Opposition party proudly on Ostend tends heavily to cancel the art project. “We are even angry. They throw a participation process of years overboard. There has been an open exhibition in the Venetian galleries where people could put their ideas on paper, people could give their opinion online. It would have been unique that a colonial monument gets an artistic interpretation,” says municipal councilor Silke Beirens.
Yet Ostend does not give a better framework of the controversial colonial past of Belgium. “We want to realize a memorial square there in the short term, by entering a dialogue with a lot of people. In the longer term we will develop the entire park Royal Site. The decolonization story will be the common thread,” says ships Judith Ooms.