Community Art Lab – Utrecht, The Netherlands

Like in many other countries around the world, carnaval in the Netherlands is a cultural tradition that goes back to the Middle Ages, and some say even to pagan rituals to celebrate the end of winter. Whatever the roots, it is a vibrant cultural practice that manifests itself in the Catholic areas of the southern provinces. In big cities like Maastricht, Roermond, Helmond, Breda, Tilburg, Bergen op Zoom and ’s Hertogenbosch carnaval has become a big urban street party attracting lots of people from the North as well. But particularly in small rural villages, the festivities bring together virtually the entire community. High point of carnaval is the parade in which small performances alternate with impressive oversize floats, the product of many months of collective grassroots art making. The creative processes start as early as August and are conducted in secret in farm barns until the final carnaval weekend, right before Lent. In the video below you can see an impression of one such parade in the small village of Alphen, located just a few kilometres above the Belgian border south of Tilburg. An interesting aspect of this parade is that in economic terms it is fully community-supported through local sponsorship from families, shops and small businesses.

In the years
2006 and 2007 activities of the Community Art Lab (CAL) were mostly of an exploratory nature with only occasional in-depth research, such as in the community theatre productions ‘Maxima Comes’ and ‘In the Name of the Fathers’ and the YO Opera productions ‘Kuil’ and ‘Opera Flat 2′. In this period, we organized two festivals and two working conferences. In 2008 CAL shifted its attention more towards documentation, research and exchanging experiences among community artists and researchers. We continue to investigate community art with an eye to social effect, artistic quality and the ethics of collaboration between professional artists and community participants. We have also launched an online community art database, which for the time being is still in Dutch, but should give foreign visitors a global idea of the quantity and diversity of projects currently in progress in the Netherlands.