Zuid.Boijmans is a branch of Museum Boijmans in the Hillevliet district of Rotterdam Zuid. This district with 200,000 inhabitants has many social and economic problems. And although it has a rich and diverse cultural life, no cultural institutions are located here. In Zuid.Boijmans, we discuss what can be learned from Zuid and share knowledge with residents of the district. Everyone is welcome. Residents, students and talented makers come together, organise activities and learn from each other.
Local
Netherlands
Rotterdam Zuid, stadsdeel van Rotterdam in Nederland
Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Stichting tot Beheer Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Type of organisation: Museum First name of representative: Menno Last name of representative: Wiegman Gender: Male Nationality: Netherlands Function: Development manager foundations Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Gedempte Zalmhaven 4K Town: Rotterdam Postal code: 3011 BT Country: Netherlands Direct Tel:+31 10 441 9686 E-mail:info@boijmans.nl Website:https://www.boijmans.nl/
Rotterdam is a city of two speeds. On the north bank of the river Meuse, buildings shoot up as if by themselves, and cultural and scientific institutions such as Museum Boijmans are located. South of the Meuse you will find a city of more than 220,000 residents, who speak 175 languages. The contrast with the northern bank is stark. A high proportion of South's residents live in poverty. On average, people are low literate, families are large, the population is young, the school dropout rate is high, and there is little social mobility. At the same time, it is a city district with great cultural dynamism, unprecedented potential and an awful lot of (creative) talent.
Since 2020, Museum Boijmans has been working on a new hybrid museum concept in a former technical school. We do this together with partners from the cultural sector, the social field and education. The museum is working on building a cultural infrastructure in Zuid. The starting point is to enter into a dialogue about what art and heritage can mean for the city in different ways and at different levels. Zuid.Boijmans:
●is a place for encounters (people, insights and cultures),
●a place where museum walls become stretchable,
●and a place of opportunities and possibilities for Rotterdammers
Zuid.Boijmans is a place for learning. We do this at different levels. We open our doors and create programmes with and for artists, residents, makers, curators and residents from the neighbourhood. We connect contemporary art and design with the museum collection and new stories. We initiate commissions focused on co-creation and participation, and through fellowships we explore how to make new connections between art, heritage and local communities. We connect the commissions and fellowships with programmes for students: making classes for everyone from 4 years old and up, and internships for students from intermediate vocational schools to experience how to work and learn in the context of the museum.
Samen leren
Samen werken
Talentontwikkeling
Verbinding
Ontmoeting
With Zuid.Boijmans, we focus on the redevelopment of existing infrastructure. We involve the existing technical school and create a place of exchange. We start from what we encounter, both in terms of the built environment and organisations and people. Based on co-creation, we develop a place that is relevant to everyone and connects to the museum from the neighbourhood.
Zuid.Boijmans realises unique experiences of high artistic quality: the starting point is high-quality art and design. We engage high-level artists and we scout local talent, help them develop and support them in realising serious programmes.
The museum has a world-class collection, programmes leading international artists and maintains a strong network with makers, artists, curators and researchers. We link this network to the programmes in South. One of the curators connects objects and stories from the museum collection with objects and stories from Zuid, thus building a community. Contemporary art curators help to scout and guide creative talent. This has now resulted in several residency programmes and several art commissions. Our education department also explores how artists can develop new forms of learning with the 'artist as educator' programme.
With Zuid.Boijmans, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen wants to become a museum that is relevant to all residents of the city. Research has shown that few residents from Rotterdam South visit the museum. Too many experience museum visits as a threshold. By literally opening a branch in the neighbourhood, we not only bring the museum and the collection to Zuid, but we can also learn. It is therefore of great importance that the museum does not send, but listens. Zuid.Boijmans is open to everyone, but explicitly to local residents. We involve them in developing the programme and create as few barriers as possible.
We offer free art classes for all children (and their parents) from the neighbourhood. We have also opened a collaboration space where anyone from the network can come to work, meet or organise group sessions, for example.
And as part of talent development, Zuid. offers young creators the chance to develop professionally and artistically through commissions. Various activities, exhibitions and events are organised where young and old come into contact with artistry.
Zuid.Boijmans is a place of co-creation. We started by listening to what was going on in the neighbourhood. There appeared to be little cultural and creative offerings for children, local creative talent needed development opportunities and there was little feeling with Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen's collection. Meanwhile, there are weekly art lessons for children from the neighbourhood, we give an art assignment to talented makers every three months and we have already collected many stories and objects from the neighbourhood that we link to the museum and the museum collection.
Since 2020, we have been working with various funds and funders who help us launch experiments that allow us, as a museum, to be relevant in the neighbourhood. These include Fund 21, Mondriaan Fund, Innovation Labs and the Prince Bernhard Culture Fund.
With local MBOs (Albeda and Zadkine) and HOs (Erasmus, CODARTS and Willem de Kooning), we link research and practice and connect students' research questions to relevant challenges in the field or problems in the neighbourhood. Together with these institutions, we will develop a number of experimental workshop trajectories in the coming years to arrive at a new cultural campus in the district.
