From Cape Town to Oostende: Girls Make the City in Parks.

In recent months, Girls Make the City has taken bold steps to rethink what parks can be. Parks are not just places to walk through or sit in, they are spaces where women and girls should feel safe, visible, and welcome. Across two cities separated by 11,940 kilometers, we explored how parks can be reclaimed and transformed: in Leopold Park in Oostende, Belgium, and in Nantes Park in Athlone, Cape Town, South Africa. Both parks carry layered histories and face serious challenges, but they also hold enormous potential to become spaces of belonging.

Oostende: Leopold Park

Leopold Park is more than a patch of green in the center of Oostende. It mirrors the contradictions of many urban public spaces. For the Girls Make the City group, it represents both possibility and struggle. While families picnic, children play, and artists perform, the park is also marked by dark corners, dense shrubs, and poor lighting, physical signs of a space that can feel unsafe for women and girls. Deeper than this, structural issues like racism, sexism, and colonial legacies shape the way the park is designed and experienced, turning what should be a public refuge into a place of surveillance and exclusion.

But this tension is also where change begins. By bringing more light, presence, and collective energy into the park, we aim to transform fear into confidence and exclusion into participation. Through cultural programming, artistic lighting, and new roles like park guardians and park programmers, Leopold Park can become a space where people feel they belong, especially women and girls. When men are engaged as allies, when conversations flow on benches that invite connection, and when shared picnics bring diverse groups together, a new atmosphere emerges. The park starts to breathe differently, not just as a landscape but as a living, communal heart of the neighbourhood. Leopold Park can stand as a cultural and artistic landmark: a place where everyone is part of the story.

This project is driven by Wetopia in collaboration with ZIJkant and partners including De Stadsnomaden en ’t Kadaster, Theater aan Zee, Athena High School, SJO School, De Grote Post, and Stad Oostende. Girls and women who participated include Ruqaya, Aqsa, Amy, Freya, Zita, Joyce, Yamila, Lieve, Mia, Liesbeth, Myriam, Irène, Estelle, Eva, Imke, Sumaya, Sabariin, Anisa, and Élise.

©Lynn Delbeecke / logo: Estelle Demaré

Athlone: Nantes Park

Thousands of kilometers away, in the Cape Flats of Athlone, Nantes Park holds its own layered story. This 17-hectare green space became a gathering place for a large coloured community forcibly relocated from District 6 during apartheid. People used to gather here to listen to radio shows, one of which featured a character named Nantes. That is how the park got its name. But beneath this history lies the weight of displacement, gang violence, and many female victims of systemic neglect.

And yet, Nantes Park is also a place of extraordinary resilience. The women who came together here identified powerful levers for transformation: family ties, religion, community activities, heritage, and intergenerational solidarity. Their vision is not about waiting for safety to be delivered from above but about building it together. By creating spaces where women can meet, talk, fix, plant, celebrate, and protect, they reclaim the park as their own.

This transformation can take shape in many ways. Our Girls Make the City team imaged the following: the park’s facilities are cared for, toilets are locked safely, and new features like free sanitary pads and water taps are installed. Regular activities centered on women, sports, religion, and nature turn the park into a vibrant and inclusive environment. Special routes invite girls to explore their own strength through play, storytelling, and movement. Seasonal women’s picnics build sisterhood across backgrounds. A “Girl Power Radio Box” reimagines the park’s early radio history as a tool for connection today, while a Food Memories Garden celebrates the flavors and stories passed down through generations of women. At the center of it all stands the idea of a “Motherhood Park”, a space explicitly dedicated to mothers, grandmothers, and all women who fight for safe spaces for others.

This project is led by Wetopia in collaboration with Open Design Afrika and a core team including Joke Quintens, Sune Stassen, Nthaks Maeme, Tiisetso Mofokeng, and Ellen Fischat, with partners such as Norma School, His Servant, Spes Bona High School, and Zeitz MOCAA. Girls and women who participated include Tara, Tatum, Alex, Chloe, Portia, Chanté, Miché, Katelynn, Tyra-Lee, Likhona, and Anela.

A Shared Vision

Leopold Park in Oostende and Nantes Park in Athlone are worlds apart in location, but the girls and women who shape them speak a shared language: one of courage, creativity, and the right to belong. In both places, parks are being reimagined from spaces of invisibility into places of power. This is what Girls Make the City stands for: cities where women and girls are not guests, but co-creators of the public realm.

These transformations are not just about safer parks. They are about shifting power, rewriting narratives, and building cities where everyone can claim space — together.

Discover our other projects on www.girlsmakethecity.com !