Last week I went to the Spring House to converse with curator Joanna Van Der Zanden, an interview I will recap in a future blog. She does amazing work, with some ideas I hope to bring to CSW. She is one of the founders of the Spring House, a communal work and innovation space across the road from the IJ* not far from Mediamatic.
Spring House values and mission:
We share the desire for a more social and sustainable society. With room for 200 flexible and seated members, Spring House is our workspace, lab and platform. Here, at the Amsterdam waterfront, we inspire each other and work together. Spring House functions as a catalyst, stimulating positive change.
Physically Spring House is an impressive and versatile space. And it’s red. Really red. Beautifully red.
They have a restaurant as well as common space on the main floor, both private desks and group spaces, closed spaces that can be rented out, outdoor balconies, small amphitheaters like seating outside, a garden in the back (next to train tracks leaving Centraal Station), a library, gallery wall spaces, and more. There are no cubicles, and exchanging ideas and working towards a better world are core values.
Artists, lawyers, writers, non-profits of all kinds, and others work there. Twice a month they haven open member-meetings where they talk about individual projects, share ideas, and look for ways to collaborate.
One of the themes I have heard over and over again in my research this summer is the value of both diversity and collaboration in forging new ideas and designs. I think these values CSW shares for many reasons, but collaborating is something the students struggle with. I often hear (and witness) the imbalance of work-loads, struggles with personalities, and struggles for control... all too often leading to their focus grades. Granted many adults don’t have the grade as the apple to be reached for, but many of the other concerns remain.
But what I have heard this summer is the reality that more diverse views, voices, experiences and collaborations make for a better solution. It is the work that benefits. With designing solutions, the work is key.
Spring House cultivates an atmosphere of diverse thinkers, but also of events to feed those people. While the value of nurturing a thought-provoking atmosphere seems obvious, it is often ignored in many American institutions, and not seen as the necessity it is. From Spring House’s summer brochure, they are offering: yoga classes, a talk on self-publishing, group gardening projects to green up their neighborhood and create food sources, research labs for “radical social change”, workshops on what it means to integrate into a neighborhood (in a gentrification context), playing games to look at societal problems, and a book club (they are reading Wabi Sabi).
They also sponsor visiting artists. Julia Mandle is an American artist who relocated to Amsterdam with her family. In a workshop, Julia gave Spring House participants clay the size of their phones and computers. The goal was to get people away from screens, and to think of their devices as holders of emotion. They have exhibitions in the stairwells and open walls, and display cases where members of Spring House can share their collections and tell what these collections mean to them.
It was a “gezellig”** place, and I could have stayed for hours to look at projects, examine the spaces, look at the garden, read books, have conversations, and more.
It was a space for learning and focusing on the task of making lives (micro and macro) better.
*large riverway that runs north of the Amsterdam Centre, pronounced “eye”
** best Dutch word, hard to translate but think cozy + friends + welcoming + warm
Spring House:
https://springhouse.nl
Julia Mandle:
http://www.jmandleperformance.org
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