It’s a simple enough ambition, really.
“We want to keep those brains,” says Steven Van Goethem, staring at us with the weary patience of someone who has explained it all to visiting delegations before:
There’s a lot of talent in the city during those four, five, six, seven years – and a lot of that talent disappears afterwards.
We’re in GATE15, a student hub in central Antwerp that won the Belgian Architecture Prize in 2015, and Steven is walking us through STAN – Student & Antwerp – the city-wide student platform that has been quietly getting on with treating students as urban infrastructure since 2008.
It’s Day 4 of our Rhineland study tour, and after Luxembourg and Liège, 35 increasingly sleep-deprived SU officers and staff have arrived in Antwerp to learn how a city can decide that students are citizens worth coordinating around – rather than a nuisance to be managed or a market to be exploited.
A village pretending to be a city
“Antwerp is actually a little village,” Steven admits. “We try to pretend we’re a city.”
But unlike British cities that genuinely are cities and still can’t muster a coherent student strategy, Antwerp has built something quite impressive – a structural collaboration between the City of Antwerp, the University of Antwerp, AP University College, Karel de Grote University College, and the Antwerp Maritime Academy, with KU Leuven Antwerp, the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp Management School and Thomas More also in the mix on project work.
STAN isn’t a students’ union. It’s not trying to represent students in the democratic sense. Instead, it’s a facilitation layer – a boundary organisation sitting between students, the city, and the universities, asking a question that British local authorities rarely bother with – what would make student life nicer, happier, more fun, and easier?
“We’re not interested in the education itself,” Steven explains:
That has to be good, of course, but there are specialists at the university. That’s not our business. We only want to try and make student life better.
The staffing model is fascinating. STAN has nine permanent staff – but 45 student workers. There’s a student editorial team producing maps and guides – and not just sensible ones. During the pandemic, they made a map of parks and picnic spots. Then someone suggested a map of where you can make out in Antwerp.
When they first said it to me, I thought the mayor would say no… But they come up with ideas that we don’t have.
The map exists. It includes some of the same scenic spots as the picnic guide, plus some more… private locations. It’s an original view on the city, produced by students for students, and it’s exactly the sort of thing a municipal communications department would never commission.
There’s also a street team spreading the word across campuses, and students staffing the reception desk at GATE15, which Steven notes means visitors actually get friendly faces rather than “someone who has been doing this for 10 or 15 years and is bored.”
Below STAN sits another layer entirely. Each campus has its own student umbrella – Unifac for the City Campus, A.S.K.-Stuwer for the others – coordinating clubs and feeding into the city-wide structures. And the University of Antwerp has a 60-member elected student council.
Any five students can form an association, get recognised by STAN, and then access rooms and subsidies. It’s a full infrastructure – though one where STAN deliberately sits outside the university rather than inside it.
Unifac alone runs quite a programme. There’s Students on Stage, the opening festival that transforms Sint-Jansplein for an afternoon. Calamartes is a week-long cultural festival in a spiegeltent with programming partly delivered by student associations – including, charmingly, a “TD Pensionnée” for older locals.
Verkenningsdagen is a three-day trip for first-years before term starts. Kiesweek is the annual election week where faculty clubs campaign and face a vote threshold to secure representational status.
De Grote Verwarringsquiz is a huge quiz night with a “boefprijs” for the team that eats the most snacks. There’s an annual post-exam trip – Albania this February, €395 all-in. Even a Beiaardcantus, a cantus held under the city’s carillon. And Kerst op UAntwerpen, a Christmas charity event with proceeds going to Handicap International Belgium.
The sheer density of student-led “tentpole” programming puts most UK SUs to shame.
Thirty years ago, the students who created the structure negotiated to take the house across the street rather than space inside the university buildings. The trade-off was more liberty but no guaranteed funding.
We are legally and physically outside of the university… So we are very independent from them.
That independence has become part of the culture.
Memes against misperception
Perhaps the most unlikely thing we learned about Antwerp is that the city council has deployed memes to correct public perception of student drinking.
