Festival Body of Work 2026 will take place thanks to support from the City of Leuven and the National Lottery

At the end of September, the Flemish government announced a whole series of savings measures for 2026. In her savings exercise, Minister of Culture Gennez chose not to make linear cuts to subsidies for arts organisations in Flanders, but to make significant cuts to organisations that receive subsidies “ad nominatim” (i.e. outside the framework of the decree) for a specific initiative. The subsidy for STUK's dance heritage activities falls into this category and will therefore be completely scrapped from 1 January 2026.

What does this mean?

The news came as a bolt from the blue for STUK. Dance heritage work has never been purely a story “of and for STUK” and transcends our arts centre in its goals and impact. It has branched out into many partnerships in Leuven, Flanders and internationally and contributes to the future of dance in Flanders by strengthening and broadening the community around it.

Thanks to basic subsidies from the Flemish government, we have been able to make great strides in recent years:

• We were able to enroll in a European Horizon project called DanceMap, within which we develop innovative research and audience-oriented projects.

• The first edition of the Body of Work Festival was a great success, with almost 10,000 visits to 24 performances, an exhibition, 13 rhythm workshops, 12 dance workshops, 4 blind dates between dancers and musicians, 2 films, a children's camp, a concert, 4 lectures, a Slow Walk, a Wiki editathon, an Etcetera theme issue and debate, a European network meeting and a dance battle.

• We have strengthened our partnership with KU Leuven, and the university will be making additional funds available for research into dance (heritage) in the coming years.

• Together with Danspunt and CEMPER, we launched Dansstroom, which allows amateur dancers to dive into repertoire.

• The City of Leuven made an additional contribution; dance heritage plays a central role in the LOV2030 programme and in the story-in-development of the Performing Arts Site.

• We organised symposia and reflection days with our academic partners and Opera Ballet Vlaanderen and, together with CEMPER, wrote the Flanders Dance Heritage Action Plan.

Festival Body of Work 2026 will take place

Because we at STUK, together with our partners, continue to believe in the value of dance heritage, we have been looking for ways to ensure its survival.

Thanks to additional support from the City of Leuven and the National Lottery, we have the resources to continue with the already planned Body of Work festival in 2026 (25.04-13.05), albeit in a smaller version. In 2026, we will also be able to continue coordinating our European projects, Dansstroom and ongoing partnerships.

We are already looking forward to the new edition of Body of Work and are continuing to explore how we can breathe life into dance heritage and re-establish it in the coming years.

The support we have received in recent months from STUK visitors and from the many artistic, academic, educational and heritage partners in the dance heritage story has been overwhelming. We thank you all from the bottom of our hearts!