Herentals, Belgium | 13–17 September 2025
What happens when two creative hubs from different parts of Europe come together to exchange ideas, methods, and experiences?
For five days in September 2025, Katapult Subtopia and Moktamee explored exactly that through a peer-to-peer exchange focused on creative ecosystems, community building, and the role of culture in urban development.
Hosted in Herentals, the exchange brought together Martin Q Larsson from Katapult Subtopia and Koen Snoeck from Moktamee to reflect on how creative hubs can shape cities, not only economically, but socially and culturally.
Exploring the Role of Creative Hubs
At the heart of the exchange was a shared question:
How can creative hubs become long-term drivers of urban transformation and community resilience?
For Moktamee, this question feels especially urgent. Since relocating from its original location earlier in 2025, the community has become geographically dispersed across Herentals. While this opened new opportunities, it also challenged traditional ideas of proximity, belonging, and collective identity.
Katapult Subtopia, which has built a strong relationship with local authorities in Sweden, offered valuable insight into how municipalities can actively support creative ecosystems and recognise their broader societal value.
The exchange became an opportunity not only to share best practices, but also to create new perspectives for the future of Moktamee and its relationship with the city.
A Week of Encounters, Conversations & Creative Practice
Music, Ritual & Temporary Community
The exchange began with participation in the Art Changes Society festival during Belgium’s Open Monuments Day. Martin presented Music for Pancakes, a participatory sound installation inviting visitors of all ages to collectively create an evolving sonic landscape.
What emerged was more than a performance. Through listening, improvisation, and shared presence, the installation became a temporary community space, demonstrating how artistic practice can foster connection and civic intimacy, even in fleeting moments.
Innovation Ecosystems in Eindhoven
A visit to Eindhoven offered a broader perspective on innovation and creative infrastructure. Together, Martin and Koen explored places such as High Tech Campus Eindhoven, Sectie-C and Baltan Laboratories.
These visits highlighted the delicate balance between structured innovation systems and spontaneous grassroots creativity. One idea repeatedly surfaced throughout the conversations: “organised serendipity”—the notion that creative hubs thrive when they create conditions for unexpected encounters and cross-disciplinary exchange.
Dialogue with the Municipality
Back in Herentals, Martin presented the work and vision of Katapult Subtopia to representatives of the local municipality, including discussions around cultural infrastructure, creative incubation, and the long-term societal value of creative hubs.
For Moktamee, these conversations proved especially meaningful. According to Koen Snoeckx, the exchange helped local policymakers better understand how creative hubs contribute not only to culture, but also to urban development, entrepreneurship, and social cohesion. Most notably, the exchange sparked renewed political interest in developing a longer-term vision for creative ecosystems within the city.
Rethinking Community Beyond Shared Space
One of the central reflections of the exchange revolved around a question many creative communities face today:
How do you maintain a strong sense of belonging when a community is no longer gathered in one physical location?
The conversations between Martin, Koen, and Moktamee members explored how rituals, movement, sound, collaboration, and shared experiences can continue to nurture community, even when daily proximity disappears.
Rather than viewing dispersion as a loss, the exchange opened new ways of imagining distributed creative communities that remain connected through shared purpose and participation.
Immediate Impact and Future Collaboration
The exchange generated an immediate and visible impact within the Moktamee community, strengthening a renewed sense of ownership, belonging, and connection among members across different locations, extending beyond those directly involved in the new hub. At the same time, meetings with local authorities opened opportunities for future collaboration and policy development related to creative hubs and community-led urban initiatives in Herentals.
Building on the momentum of the visit, Katapult Subtopia and Moktamee also established a strong foundation for continued international cooperation. Discussions identified several areas for future joint work, including a potential New European Bauhaus (NEB) collaboration focused on bottom-up social entrepreneurship and neighbourhood co-creation, as well as future Erasmus+ opportunities. The exchange further created pathways for ongoing knowledge sharing around creative incubation, youth engagement, and cross-innovation methodologies, while encouraging new artistic, educational, and community-based collaborations between members of both organisations.
What began as a peer-to-peer exchange evolved into a broader reflection on how creative communities can shape cities, foster belonging, and imagine alternative futures together. The relationships, ideas, and collaborations initiated in Herentals continue to extend beyond the visit itself, reinforcing a shared commitment to long-term cooperation and collective learning. As both organisations concluded, the exchange felt less like an endpoint and more like the beginning of a new chapter of collaboration.