In 2022, the City of Antwerp conducted a study with the University among 1,886 students. The findings were striking – 78.9 per cent of students drink spirits less than once per month, 65 per cent drink no more than one or two drinks at student gatherings, and 72.9 per cent have no problem ordering a non-alcoholic drink.
And yet 73.3 per cent of students think the average student gets drunk weekly or more often. The distance between perception and reality was doing real damage – students were drinking more because they thought that’s what students do.
So the city made memes. Actual municipal memes, translating the survey findings into shareable content to correct both public perception and students’ own beliefs about their peers.
It’s the sort of thing that you can’t imagine happening in the UK. In Antwerp, it’s evidence-based public health communication using the formats students actually consume.
StuDay and the 15,000
Every September, STAN runs StuDay – the city-wide student welcome festival that’s been going since 2004. It’s not a freshers’ fair run by one institution. It’s an Antwerp event, drawing around 15,000 students from across all the city’s universities and colleges.
“Any organisation that is relevant to students can present itself,” Steven explains. Commercial partners can rent space to reach what he frankly describes as “a very constructed market” – 15,000 students in one place. But the real purpose is visibility for student organisations, city services, and the message that student life in Antwerp extends beyond any single campus.
It’s the sort of event that requires a city to decide that coordinating students is worth doing. In the UK, we leave it to individual SUs to run their own freshers’ weeks, competing for the same students’ attention in the same week, duplicating effort and missing everyone who doesn’t show up.
Every year, Antwerp’s student organisations sign a student charter – a detailed governance instrument that sits at the intersection of student life, municipal regulation, and public order. The charter has been developed jointly by the city, the Association of Antwerp Universities and Universities of Applied Sciences, and the Antwerp Student Consultation for about ten years now.
This isn’t a symbolic statement. The charter specifies when and where student rituals can take place, designates locations for “baptisms” (initiation ceremonies), mandates sober internal supervisors, requires compulsory training on alcohol management, and sets out explicit bans on practices deemed hazardous or degrading. If a student club doesn’t sign it, they can’t organise events in public space.
The rules get remarkably specific. Initiations can’t use live fish. Participants who don’t want to drink alcohol must be allowed to refuse without pressure. Certain locations are designated for certain activities. There are noise limits, cleanliness requirements, and medical disclosure safeguards.
In return, the city provides toilets and waste containers, waives fees for public space use, and offers preventive support through training and guidance. It’s co-regulation rather than prohibition or laissez-faire tolerance – peer-led compliance backed by municipal sanctions.
Since 2012, all newly elected student councils and representatives attend an annual Kick-off event, convened jointly by the City, STAN, and the Antwerp Student Consultation. This is where the charter gets signed, where operational information is shared, and where expectations are set for the year. It’s part of something called the “Liveable Student City” action plan – a phrase that would sound like meaningless strategy-speak in the UK, except that in Antwerp there are actual instruments attached to it.
In 2023, this support strand was consolidated into Stuvent – a one-stop-shop platform combining STAN, the city, and the student consultation to provide everything a student organiser needs, from inspiration and practical rules to subsidy routes and event registration. If you want to run something in Antwerp as a student, there’s now a single place to start.
Bureaucracy reduction as student service
GATE15 also houses a joint International Students Office for the universities in the city where, after an appointment with their institution’s international student services, students can complete their Antwerp city registration and residence permit processes without traipsing across town to other municipal offices. With around 5,000 international students in the city each year, it’s the sort of practical friction-reduction that makes an immediate difference to someone arriving in a new country.
STAN also runs welcome sessions for international students where – alongside practical city orientation – the police come to explain Belgian rules.
“Belgian beer is much heavier than most countries,” Steven notes, as one example of the kind of thing that trips people up. Student workers then guide international students through the city centre.
It’s not glamorous work. But it’s the difference between a city that treats international students as a revenue stream and one that treats them as residents who need help finding their way through an unfamiliar system.
Evidence as infrastructure
The Big Antwerp Student Survey, run every few years by STAN in collaboration with the University of Antwerp, has become the evidence base for actual policy. In 2018, over 4,000 students were surveyed across five themes – mobility, safety, free time, diversity, and nutrition.
