Joyeeta Gupta

Joyeeta Gupta is a professor of environment and development in the global south at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research of the University of Amsterdam and UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education in Delft.

She is editor-in-chief of International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics and is on the editorial board of Environmental Science and Policy, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, Carbon and Law Review, International Journal on Sustainable Development, Catalan Environmental Law Journal, Review of European Community and International Environmental Law and the new International Journal of Water Governance.

She was a lead author in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore and of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment which won the Zayed Second Prize. She is on the scientific steering committees of international programmes including the Steering Committee of the Global Agricultural Research Partnership (CGIAR) research programme on Forests, Trees, and Agroforestry; the Global Water Systems Project and Earth System Governance.

She’s a member of Science Europe’s Scientific Committee for the Social Sciences and of the Joint Programming Initiative – Climate Transdisciplinary Advisory Board in Brussels. She is also on the Board of Directors of Oxfam Novib and the Board of Commissioners of the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam. She is Vice-President of the Commission on Development Cooperation and member of the Advisory Council on International Affairs, a statutory body that advises the Netherlands’ Government.

She has published several books on climate change, including ‘The Climate Change Convention and Developing Countries – From Conflict to Consensus?’ and’ Our Simmering Planet: What to do About Global Warming’.

She is a speaker at Setting the Urban Agenda of Tomorrow on Wednesday, June 20.

Shishani Vranckx

Shishani is a talented singer-songwriter/ anthropologist/musicologist, with Namibian and Belgian roots who grew up in the Netherlands. In her songs, she tries to bring these worlds together.

She has a smooth and powerful voice and her style has been influenced by Afro-American and African music traditions, giving her a truly unique sound. Her music has a thread of strong social consciousness running through it, and she has performed for various causes at protests and benefits. Her song ‘Clean Country’ was the Campaign song for the Campaign Against Nuclear Waste in Namibia.

In Namibia, she has spearheaded various arts initiatives in Namibia focusing on social upliftment. She is a founder of ARTNAM; advocating for the promotion of Namibian arts.

Her song ‘Minority’ got two nominations at the Namibian Annual Music Awards, and she has won several awards, both locally and internationally. In 2013, she won the Amsterdam singer-songwriter music competition ‘Mooie Noten’ and she was the winner of Amsterdam TV Channel AT5 talent competition ‘Cultuur in de Stad’.

In her work as an anthropologist/ musicologist she has specialised in contemporary urban Namibian music. Currently, she is writing for the Bloomsbury Encyclopaedia of Contemporary Music of the World.

Vranckx is a speaker at Setting the Urban Agenda of Tomorrow on Wednesday, June 20.

Child Translators in the Spotlight

The social artists collective Moving Arts Project documented children that are translating for their parents and thus mediate between two worlds. Together, their life-size portraits form the exhibition TransTaalKinderen (Trans Language Children), which will open with a meet-up.

Friday 22 June, the exhibition will officially open with a guided tour and a meet-up for all Amsterdam-based language experts. During the tour, the stories behind the portraits will be told by experts through experience, and by language experts. The exceptional qualities of these children will be highlighted as it will transpire how family interests sometimes collide with societal expectations. Visitors can take a look at the life-size portraits which were taken at the children’s own doors; some of the stories will be brought to life in a theatrical manner. A social drink for visitors and participants, where the phenomenon of child translators will be addressed, will bring the event to a close.

Jan Rothuizen

Jan Rothuizen is known for his unorthodox ‘maps’ of reality. He documents his surroundings in a very personal way, using both fictional and journalistic elements. About his way of working, the artist says that his presence affects his environment and vice versa.

