De Reizende Glijbaan, a children’s book about a travelling slide in Leidsche Rijn!

In 2018 a second-hand yellow slide landed in Leidsche Rijn, right over a hedge that separated the once-abandoned Terwijde farmhouse from a newly built shopping mall. It was brought to the place by the artist collective The Outsiders, as well as Casco Art Institute and the friends and neighbours who had inhabited and animated the farmhouse earlier that year in a collective venture. Now, two years later, the farmhouse has been sold to a developer and we work hard on new plans around it, stay tuned for updates! In the meantime, the slide has been relocated to het Muziekplein next to the farmhouse, where it connects the many children –and sometimes adults, as we saw – playing in Leidsche Rijn. 

To capture and share the stories of the slide, artists Asia Komarova and Merel Zwarts from The Outsiders made a book for children, with children, in the Terwijde neighbourhood. They collaborated with students from Basisschool de Ridderhof, a primary school in Leidsche Rijn, who imagined themselves to be the slide – drawing and asking questions such as, What kind of character does this slide have? How does it feel moving from place to place? and, Where would the slide like to go next?