Place First Voices: Thomas Verstraeten
In the lead-up to the official launch of our new community, GENERATION PLACE, in Turin, Italy, we want to highlight people whose work puts the flourishing of a place first. This series opens up to anyone who embodies the PLACE FIRST principle already - musicians, painters, visual artists, writers, philosophers, placemakers, journalists, consultants, mayors, community workers, people in healthcare, and those reflecting on placemaking, placemarketing, and tourism. If someone comes to mind whom we may not yet have considered, feel free to send us a personal message. The more inspiration we gather, the stronger the community becomes.
JOIN US AT GENERATION PLACE, FEBRUARY 24–25, 2027, IN TORINO, ITALY, AND MEET SOME OF THE PLACE FIRST VOICES OF OUR GENERATION. LEARN MORE HERE.
Place First Voices Featuring Thomas Verstraeten: The Upraising of the Facades - A Tourism Opera
Thomas Verstraeten, an Antwerp-based artist who approaches every artistic project by listening closely to the place in which it unfolds. He pays attention to how people inhabit their streets, how daily routines shape the atmosphere of a neighbourhood, and how the quiet gestures of community life reveal what a city truly is. In Familiestraat, he invited residents to re-enact one ordinary day in their own street, turning the neighbourhood into both the stage and the subject. His work consistently shows that a place is not an abstract backdrop but a living environment shaped by the people who move through it, care for it, and give it meaning.
His new project in Ghent extends that same sensitivity to place, but on a city-wide scale. Last Friday, September 12, two full-scale house fronts - one from the historic Vrijdagmarkt and one from the Brugse Poort - were carried through the city and exchanged halfway.
Photo Credit: Marianne Schapmans
As the project describes, "two house fronts will be carried through Ghent on trucks and swapped." Afterwards, the facades will become the set for an opera performed by an orchestra of Ghent residents. By choosing the facade - "the most touristic thing a city owns" - the project reveals how cities often present only their polished surface, while the lived reality behind it quietly shifts under the pressure of tourism, gentrification, and changing urban priorities.
The opera invites audiences to look more carefully at what a city chooses to show and what it tends to overlook. The replicas are rebuilt with meticulous attention to detail, including "the hairline cracks in the plaster, the untidy tangle of cables, the weathered sandstone," the subtle signs of life that touristification often erases. The procession takes place on 12 September in Ghent, and the opera runs from 29 October to 8 November 2026 at NT Gent.
Those wishing to experience the project or learn more can find information and tickets through Opera Ballet Vlaanderen and NT Gent, where the full programme is available.
What happens in Ghent reflects the core idea of Place First: the understanding that a place is not defined by its surface, but by the people who carry it, shape it and keep it alive.
This project shows how the questions we face in tourism and placemaking reach far beyond those fields — they touch on belonging, identity, and the quiet negotiations that determine who a city is ultimately for. It is a reminder that the future of places is a shared responsibility, held collectively and never by one sector alone.
MORE PLACE FIRST FEATURES TO COME...
