Envisioning Free Space Conference 2022

Welcome to the future: Amsterdam 2050: Imagining the city of the future, a city where culture is widely valued and free space and night culture are embedded in urban planning. There is sufficient access to space for young and upcoming artists and creatives and free spaces are self-sufficient and thriving. We use this gathering to explore how to build a city whose citizens can actively shape the environment in which they live; by creating a space for cultural experimentation and self-organization and manifesting the discoveries that take place into actionable legislation.

We'll realize a city whose long-term social value supersedes short-term economic profit; a city where cultural free spaces are recognised as microcosms of our wider community and vital laboratories for social-ecological innovation. In a city where dance has a socio-political function and empowers people, it heals and helps us in times of crisis. In the sparks of last year's pandemic, recent protests and civil disobedience, we aim to unite voices and create solutions to the structural challenges of access to space, developing tools and practical solutions for venues and creatives to do the same.

The “Envisioning Free Space” conference is the culmination of an ongoing collaboration between curators/researchers Liese Kingma and Bogomir Doringer. Supported by the departments of Vrije Ruimte & Bureau Broedplaatsen (City of Amsterdam), EFS’22 seeks to provide an enhancement of the cultural mycelium, devise a contribution to building a common narrative for culture and the arts and develop methods of embedding nightlife within the spatial design of the city.