He visits different kinds of places like the IKEA showroom, the former Bijlmer prison, a refugee camp in Iraq and the famous Achterhuis of Anne Frank. He writes down everything he sees, thinks and feels. In 2017, he published his latest book ‘Amsterdam City of Changes’. His earlier books, ‘The soft atlas of Amsterdam’ and ‘The soft atlas of The Netherlands’ were very successful. His work has been translated into French, English, Chinese, and Spanish and can be seen all over the world, from the Townhouse Gallery in Cairo to the New Museum in New York. Every month, he publishes a drawing in daily newspaper de Volkskrant.

The artist is a speaker at An Ode to Urbanisation on Friday, June 22.

Richard Koek

Richard Koek is a Dutch-Argentinan photographer. He’s a visual storyteller, communicating his love for New York City and its inhabitants with the audience through his lens.

He shows his sensitivity to the complicated life in New York in his pictures, in which he doesn’t try to document a defining moment, but rather invites the audience to create its own interpretation of the work. Each photo becomes a new story, unique to each spectator. In his works, he organically incorporates themes such as gentrification, segregation, and cultural diversity.

He’s a speaker at An Ode to Urbanisation on Friday June 22.

Festive Pre-launch of WMTC on 26 April

Don’t miss the festive pre-launch of WeMakeThe.City. On Thursday 26 April we invited  some of the initiators to share a preview of the extensive programme. More speakers, conferences and other special events will be announced every week.

Up Close and Liveable presents urban professionals from around the world discussing hot topics: how can we learn from each other’s cities?

Conferences
During WeMakeThe.City dozens of conferences will take place. Edwin Oskam from the Amsterdam Economic Board will talk about State of the Region. Director of Amsterdam Creative Industries Matthijs ten Berge will explain more about the conference We Charge the City, while Marleen Stikker, founder of De Waag, will shed light on Next Generation Cities (Strategies for Inclusive Digital Transformation) and Smart Mobility Manager Tijs Roelofs will elaborate on Smart Mobility. Eric van der Kooij from Amsterdam Municipality gets in-depth on Up Close and Liveable and will also provide a sneak preview of an extraordinary maquette exhibition at the NDSM wharf.

There will be Skype talks with New York-based designer Toni L. Griffin on Creating the City and with architect Moriko Kira in Tokyo on New Tokyo Story.

Sustainable initiatives

One of the hot topics at WeMakeThe.City is the sustainable city. Multiple initiatives are dealing with this issue in innovative ways. Pauline Westendorp, for instance, talks about emission-free ambitions for Project02025 and Jesse Jorg demonstrates how ROEF-festival can take sustainability to a higher level. More on the subject will be brought by Dennis de Waart, founder of DAKKASHaarlem and Chris Monaghan, creative director at Metabolic.

M-ODE envisions a sustainable future for the fashion industry through the event We Make M-ODE

Specials

We will give you some insight into the special events at WeMakeThe.City. Iris Ruisch will give a heads up on her initiative We Make M-ODE, a five-day event on sustainability, innovation, and healthy entrepreneurship. Part of the event is a fashion spectacle at the Bos and Lommer square, organised by WOW Amsterdam. WOW’s head of cultural programming, Marlies Buurman shares more details. Sietske Roorda and Ceciel Mullens Wentgens take us on some of the art routes of Public Art Amsterdam, like Pay Attention Please! and Get Lost.

The pre-launch takes place on 26 April at  Pakhuis de Zwijger, from 5 to 7 pm. We’d love to see you there.

A Guided Tour through Van Eycks Orphanage

Famous architect Aldo van Eyck is the designer of the former city orphanage at the IJsbaanpad in Amsterdam. The building – which opened in 1960 – is the first example of structuralism. In the weekend during WeMakeThe.City this extraordinary place will be open for guided tours.

The orphanage was in use from 1960 until 1991, after which it was thoroughly renovated. The building is now used for a variety of purposes – it is, among other things, the regional office for area developer BPD. Saturday 23 and Sunday 24 June, visitors can sign up for a guided tour. 

