This was Playground 2016

The tenth edition of Playground took place from 17 until 20 November. This festive edition was a tremendous success for the organizers M-Museum Leuven and STUK – the Centre for Dance, Image & Sound. Over the past decade, the festival has developed an excellent reputation in the live arts scene. Yet again this year, the blend of small experimental work and larger productions drew the attention of international curators and programme directors, from Portugal, Greenland, France, Italy, Germany, the UK, Spain, Lithuania, Egypt, Luxemburg, and the Netherlands. They all came to Leuven especially to discover new talent.

A particular highlight of this edition was the contribution from American artist Mary Reid Kelley. She recently won the prestigious MacArthur Prize. Her exhibition at M and the performance This Is Offal at STUK more than matched the high expectations, and were tremendously popular with audiences. For Claude Shannon by Liz Santoro and Pierre Godard was the opening production, which was nominated for the Bessie Awards. In addition to these productions, there were many other exciting performances at M to surprise chance visitors.

To celebrate this anniversary edition, a call was launched to national and international arts programmes that have loyally participated in the festival over the past decade. A selection of the most exciting submitted projects was presented on Sunday afternoon in Playground Platform. Thanks to this unique call, many arts schools visited the festival and the cross-fertilization can continue.