Report: Towards the General Assembly of the Visual Arts
@Kunsthal Gent
Report on the preparatory conversations, June–September 2026
Visual arts organisations, artists and museums already frequently work together. But how does this collaboration take shape in practice? How can bridges be built between different actors? How can they strengthen one another? And how can art connect more closely with society?
In 2027, FARO and Flanders Arts Institute are organising a General Assembly of the Visual Arts and museums working with visual arts. In preparation for this, a series of conversations took place across Flanders between June and September 2026, bringing together different voices from the field to reflect on the future of the visual arts.
Starting from existing practices, relationships and structures, the conversations explored what is already working, where gaps and tensions remain, and what could be strengthened or developed in the future.
Across the different locations, participants reflected on the conditions in which artists and organisations work, the relationships between different actors in the field, and the possibilities for building a more connected, resilient and solidary visual arts landscape.
Read together, the six conversations reveal shared concerns around visibility, access, infrastructure, institutional responsibility, collaboration and solidarity. What differs considerably is the form these concerns take depending on geography, artistic density and institutional context. The discussions also raise questions about how opportunities and resources are distributed, and who is able to access them. They therefore reveal a series of interconnected local ecosystems operating under different conditions.
Locality and artistic ecosystems
One of the clearest differences between the conversations concerns the impact of geographical position and artistic density on the challenges faced by the field. In Limburg, a central concern is connection and visibility: artistic activity exists, but remains dispersed and is not always sufficiently visible within the region or beyond it. West Flanders presents a related situation, but the discussion shifts towards critical mass: how can dispersed artists, organisations, infrastructure and audiences be connected strongly enough to sustain a regional ecosystem? In both conversations, the gravitational pull of Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent is apparent, particularly in relation to professional networks, visibility and career development.
Mechelen presents some of these concerns on a smaller urban scale. Participants described artists establishing their practices and networks in larger cities, while local initiatives seek to create opportunities for collaboration and community-building. The discussion also raised questions about the availability of shared spaces, access to municipal support and the role of informal networks in determining who can develop projects locally. The city’s relatively small scale can facilitate direct relationships, but these do not necessarily translate into equal access to resources and opportunities.
Antwerp and Ghent begin from a different position. Here, artistic and institutional density is already relatively high, and the questions consequently shift towards how an existing ecosystem functions. In Antwerp, the discussion centres on the circulation of power, resources and responsibility between organisations operating at very different scales, while in Ghent questions of access, gatekeeping, time and the distribution of limited opportunities become particularly important.
Brussels further complicates a straightforward centre-periphery distinction. Its ecosystem is exceptionally dense, international and multilingual, yet this density does not eliminate scarcity or precarity. Instead, participants described pressure on space and opportunities alongside a different form of fragmentation: networks, institutions and artistic practices cross linguistic and administrative structures that do not necessarily correspond to how the field actually functions.
Geography and density therefore shape the conditions under which artists and organisations operate without producing a simple opposition between centre and periphery. Greater density can provide more institutions, networks and opportunities, while also producing competition, barriers to access and unequal distribution. Lower density can limit critical mass and visibility, while sometimes allowing greater proximity, experimentation or possibilities for regional mobilisation. Across several conversations, artists also described the importance of looking beyond their immediate local environment for professional networks, recognition or opportunities. What matters across these different contexts is where cultural infrastructure is located, how artists and organisations can access it, how resources circulate through it, and how local practices connect to wider professional networks.
Conditions for sustainability
Across the six conversations, connection emerges as a recurring need, although what needs to be connected and for what purpose varies considerably. It may involve making dispersed practices visible to one another, creating sufficient critical mass, opening access to institutional networks, connecting organisations operating at different scales, or building bridges between networks that already exist but do not sufficiently intersect. Grassroots initiatives and shared spaces also emerged as important ways of bringing artists together, providing opportunities for experimentation and developing local artistic communities. Calls for “more networking” or “more collaboration” are therefore insufficient on their own. The more relevant questions are what kind of connection is missing, between whom, and what that connection should make possible.
Across the conversations, this question also develops into a concern with continuity. Participants repeatedly moved beyond individual projects, residencies, exhibitions or subsidies to ask what happens between and after them. Smaller organisations struggle to plan beyond project funding; artists can move through temporary residencies and workspaces without reaching greater stability; and professional development may require repeatedly moving between different networks and contexts. Independent and grassroots initiatives can similarly struggle to sustain their activities without accessible spaces, flexible support or the resources needed to develop beyond individual projects. At the same time, relationships created through residencies, peer networks and collaborations can outlast individual projects and become an important form of infrastructure in themselves.
The recurring concern is therefore whether existing opportunities contribute to sustainable trajectories. The conversations point towards a need for conditions in which practices, organisations, relationships and knowledge can develop and accumulate over time instead of repeatedly starting again with each individual project.
Solidarity, access and shared responsibility
A final question connecting the six conversations concerns who is responsible for sustaining these ecosystems. Artists are encouraged to organise themselves and create networks; institutions are expected to support artists; larger organisations are asked to share resources and visibility with smaller ones; and public authorities are expected to provide the conditions within which this can happen.
None of the conversations places responsibility entirely with one actor. Instead, they repeatedly expose the limitations of doing so. Artists cannot compensate for insufficient infrastructure through self-organisation alone. Institutions can contribute to the development of their surrounding ecosystem but cannot solve structural funding problems themselves. Smaller organisations cannot continually take on additional expectations around participation, collaboration and care without corresponding resources. Artist-led initiatives, meanwhile, can provide crucial forms of support while remaining precarious themselves.
The Mechelen conversation added a further dimension to this question by drawing attention to the unequal distribution of opportunities within the field. Participants questioned how racial and cultural background, educational credentials and personal networks influence access to artistic platforms and institutional recognition. The exchange also revealed differences in how these barriers are understood, particularly whether the difficulties encountered by artists of colour can be compared with those faced by emerging artists more generally. These concerns extend the question of institutional responsibility to the criteria through which artists are selected, represented and supported, as well as whose perspectives are included in decisions concerning cultural resources and opportunities.
This also complicates the recurring call for collaboration. Collaboration can strengthen the field through shared infrastructure, knowledge, networks and advocacy, but it requires time and resources of its own. Participants therefore repeatedly distinguished structural collaboration from forms of cooperation that simply redistribute existing scarcity or ask already precarious actors to take on additional responsibilities. The discussions also suggest that access to networks and collaborative opportunities cannot be taken for granted, particularly when participation depends on existing relationships or institutional recognition.
In this context, solidarity depends on collective responses in moments of crisis as well as on information circulating, people knowing one another, spaces for encounter, access to shared resources, and organisations having sufficient stability to support others. The form this takes differs locally, but the underlying concern is shared.
Across the six conversations, the challenge appears to lie primarily in the conditions through which existing artistic activity can become sustainable and mutually reinforcing. Those conditions cannot be identical everywhere, nor can they be considered independently of who has access to them. The conversations point towards strengthening local ecosystems according to their particular needs while improving the circulation of knowledge, resources and opportunities within and between them. In this sense, solidarity involves responding collectively when individual actors come under pressure and creating the conditions through which different parts of the field can remain distinct while becoming better able to support and reinforce one another.
