Horst's arts programme is a celebration of contemporary art, performance, and interactive activities. During this residency you'll contribute to the spatial installation by Paul Maheke. Participants will engage in the making of a space, together with the artist, constructing atmospheres, handling materials, and shaping light, rhythm and movement.

Through ambiguity and experimentation, The Engine Room reflects on how space can hold tension, care and intimacy, and how bodies bring architecture into being. This week-long workshop offers a hands-on opportunity to collaborate with Paul Maheke, our arts team, and like-minded enthusiasts.
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While the natural charm of Asiat Park is a wonder to behold in itself, our mission is to elevate its trickery. As a scenography collaborator, you’ll join hands with our architecture team, weaving art and functionality into the very fabric of the festival. Your canvas? The entire terrain. From crafting intimate hangout spots to adorning entrance and bar structures, each task is an opportunity to rethink our very site. Imagine building a 60m long counter in the food hall, not just as a structure, but as a piece of art.

And it’s not just about beautifying spaces, you’ll also bring functional art to life, ensuring signage is as aesthetically pleasing as it is informative. This year, the Scenography residency focuses on the reinvention of outdoor bars and food halls. Building on last year, two additional food halls will be added, designed by the Horst design team, while the garden hall at Bar Bâtard will receive a new look, and the food hall at the Landtsheer will get extra attention. Here, every detail contributes to an immersive festival experience that is as enchanting as it is unforgettable.
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During our second scenography residency, you'll be providing the last unmissable layers of the scenography of the festival, and perform various detailed tasks that make or break the general look of our whole park. Some are very DIY, some will be very routine-work and meditative, others will be a fast install and easy win. Something for everyone with various talents. Here, every brushstroke, every detail, contributes to an immersive festival experience that is as enchanting as it is unforgettable.
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For Horst Arts 2026, Nel Maertens and Marilou Dejans collaborate on a research-driven trajectory centred on the relationship between women and public space.

Under the working title ‘How to Raise a Park’, they explore how multiple voices, from park users and festival visitors to local residents, citizens, and the park itself, can actively shape the future of Asiat Park. This week-long workshop offers a hands-on opportunity to collaborate with the artists, our arts team, and like-minded enthusiasts.

How to Raise a Park is spread across 2 timeframes.
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This year, Horst crosses the river for the first time with Succession. A large-scale pavilion by German artist collective YRD.Works made from reclaimed steel and wood, situated on the banks of the Zenne across from Asiat Park.

Designed to be gradually overtaken by nature, the structure marks the beginning of the river bank transformation into a new green public space. The construction will take place over three weeks, with the final two weeks forming part of the Horst Atelier. After the initial welding work in the first week, we’ll continue the build by combining metal and woodworking techniques to bring this nature-driven installation to life. This residency is open to both experienced and curious beginners - your perfect chance to learn by doing and to help build something that will stand, grow, and evolve far beyond the festival.

Succession is spread across 2 timeframes.
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In 2026, Horst introduces a new and dedicated Performance Atelier, created in collaboration with artist Fallon Mayanja and arts platform The Constant Now. This atelier is exclusively open to POC participants and invites young performers with experience in voice, movement, or embodied practices to take part in a week-long artistic process leading up to the creation of the performance 'Hymn', a performative adaptation of Julius Eastman’s monumental composition 'The Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc' (1981). Created by Fallon Mayanja, the work brings together nine bodies and voices in a collective ritual of presence, remembrance, and resistance.

Set within the sound installation The Hospitality of Darkness: a sonic environment built from spoken stories, whispers, and layered textures, the performance unfolds as a temporary space of care, resonance, and shared attention. It explores repetition, presence, and the generative power of Blackness as an active, sustaining, and world-making force.

The Performance Atelier offers participants the unique opportunity to enter this world from the inside: to rehearse, exchange, and build the foundations of the performance together with the artist.

*Mind! This atelier is exclusively open to POC performers with experience (not necessarily professionally trained) in voice, movement, sound, choreography, or live performance.
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You’ll take part in the construction of a temporary architectural installation designed as a place of pause and gathering within the festival. Working closely with the architecture team, you’ll help transform an interstitial site into a welcoming space centered around fire, rest, and shared moments. The project is built through a single, clear gesture: a lightweight structure leaning against the existing building, combining reused materials, simple assemblies, and collective craftsmanship.

Participants play a key role in shaping the space, from assembling the wooden structure and platform to helping create the atmosphere that will define how people experience it. Throughout the week-long residency, the focus will be on collaboration, experimentation, and hands-on making. Together, we’ll build not just a structure, but a place meant to be inhabited - during the festival and beyond - where bodies gather, slow down, and linger longer than expected.

