Doel and Copenhagen.

At the end of August, KunstDoel and Eva Van Tulden launched, in cooperation with Doel2020 and Koma-ar Educatief, a campaign to obtain speaking right about Doel in the Flemish Parliament. On the embankment of the Scheldt, artists from the KunstKater (Lier) rolled out a 50-meter-long banner while Ademloos1 leader Wim Van Hees delivered pro-Doel speeches. Subsequently, representatives from SP-A (socialists), N-VA (Flemish nationalists), Flemish Interest (radical Flemish nationalists), Groen! (ecologists) and LSP (progressive liberals) voiced their personal or party standpoints about Doel. So many politicians on the same day in Doel, this had not happened for years!
Thanks to Eva 15,000 signatures have been collected, even more than that, before the beginning of the Christmas holidays. This is a clear sign that there is much support among public opinion for maintaining Doel. The box with signatures has been handed over to the Parliament on 6 January. What will happen in 2010? The failed climate conference in Copenhagen showed that system change in the direction of an ecologically sustainable, economically stable and socially fair society will have to be a bottom-up process. At the end of November, KunstDoel wrote in a letter to Antwerp Port CEO Eddy Bruyninckx that Doel might become an "innovative model community", a place where "top-notch ecological technologies could be applied and tested out."
Convert the battered village of Doel into a showcase of an embryonic harmonious New Economy that shows due respect for the limits of the ecological system, people, nature and culture… This is the broadened track that KunstDoel wants the follow this year, in a bid to transfer these values, via the mediagenic Doel case, to a larger public. Art and ecodesign as catalyst toward an innovating and environmentally-conscious economy and a higher-quality life. This is a future-oriented discourse that matter to everybody.
In the course of January, we will launch a blog on our website where experts from various relevant domains may post their opinions about a possible new destiny for Doel. The public can follow this brainstorming exercise on the KunstDoel website and react to the experts' views. In this way, we hope to stimulate a high-quality debate about a "New Doel", so that we may address the people's representatives with a novel range of arguments and ideas when we will be heard in the Parliament later this year.
We are very curious what the 2010's will have in store for Doel… A new decade, visionary politicians, a new village? Am I too optimistic?