Zuid.Boijmans works from the disciplines of visual art, design, education, science and social work. Boijmans works on Zuid with a team from all parts of the organisation. We also actively involve education by collaborating with Zadkine. The Rotterdam Arts & Sciences Lab (RASL) is a collaboration between Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR), Codarts Rotterdam and Willem de Kooning Academy Rotterdam. RASL deals with transdisciplinary issues and transdisciplinary education. Together and in collaboration with local residents and students from Zadkine, we shape the programmes and investigate the impakt and development opportunities.
With Zuid.Boijmans, we are developing a new way of working and a new way of connecting and involving communities. Whereas as a museum we are used to thinking and working from a project-based and hierarchical structure, in Zuid everything comes about from co-creation. The work processes are organised horizontally. Together, we set goals and develop programmes. A radically equal approach allows us to involve groups that previously did not feel drawn to the museum. At the same time, we are exploring how to implement this working form in the museum's normal operations.
We actively work to explore opportunities to develop lessons learned and make them further transferable. Rotterdam is a city that reflects the world. What is unique about the way we work is the combination of borderless thinking and local principles. Like Hillevliet, there are many neighbourhoods in the Netherlands, Europe and worldwide, with the same challenges and opportunities. Naturally, we will share our findings, knowledge and experiences with local, national and international networks of which we are an active part. With Boijmans Hillevliet, we want to contribute to the development of the cultural sector by developing a new form of cultural infrastructure. Averse to categorisation, we are developing a place where culture, education and social work work work together under one roof. A new museum model that is not just about 'visiting' but about 'participating'. We also want to support the development of new hybrid forms of work by makers. Artists work as makers, but also as tutors and as 'participants'. Art as education and education as art. A platform for equity, talent development and developing new ways of participatory art projects.
We take an iterative approach and apply a number of principles:
Integral approach
We ensure that there are as few barriers as possible between different programmes and initiatives. Artists, curators, teachers and social workers complement each other. We therefore adopt an intergral and reciprocal approach.
Starting from existing quality
We have found that we have to start from quality. On the one hand, this means using and stimulating the many talents, infrastructure and networks present in Zuid; on the other hand, it means using the quality of the collection and the (international) network of the museum and its staff. Content and organisational involvement of the museum professional is of great importance. This involves not only the involvement of well-trained museum educators, but also high-level artists, community professionals from the neighbourhood and curators. Both the museum and many residents in Zuid.Rotterdam are internationally connected and operate in networks with their own knowledge, stories, perspectives and narratives. What we are learning is about how to recognise and connect these different qualities.
Horizontal and flexible approach
Within South.Boijmans, we work with a flat organisation, based on equality between the project partners and the professionals. Together, we formulate goals and define the programme.
Shared ownership
We work iteratively. Together with our partners, we develop programme and formulate objectives. Everyone can contribute ideas, creating a shared sense of ownership. Only then do makers, artists, pupils and neighbourhood residents feel taken seriously and enter into a fully-fledged connection.
Zuid.Boijmans is an innovation lab and engine for the programmatic renewal of the museum, which increasingly plays a role as a meeting place for a diversity of groups and cultures. We respond to this by exploring new approaches with
the various target and user groups. The lab also serves as a platform that actively seeks to connect, with emancipation and cultural citizenship as its goals. We shape this by broadening and strengthening collaborations with partners from various sectors, education, arts and culture, welfare and a solid local/regional embedding. Among other things, Boijmans Hillevliet addresses social, economic and energy transition in its programme. With the lab, we also explicitly support the development of artists and the broadening and/or renewal of their professional practice by expanding existing maker practices, entering into crossovers and experimenting with new forms of presentation.
With Zuid.Boijmans, the museum sets an example when it comes to an integrated approach to art, urban renewal, social development and realising an economic impulse. We can show that museums, when operating in a coherent network, contribute to various social tasks. An approach that can be emulated elsewhere in the Netherlands and the world. Problems that occur in Rotterdam occur all over the world. And all over the world, museums ask themselves to what extent they are relevant to all inhabitants of a city or a country.
We started in 2020 and approached the area without a preconceived and defined plan, but as a 'listening post'. Everyone believed the former technical school on the Hillevliet could once again become a place of meeting, of opportunities for makers and where we work and learn together. We found strong (welfare) partners with whom we could involve residents and students and quickly build a network in the neighbourhood. We worked with schools, and were prompted to think about what we could offer them. With young artists based in the Putsebocht 3 studio building, we engaged artistic talent, bringing artistic subcultures into the museum context. The museum ended up in a different world, where the established museum methods and (art-historical and scientific) approaches seemed irrelevant and had no or limited only had limited resonance with the residents and participants. Had our way of working always skipped a part of the city? We realised that we needed to 'unlearn' what we were used to doing in order to find new ways of working to get results here. Looking back on the first period at this location, we can conclude that we have increasingly become a natural part of the neighbourhood. With the programme, we have created a place where new stories and perspectives emerge.