Wasteless Wednesday Dinner

On Wednesday, June 20 you can join the Wasteless Wednesday Diner at the Plantage Doklaan 8, organised by Taste Before You Waste. The delicious vegan/vegetarian meal is cooked, just like every Wednesday, by a team of volunteers and a professional chef. The ingredients? Food waste of markets and shops, so nothing goes to waste.

Foundation Taste Before You Waste aims to raise awareness about the enormous waste of food and to educate people on what they can do to prevent it. At the same time, they want to create a caring society. They organise Food Cycle Markets, food-saving workshops, and Wasteless Wednesday Dinners, making people feel, taste, and see how delicious society’s waste can really be.

The dinner starts at 6.30 pm and lasts for two-and-a-half hours, on a pay-as-you-feel base.

Fun- and Food-filled Day at Artists’ Nieuw en Meer

The artists’ community Nieuw en Meer, at the lake Nieuwe Meer, will open its doors on Saturday, June 23. Expect exhibitions, workshops, music, edible flowers and books for free. Visitors can also visit the Relics Museum and several studios.

The one-day exhibition Vensters (Windows) about nature and technology, will provide a lecture, challenging music and a meal made from homegrown products. You can sign up for this free meal at [email protected]. If you’d rather move, you can sign up at [email protected] for the Workshop World fitness Holistic Dance. A lot of words for a variety of moves (on music) and inspiration from around the world.

Canteen De Zeemeermin Zonder Hoofd (The Headless Mermaid) serves snacks, wine, local beer and music by Martin van Leusden and Paul Nassenstein & Guests, from 3 pm onwards. There will be more food at Ogentroost, an Amsterdam catering collective, cooking with edible flowers which are grown at the gardens on site. You can also visit Art4ARtbnb, a small camping where you can stay the night and enjoy an artist’s breakfast, go on a guided tour and have a look at all the artists’ studios. 

Admission is free, but there will be a fee for the dance workshop and food and drinks.

Urban Religion

How do people in the city perceive religion? And how did religion impact the city? These are the subjects of inspiring Urban Religion lectures by scientists and professionals. They talk about religion and meaning in the city at the very appropriate location of the Westerkerk, on Thursday, June 22.

Ages ago cities were built on religion. In medieval times almost a third of Amsterdam consisted of convents and other ecclesiastic buildings. Religious movements have always been involved in the design of the cities. Nowadays, the tables seem to be turned. The monumental Utrecht Cathedral and Ghanese Pentecostal churches in the Bijlmer, yoga mats in the city parks and hidden mosks in Stuttgart: how do modern-day cities shape the way people deal with religion? The meeting starts at 7.30 pm.

Pay Attention Please! – Framer Framed

The Turkish, Amsterdam-based Suat Ögut is an artist pushed by Framer Framed. His work will be shown during WeMakeThe.City, as part of the manifestation Pay AttentionPlease!, which will open on June 21 and will run until September 30. 

The manifestation by Public Art Amsterdam is a collaboration of eleven leading art institutions in Amsterdam, exposing the richness of the public (art) space in the city. An inspiring programme containing tours, stories, lectures, and performances will help unlock the artworks for a broad audience.

Framer Framed, a platform for art and culture with an exhibition space in the Tolhuistuin, is one of the participants. The platform focuses on younger (international) artists and curators. During Pay Attention Please! they will highlight two existing monuments in North Amsterdam: the Spain Monument and the Atatürk monument. These monuments have a connection with the installation The First Turk Immigrant or The Nameless Heroes of The Revolution by Suat Ögut.

Sound As a Citymaker

How does a good city sound? You can find out at the exhibition Sound as a Citymaker, at the Architecture Centre Amsterdam (Arcam). It is the result of the research project Crowdsourcing Mr.Visserplein by Soundtrackcity and the Centre for Urban Studies of the University of Amsterdam, based on the notion: a place that sounds good is a place where people like to be. Citizens, sound artists, and architects have collaborated in the project, designing places with sound as an essential element.