After spending the first days in Amsterdam and Eindhoven, the programme of the following days shifted to Utrecht. The fourth day began with intimate conversations, continuing with reconnection sessions with more presentations by Arts Collaboratory members and discussions around the purpose of AC to reflect on why we come together, how we work together, and what we stand for. In the early evening, we moved to de Appel, Amsterdam, for an enriching collective reading of the book Abolitionist Geography: Essays towards Liberation with activist and scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore, organized as part of de Appel’s curatorial fellows’ public offering.


The rest of the weekend was spent at Casco with an entire program dedicated to internal sessions around purpose-setting and action planning for the future of AC, continued by a public event elaborating on Casco Art Institute’s recent ecosystemic shift and processes of un/learning and institutional transformation. Several AC members presented their organizations’ practices and challenges throughout the day, followed by worthwhile exchanges on art’s cohesive and imaginative function in our work. The weekend closed with the public session Out Of The Classroom! Co-organized with MAFA HKU and Framer Framed, a diversity of ecosystem members–from art students and cultural workers to educators– joined us to map and share about alternative pedagogies and radical art education practices.

The sessions also included wonderful food provided by Selarasa in Jakarta, Indonesia, and the Travelling Farm Museum of Forgotten Skills in Utrecht, The Netherlands, as part of the Food & Climate Justice project that has been happening since 2020. They prepared a 500-year-old Dutch stew recipe and Indonesian dishes. During the two-day program, a workstation was set up in the space. AC members, friends, and family creatively experimented by making linocut prints.