The findings were specific – two out of three students who cycle feel unsafe in traffic, 43 per cent aren’t enthusiastic about food options near campus, 41 per cent think there aren’t enough healthy places to eat, half want the city centre to be more traffic-restricted, and more than half want more contact with students from other institutions and with international students.
The point is that these findings led to projects. Study 360 – the city-wide network of temporary study spaces during exam periods that we’ve written about before – was born from survey data showing students needed places to study together. The mental wellbeing strand emerged directly from survey findings.
Back in my day, you would study alone in a room… Now students want to study together.
The shift matters particularly for first-generation students – pionierstudenten – who don’t always have a quiet place at home. Too crowded, too small, whatever the reason. Study 360 gives them somewhere to go.
“Sometimes a new project comes from this survey… Study 360 is born after this survey, because then we knew there was a need for those study places.
Study 360 has now been running for ten years, with a record 700 seats this year across locations ranging from the cathedral to IKEA – yes, IKEA, because the Antwerp branch is near the out-of-town campus and someone at STAN thought to ask. In the early years, STAN had to convince partners to participate. Now they come asking.
Part of the appeal for students is the perks – some locations offer free coffee, some offer free water, and one offered three free pizzas, which meant “students all went there.” It’s become competitive, with students racing to reserve spots at the most generous venues. Law students particularly enjoy studying criminal law at the police station.
CABIN and the lonely student
Next door to GATE15 sits CABIN, launched for the 2024-25 academic year as a response to another survey finding – students were struggling with mental health, and many were lonely.
“After the last survey, we noticed there’s a lot of problems with young people and students with their mental health,” Steven says:
We noticed that a lot of students were lonely after Corona. They were looking for connection – very low key and low profile. They don’t want big events focused on their mental wellbeing.
CABIN is a space where anyone can come in for free, sit, work, play games with friends – but also a place where they can be heard. The people staffing it are equipped to offer first psychological aid or refer to appropriate services. It’s a partnership with JAC, a youth support organisation, rather than STAN trying to do clinical work itself.
They don’t have to consume anything… They can just get a free coffee or tea, some water. They can go there.
There’s also Breaking Boost – an event at the MAS museum at the start of exam periods, focused on mental health and “powering up” before the stress hits. It ran for the first time last year, another response to survey findings about student struggles.
Low barrier entry, no pressure to talk, connection as the starting point, referral pathways available when needed. A student health strategy! Imagine that.
Kotweb and the label problem
On housing, Antwerp developed Kotweb – a city-wide platform listing student rooms, integrated with quality labelling to indicate whether accommodation meets safety and habitability standards. For years, the city issued its own “kotlabel” with green, blue, or red ratings based on inspections.
This year, things have got complicated. From 1 January 2025, a new Flemish-wide kotlabel replaced the municipal labels. The problem? The new label isn’t mandatory. Landlords don’t have to get it. So of the 6,000 rooms on Kotweb, only 80 or 90 currently have the new Flemish label.
We’re biting a pickle there…It’s not as good as it used to be. We will improve again.
It’s a useful reminder that even well-designed local systems can be disrupted by regional standardisation efforts – and that the transition from voluntary to mandatory quality assurance is never smooth.
What about student voice in all this? The Antwerp Student Consultation – previously known as ASO – is the city’s formal student advisory body, sitting within the broader Antwerp Youth Council architecture.
Unlike a representative assembly of student organisations, participation is individual. Anyone can join. Members are expected to contribute from the standpoint of “the Antwerp student” rather than as delegates of their association or institution.
The consultation operates through “advice sessions” – at least three per year – with a structured format of questions from the city to members, questions from members to the city, and feedback on what happened to previous advice. Recent topics have included the transition to the Flemish kotlabel, student housing policy, and evaluation of STAN’s Kick-off event.
