a day, several days or the entire residency. Walk with us through polders, wetlands and villages. Share meals, stories and ideas. Meet people from across Europe and beyond. Find out more about the programme here.

Because every walk begins in a place—but no meaningful walk ever ends where it started.