Elsewhere in the UK, there are various other exhibitions this spring by artists who are living in the Netherlands.

• Five (!) of the thirty art interventions around the city of Liverpool that form part of Liverpool Biennial 2025 are by artists who call the Netherlands their home. These are Ana Navas (Venezuela/Ecuador/Netherlands), Antonio Jose Guzman & Iva Jankovic (Netherlands/Panama/Serbia), ChihChung Chang 張致中 (Taiwan/Netherlands), Jennifer Tee (Netherlands) and Mounira Al Solh (Lebanon/Netherlands). This great presence of Dutch visual artists in the city is reason for the Dutch Embassy in the UK and the Mondriaan Fund for Visual Arts to team up with the Biennial and collaboratively host a reception in the city on 5 June. Twenty artists from the Netherlands will also be invited to this reception to meet curators, museum directors and art collectors. If you work in the arts and are interested in attending the reception, please email lon-ppc@minbuza.nl.
• Nora Turato: pool7 opens at ICA London on 8 April. In June, Turato will give performances at ICA and participate in a talks programme. In all her work, Turato investigates our collective relationship to language, exposing the ideologies, failures and pleasures that characterise communication today.
• Sunnybank Mills in Leeds has been working with artist Monika Loster (NL) on an exhibition – and an exciting participatory programme that runs concurrently – showing works of three textile artists from the Netherlands and three textile artists from Yorkshire. Loops opens on 3 May 2025 and the majority of the artist-led workshops are scheduled for the annual Threads Textile Festival at Sunnybank Mills (17 and 18 May).
• To celebrate International Women’s Day (in fact, they have dubbed it International Women’s Month) the Dutch Centre in London exhibits The Power of Women by Dutch artist Tabitha Boekweit. On the opening night, on 26 March, a whole host of inspirational women will speak. Besides Boekweit herself, there are contributions from Annemijn van den Broek (Deputy Head of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in the UK), Sabine van Elsland (Epidemiologist at Imperial College and WHO) and Flavia Frigeri (Art Historian and Curator at the National Portrait Gallery in London). The panel will be moderated by Fleur Launspach (Correspondent for the UK & Ireland at the Dutch national broadcaster NOS). Get your free tickets to the exhibition and the panel discussion here.   
• The Naughton Gallery in Belfast is currently working with Ola Hassanain, an architect and artist originally from Sudan, who did part of her arts education in the Netherlands and who now lives in Amsterdam. Through photography, video, and sound, Hassanain creates immersive experiences that engage with themes of identity, displacement, and environmental collapse. Hassanain’s first exhibition in Northern Ireland opens on 2 April.
• If you’re not able to visit the Anselm Kiefer & Vincent van Gogh exhibition in Amsterdam, don’t worry, as this exhibition will travel to London. From 28 June to 26 October the works of Kiefer, alongside masterpieces by Van Gogh that inspired Kiefer, will be on show at the Royal Academy.

Theatre

The acclaimed theatre production The Years – created by a production team from  the Netherlands, performed by British actors – has made it to London’s West End. After a run at The Almeida Theatre last year (supported by the Dutch Embassy) The Years is now on show at the Harold Pinter Theatre.
More good news: The Years is nominated for five Olivier Awards, including Best New Play, Best Director (Eline Arbo) and Best Sound Design (Thijs van Vuure).

The story of a very different Dutch theatre company is being told through a documentary screening at the Barbican Centre in London on 31 March. Inside My Heart beautifully tells the story of the people of Dutch theatre company Kamak, all of whom have learning disabilities. “I know I am different, but at Kamak we are all equal”, is one of the many beautiful, meaningful words spoken by the actors who are being interviewed. The film by Saskia Boddeke will be followed by an inspiring Q&A with arts professionals with disabilities.

Southbank Centre is, once again, giving young families in the UK a chance to see an amazing family-oriented production from the Netherlands. On Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 April, De Dansers are performing A Small Anatomy at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. This show is super exciting for children aged 4 to 11 and also lots of fun to watch for the adults that accompany them.

Music

Bradford’s Big Brass Blowout will be showcasing three outstanding Dutch soul and jazz ensembles on 12 April. Peter Somuah and his band, Kymara and her band and Sam Newbould with his quintet will all be performing that evening (from 7pm until 10pm) at Bradford’s brand new venue The Loading Bay. Audiences can get tickets to these three gigs free of charge! The Dutch embassy and inJazz are supporting the organisers in Bradford financially to make sure audiences in Yorkshire can enjoy these world-class musicians at no cost. Book your tickets to Brass Oranje here.