VVS and the Flemish level
Above all of this sits VVS – the Vlaamse Vereniging van Studenten – the umbrella organisation of student councils across Flemish higher education, with representation in VLOR (the Flemish Education Council), NVAO (the quality assurance body), VLIR (the universities council), and the European Students’ Union.
The policy-making model is structured around working groups, position papers, and a member-led general assembly. Any student – elected representative or not – can join a working group, which meet in hybrid format across themes like international affairs, education, housing, mental wellbeing, and participation. Draft positions are developed in working groups, then brought to the general assembly of member student councils for approval.
Voting power in the assembly follows student numbers, allocated in progressive slices – the first vote comes cheaply, further votes require larger populations. The assembly can approve, adjust, or reject position papers, and sets longer-term direction. Decisions aim for consensus, with a two-thirds quorum in sub-bureaus that segment by institutional type.
The output is a steady stream of “standpunten” – detailed position papers on live issues. Recent ones cover the “harde knip” (a study progress measure), housing, AI in higher education, and “safe study time.” VVS also runs “mandatarissen” and “rapporteurs” – delegates who represent the organisation in external bodies and report back, with accountability mechanisms including sanctioning routes for mandate breaches. It’s student politics taken seriously.
Recent campaigning has focused on opposing Flemish higher education cuts. On 21 October 2025, VVS and local student councils staged an action at Martelaarsplein in Brussels, using 1,000 empty chairs to symbolise students at risk of losing grants under proposed changes. There’s also been work on “sober shaming” – a survey of over 1,000 students and a report calling for institutions to explicitly combat pressure on non-drinkers.
It’s the sort of structure that makes sense when you remember that VVS has been operating since 1938 – with periods of strength and weakness, automatic and opt-out membership models, and a reconstitution in the 1990s after a period of decline. Official recognition as a Flemish student umbrella came in 1999. Permanent staff provide continuity while the student board changes annually.
One of its members is the University of Antwerp’s Studentenraad – the formal student council, established under the Flemish participation decree of 2004. It’s about 60 elected members, drawn from faculties, university-wide elections, the Education Council, and the Council of Student Services.
They sit on over 100 committees and working groups across the institution, covering everything from curriculum structure and examination regulations to blended learning policy and transgressive behaviour procedures.
An executive “Office” of around eleven students – president, vice-president, secretary, and policy coordinators for education, participation, communication, social affairs, ethics and society, and external relations – runs the day-to-day.
The vision thing
The City of Antwerp’s governing agreement – “De Grote Verbinding” (The Great Connection) – includes explicit commitments on students.
Antwerp must be the education capital of Flanders…not only in size, but also in quality, innovation, and emancipatory power.
The vision document talks about improving coexistence between residents and students through “fair distribution of student events and activities.” It commits to “smart solutions for the design of entertainment areas.” It promises to continue monitoring housing quality and safety and to expand quality labels.
There’s even a sentence about wanting to keep graduates linked to the city – “because there’s a lot of talent that disappears afterwards.”
Compare this to British local authorities, where students are usually mentioned in planning documents only as a housing pressure, in licensing documents only as a noise problem, and in economic strategies only as a future graduate to be retained through unspecified “talent attraction.”
What Antwerp teaches
The Antwerp model isn’t perfect. The new Flemish kotlabel transition has created problems. STAN’s reach is stronger around the city campus than the dispersed university college sites. The student consultation is advisory rather than decision-making. International students remain harder to reach.
But there’s a coherent philosophy here that British cities almost entirely lack – students are a permanent urban population, student culture is legitimate but can be regulated, and student life should be integrated into urban governance through structured participation, spatial management, and enforceable agreements rather than informal tolerance or hostile enforcement.
STAN has a physical hub with student workers embedded throughout its operations, runs a survey that leads to actual projects, coordinates a charter system that creates mutual obligations, provides study spaces in partnership with organisations across the city, and has launched a mental health space in response to identified need. It’s a lot. And the city treats it as infrastructure worth funding – not as a nice-to-have, not as a reputational exercise, but as part of how Antwerp works.
“We try to make those students fall in love with Antwerp,” Steven says again as we prepare to leave GATE15. It worked on us.
