Supported projects

BRUSSELS/AMSTERDAM - In June 2020, following protests in the United States, colonial heritage in Belgium became fiercely debated.

MUMBAI - India is shaping the 21st century. What is driving this unstoppable nation forward?

KIEV - In January 2024, Dutch investigative journalist Linda van der Pol and Belgian photographer Gena Kagermanov traveled to Ukraine to investigate the impact of the Russian invasion on the Ukrainian cultural sector in several cities.

JEREVAN - For Armenians, the pomegranate symbolises the invincibility of the Armenian spirit. Pomegranates begin to ripen in September. Their skin dries up while the flesh becomes moist.

BRUSSELS - Journalist and writer Catherine Vuylsteke chronicled the life stories of Mar Maremoto, Ann Telnaes, Rachita Taneja, Doaa El-Adl, Victoria Lomasko and Amany Al-Ali, six women cartoonists from Mexico, the U.S., India, Egypt, Russia and Syria to whom the documentary series Draw for Change, recently awarded at Cannes, is dedicated.

NINOVE - "Marginal triangle," "wing-west for the extreme right," "cultural breakdown strip against the language border. For those who don't live there, it's easy to brush off the Dender region. But how do the residents themselves actually see it?

Low Countries - In Flanders, we now speak Dutch. But that was not always the case. Less than a century ago, most people spoke their local dialect and the upper social class spoke Flemish-colored General Dutch or French.

BRUSSELS - In an essay, French critic Roland Barthes called the car a magical object, consumed more as an image than an object of use. Can we still see the car as a magical object today?

BRUSSELS - The photo report gives an insight into cricket, an underexposed sport in Belgium.

BRUSSELS - Unknown is unloved, especially when it comes to liberal funerary heritage. Gravestones of freethinkers and other "sinners" have been neglected, forgotten or simply disappeared. And yet, things can be different. Three stories about "dog corners," the neglected memorial of the co-founder of Het Laatste Nieuws and columbaria gnawed by concrete rot illustrate the issue.

LALIBELA - The rock churches of Lalibela in northern Ethiopia are world heritage sites. But during the civil war, the village was occupied by civilian militias of the Tigray Army (TPLF) fighting the government army. The soldiers left Lalibela as a ghost village.

AMSTERDAM/BRUSSELS - The Dutch Language Union is unique in the world; nowhere else do two countries cooperate so closely in a policy area. They have been doing so since 1980, when the Netherlands and Belgium concluded the Language Union Treaty. In it they solemnly declared their joint commitment to spread the Dutch language throughout the world.

BRUSSELS – A huge amount of art was stolen during World War II. The Nazis looted art from occupied countries and brought it to Germany, where they established ambitious collections. The story of what happened to Belgian art has yet to be told. How did paintings by Memling, Van der Weyden, Bruegel, Jordaens and Cranach leave the country so easily? The Nazis looted homes, stole art and forced owners to sell, spending millions of Reichsmarks in the process.

TEHERAN - The Islamic Republic regime in Iran has been oppressing its people for more than 40 years. In response to this repression and suffocation, the popular uprising of ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ is a powerful ‘no’.

BRUSSELS - Joy and intimacy between family members and friends was an obvious thing before the corona crisis, but became a scarce commodity during it. Journalist Arkasha Keysers and photographer Aurélie Geurts captured the coming together of family and friends as soon as it was allowed again.

VINDELN/LO MANTHANG/OLD CROW - Through the project Indigenous People Today, we investigate the effects of climate change on indigenous peoples, their ways of life and unique cultures. These are indigenous peoples in the northern hemisphere, living in arctic or high-altitude areas.

MADRID - In 2010, VRT correspondent Sven Tuytens moved from Brussels to Madrid. Based on his experiences, he tries to lay bare a piece of Spain's soul.

ANTWERP - The corona virus has been raging through Europe for weeks. The cultural sector is locked up and the creators at home, for the time being without any perspective. Seven artists manage to draw resilience from stagnation and show that they can quickly switch to an alternative frame of mind like no other.

KINSHASA - The research by Jeroen Janssen, awarded graphic novelist, and journalist Hilde Baele on Mzee Jérôme Sebasoni, who became Che Guevara's guide as a young Inyenzi rebel, took no less than 12 years.

YEREVAN - Kubra was born and raised in Belgium. However, her family is Turkish, at least, that's what they thought, because she was brought up as a Belgian Turk: with Turkish customs and the Islamic faith. Internal doubts lead her to have a DNA test taken in 2017 to see if she actually has Turkish roots. The test showed that she is not Turkish but Armenian. 

MYANMAR - The Karen People are an ethnic minority of eastern and southern Burma (Myanmar). Many Karen people live in north-western Thailand as refugees from the decades-long Karen insurgency and Burmese government oppression. 

ANTWERP - Thanks to more than 450 volunteers the cultural center called De Roma keeps going. Why do they put their heart and soul into this theater in Borgerhout near Antwerp? Television maker Lies Van der Auwera tried to find the answer. 

GABORONE - In the series "The Flemish story behind heritage in southern Africa", Margot Cassiers investigates what was achieved with the Flemish Community's long-term investment in intangible cultural heritage in southern Africa. "Why should I learn about Aristotle, not about my grandfather?"

BRUSSELS - While the authors were walking through Paris, they were both attracted to Château Rouge, an African neighbourhood immediately behind Montmartre. The positive sides but also the struggles of the neighborhood with gentrification and crime, reminded them of that other African neighbourhood, much closer to home: Matonge in Brussels. That was the start of a long search for the history, identity and future of black neighbourhoods in Europe.

TEHERAN - The Iranians are caught between two fires today. On the one hand they suffer the American sanctions, on the other hand there are many domestic issues to overcome. During the "Nowruz" period, we investigated this stifling position with various teams across Iran. The story about Nowruz transcends borders and identities.

MADAGH / TOUBA - After a long period of decline and even persecution, Sufism is experiencing a genuine revival in the Muslim world. In countries such as Morocco, Algeria, Senegal, and Turkey, there is a clear resurgence in both religious and political terms, and this is having an impact on migrant communities here in the West.

INDIA - Being transgender seems to be a fairly recent concept in Belgium and the Netherlands, but in India there has been a deep-rooted culture around the third sex for centuries.

UGANDA - In “Bewitched”, Daan Bauwens, Rien Bauwens and Yann Verbeke head to Uganda. A team of young Ugandan psychologists visits fishing villages on the shores of Lake Victoria. They are going to tell that there is such a thing as mental health and that it it can be helpful to talk about it. Because too often people with problems go to a witch.

BELGIUM - There is no form of religion that politicians and commentators are as concerned about as Salafism. The young men with their beards full of religion and women dressed in long, wavy robes with black stretch gloves have become the symbol of backwardness, of an Islam that does not belong to the West.

EGYPT - In Belgium lives a small, unknown minority from the Middle East: Coptic Christians from Egypt. For many, migration was a choice for a better life, others point to the penal position of Copts as a minority in Egypt.