 

On that same day, 12 April, another Dutch jazz band is performing at Brecon Jazz in Wales. Saskia Laroo brings her electrifying blend of jazz, bebop, hip-hop, Latin, funk and world music to The Muse in Brecon.

Musicians specialised in a completely different style, namely medieval Gregorian chanting, are  touring the UK with support from the embassy. Wishful Singing, an all-female vocal ensemble from the Netherlands, will be performing with five male singers from the VOCES8 Scholars Ensemble in Hatfield (25 April), London (26 April) and Cambridge (27 April). More information and tickets on this webpage.

 

Public art

Chatham will soon get an enormous new artwork in its public space. Nicole Mollett, an artist from the UK, and José den Hartog, from the Netherlands, have been working on this project for months. They have held workshops with local communities, explored the history of Chatham, made an amazing design specifically for the location where the work is going to be installed, and they are currently in the midst of producing beautifully decorated ceramic tiles, to form a mural of about 20 meters wide and 2.5 meters high on Chatham’s pumping station. If all goes well, the work should get installed before the start of summer. More info here.

Literature

Fourteen authors from all over Europe will partake in a literary residency at Tŷ Newydd Writing Centre – the National Writing Centre of Wales – from 17 May to 31 May 2025. The project will bring together five authors from Wales and nine from various countries in the European Union, including the Frysian speaking Dutch poet Syds Wiersma. All participating authors write in minority languages. The project is generously supported by the Welsh government and Literature Wales, and it’s a cooperation with EUNIC London, a network of cultural institutes and embassies of EU countries based in London. The residency will conclude with a visit to Hay Festival.

Oxford Literary Festival also has various ‘Voices of Europe’ lined up for the 2025 festival, including two authors from the Netherlands. On 2 April, expert on Russian art Sjeng Scheijen tells the story of the Russian avant garde and how they transformed the modern world and survived a totalitarian regime, civil war, hunger and terror. On 6 April, award-winning writer Jan Brokken mixes stories of his own travels to the Baltics (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) with a look at the cultural richness and social diversity of the region and tales of personal tragedy over the past eight centuries, heavily influenced by WWII.

Children's books by Dutch authors that have recently been released in English, and that were very well received, include My Presentation Today is About the Anaconda by Bibi Dumon Tak and The Gnome Book by Loes Riphagen. A highly anticipated children’s book, to be released in English this summer, is Under the London Sky by Anna Woltz.

 

Design

The exhibition ‘Garden Futures: Designing with Nature’, currently on at Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, will travel to V&A Dundee next. The exhibition – which includes works by Dutch designers like Piet oudolf and Mien Ruys – opens on 17 May in Dundee.
Also at V&A Dundee, and currently already on display, are eleven Shylights, created by Dutch design studio DRIFT.

A team of the aforementioned Nieuwe Instituut will be back in London on 6 June. Nieuwe Instituut were Artistic Director of the London Design Biennale 2023. They had encouraged designers that showcased work at that edition of the biennial festival to not all work individually, but connect with each other and work together - in one way or another. At the start of London Design Biennale 2025, the team will reflect on that approach. The approach has been evaluated, resulting in a publication, which will be presented at the Dutch Ambassador’s residence on 6 June. If you work in the field of design and would like to attend the presentation of the book, please contact us on lon-ppc@minbuza.nl.

And then for some customs news...

As of 2 April, Dutch passport holders who are visiting the UK will need to apply online for an ETA, an electronic travel authorisation, before travelling. (To our newsletter readers who work at UK cultural organisations, please inform any Dutch artists you are working with about these new ETA rules.)

Supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in the UK

Most of the activities mentioned in this newsletter have been made possible with support from the Dutch Embassy in the UK. The United Kingdom is one of the focus countries in the Netherlands’ International Cultural Policy. The aim of this policy is to strengthen the position of the Dutch cultural sector in the UK, through visibility, exchange and sustainable cooperation. Secondly, Dutch cultural activities in the UK help to support the bilateral relationship between the Netherlands and the UK. And thirdly, the Dutch cultural sector and creative industries can play a role, at home and internationally, to help achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. That is why the cultural department at the Dutch Embassy in the UK actively supports Anglo-Dutch cultural exchange. If you want to know more, please contact us on lon-ppc@minbuza.nl.

Best regards,
The Culture Team at the Dutch Embassy in London