This fritz-kola firepit is spread across 2 timeframes.
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In the exciting final days before the festival, you will gear up to construct the entrance, a pivotal first and last impression for every attendee. A freakishly tight deadline with incredibly impactful results. 

This year the entrance structure will be redefined and reshaped by the architecture studio L'EQUIPE Architectes, whose practice draws inspiration from all things cars, be it tuning, the highways or the carwash. You'll help make the last structure being built on the festival grounds - but the first one all the visitors will see. Expect a fast and creative buildup, producing scenographical objects to enhance the scaffolding structure the entrance uses as a skeleton.
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After fulfilling its role as The Belgian Pavilion at the Biennale Architettura 2025, Building Biospheres lands for its Belgian premiere in Asiat Park, after a short hibernation at Horteco, Vilvoorde’s school for nature, science, plants, animals and environments.

During this residency participants will join the works to install the intricate garden installation in its new surroundings by building up the aluminium frame, planting all the plants and installing plant lights and water irrigation from the ceiling. And so, make the park’s Rain Room into the new home of Building Biospheres where it will remain as a permanent installation. The Building Biospheres atelier is a hands-on project in collaboration with Bureau Bas Smets and Flanders Architecture Institute.

Building Biospheres is spread across 2 timeframes.
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The beloved Moon Ra stage, built by Leopold Banchini with the remnants of the former Feathers stage, disappears and finds a new form through the design of TEd’A Arquitectes.

During this Horst Atelier, you will help with the dismantling of the ‘tipi’ and kick-start the process of creating a new, bigger, and more open playfield. You will take part in repurposing the original structure: unbolting and unscrewing the wooden beams, relocating a set of massive stone blocks within the park using heavy machinery, all while giving the pavilion’s material a third life in its next iteration. The cherry on top of this newest addition? A light yet delicate canopy that brings the project to completion.

A New Moon Ra is spread across 3 timeframes.
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Right outside the Park’s borders an exciting new addition will be introduced: a ninth dance floor, created inside a previously inaccessible raw warehouse. The stage is a special project by TAKK, an architecture and research studio based in Barcelona and New York run by Mireia Luzárraga and Alejandro Muiño.

For this project, temporality is central. It invites new ways of thinking about presence and materials. You’ll work with wood through a hands-on approach that feels like solving a construction puzzle. The structure is designed to be easily taken apart, reassembled, and reused. Pieces are cut, drilled, connected and tested together. 

The building process is guided by TheWorkshop, a makers’ space for artists based in Asiat Park, bringing local technical guidance into the making process. Slowly, patterns appear and the structure grows. No building experience is needed, just curiosity and hands-on teamwork. Together with TAKK, you’ll explore how to build collectively and take shared ownership of the process.
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For the festival, visual artist Delphine Dénéréaz transforms the covered entrance passage of Asiat Park into a sensitive threshold between public and intimate space. Through a series of suspended portals, the installation evokes ideas of shelter, softness, and dwelling. Simple domestic scenes mix with elements of nature, creating a poetic inner street where human presence and the living world quietly coexist.

During this residency, participants are invited to take part in the making and installation of the work. Tasks include assembling suspended elements, preparing and weaving motifs, working with materials, and installing the piece on site together with Delphine Dénéréaz and the Horst arts team.
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For the Festival Production Atelier we’re looking for the hands that raise walls of sound, weave signage through the maze, and prepare the terrain for all our visitors. This is high-impact, physical work for those who want to see how a site of this scale actually comes together.

Expect a mix of heavy lifting and the essential grit needed to get the place ready for the party people. Whether you’re constructing bars, securing the perimeter, or clearing the tracks, you’re there to make sure everything is on point. It’s about the sweat, the build, and the satisfaction of seeing the site fully locked and loaded. Time to roll up the sleeves.

Our Festival Production Atelier is spread across 2 timeframes.
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The Ateliers take place across two seasons each year: spring and summer. Applications for the spring Atelier in April & May are now open.

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We provide a Festival Pass for 2026, breakfast, lunch and dinner, advice and access to Horst professionals, and free on-site lodging in Asiat Park.

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Participants are expected to arrange their own in- and outbound transport to Asiat Park (Vilvoorde, Belgium) where the Ateliers take place. All local transport during the Atelier will be taken care of.

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Participants sleep in tents inside buildings on site (indoor camping; tent pegs cannot be used). Participants must bring their own tent, sleeping bag, sleeping mat, and any other personal sleeping equipment. Horst provides the indoor space, essential sanitation, freshly prepared meals, beverages, and a range of engaging activities such as talks and workshops. Each week offers unique opportunities to connect with fellow creatives and to challenge your practice.

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Given the broad scope of international participants at Horst Atelier, the main spoken language during the week is English.

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