Before we start our virtual hop on, hop off tour around the country to get you up to speed with what's on, we would first like to point out that two great Dutch authors – and an amazing Dutch-to-English literary translator – have recently won prestigious literary awards in the UK. Yael van der Wouden won the Women’s Prize for Fiction for her debut novel The Safekeep, whilst Lucas Rijneveld and translator Michele Hutchison were awarded the oldest literary prize in the UK, the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction, for the novel My Heavenly Favourite. For Rijneveld and Hutchison it’s already their second major award in the UK, after winning the International Booker Prize in 2020 for The Discomfort of Evening.

All stocked up on books, let’s visit some cities in the UK where you can find fascinating Dutch culture this summer.

Our first stop is Liverpool

Yes, Dutch footballers are doing pretty OK in Merseyside – congrats with the Premier League title Arne Slot, Virgil van Dijk, Ryan Gravenberch and Cody Gakpo; and welcome to Liverpool Jeremy Frimpong – but arguably even more impressive – sorry Arne, Virgil, Ryan, Cody and Jeremy – is how many artists from the Netherlands are part of the Liverpool Biennial of contemporary art. One in six artists that were selected to show their work at Liverpool Biennial are Netherlands-based. That is totally unique. Only thirty artists from around the world get featured at the biennial, so – statistically – it would already be impressive if just one artist from the Netherlands was selected, let alone five (or actually six, as one is a duo).
These are the artists and the locations in Liverpool where their work is exhibited:
*    Ana Navas has an exhibition at Liverpool Cathedral.
*    Antonio Guzman and Iva Jankovic have installations at Walker Art Gallery as well as at Tate Liverpool + RIBA North. (And in London, too. But we’ll get there later.)
*    ChihChung Chang exhibits at Bluecoat and he has created a mural at Pine Court in Chinatown.
*    Jennifer Tee’s works can be found at Walker Art Gallery. (Jennifer Tee also has a major installation at Folkestone Triennial this year, but be patient, we’ll make a stop there towards the end of our tour.)
*    Mounira Al Solh is showing work at Tate Liverpool + RIBA North.

Let’s head to Edinburgh next

Dutch Choreographer Emma Evelein has created Gallery of Consequence with the dancers of Rambert and this show will have its international premier in Edinburgh on 3 July. More shows across the UK – and hopefully internationally – will be announced in due course.

Nederlands Dans Theater will bring more world-class contemporary dance to Edinburgh in August, when Figures in Extinction is on show at Edinburgh International Festival. (This show was recently performed in Manchester and it will come to London as well. However, that’s not part of this virtual summer tour, as the London show is only happening in November.)

NDT performs Figures in Extinction

Collective – the gallery with Edinburgh’s most amazing panoramic views – currently shows the exhibition Mercedes Azpilicueta: Fire on the Mountain, Light on the Hill . Mercedez Azpilicueta will be back in Edinburgh in August for a live performance, part of Edinburgh Festivals.

Also part of Edinburgh International Festival is a concert by piano minimalist Joep Beving and electronic innovator Maarten Vos on 23 August. “An enchanting fusion of classical artistry and avant-garde experimentation.”

In the Fringe Festival, there are always a few Dutch productions. We have already been made aware of one such production: Inge-Vera Lipsius will perform her surreal new audio play Facility 111: A Government Experiment at Assembly Rooms from 31 July to 17 August.

There’s always a reason to stop in Leeds

At the moment, the best two places to visit in this city in Yorkshire, if you want a dose of Dutch culture, are Sunny Bank Mills and the Leeds City Museum. The latter is currently celebrating Miffy’s 70th birthday – the famous bunny created by Dick Bruna – and the former currently has an exhibition on called Loops & Continuums , which shows works by three textile artists from the Netherlands and three textile artists from Yorkshire.

A group exhibition by six artists from the Netherlands and Yorkshire is on at Sunny Bank Mills in Leeds

All aboard to Hull

Freedom Festival Hull regularly has acts by Dutch makers in the programme. This year, there’s only one Dutch work in the festival, but it’s a pretty impressive one. Theatre company Vloeistof performs Sliding Slope on the roof of a house floating in the Hull Marina in the last weekend of August. The message: can we stay agile while on a slippery slope, facing rising sea levels, in a changing climate?

In Gloucester and London we’ll find a different show with a similar message

Also inspired by the climate crisis, and also set on a floating, constantly tilting platform, is the theatre dance performance The Weight of Water by Panama Pictures. It’s performed at Strike A Light Festival in Gloucester, in the same weekend as the aforementioned Sliding Slope: on 30 and 31 August. The weekend thereafter, this spectacular show will be shown in Thamesmead, London, where it is part of the Greenwich + Docklands International Festival.

To Norwich, for a different perspective on the North Sea

The effects of human economic activity on other lifeforms on this planet, and on life in the world’s seas in particular, is the central theme of the current exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich. This exhibition, A World of Water , includes many works by artists from the Netherlands, such as contemporary artists Anastasia Eggers, Vibeke Mascini, Nabuurs&VanDoorn, Studio Makkink & Bey, Koen Taselaar, Boris Maas, Jan Eric Visser and artist collective De Onkruidenier. Historic paintings by Dutch artists are part of the exhibition too, by painters such as Abraham Susenier, Aert van der Neer, Jacob Van Ruisdael, Hendrick van Anthonissen and Ludolf Backhuysen. Stunning, centuries-old naval maps by Dutch cartographers Gerard Van Keulen, Pieter Goos, Jodocus Hondius and Lucas Janszoon Waghenaer also feature in A World of Water.

 

The relatively shallow North Sea is a biodiversity hotspot, as well a hub of economic activity. How do we make sure that it remains a vital source of life and a sustainable source of income for all coastal communities around that sea? And what role do artists and arts organisations play in involving those communities in a vibrant and meaningful way? Those were some of the question posed during the Shared Sea, Coastal Encounters symposium organised by Sainsbury Centre, Norwich University of the Arts and Original Projects in Great Yarmouth. Several Dutch creatives and academics participated in this symposium, supported by the Dutch Embassy.

A film screening of North Sea, Nature Untamed , a beautiful film capturing the natural riches of the underwater world on our doorsteps, was part of the symposium as well. The Dutch filmmakers, Peter van Rodijnen and Mark Verkerk, attended this UK premier. It is such a powerful film that the Dutch Embassy in the UK has decided to also screen it in London, on 8 July. If you want to attend this London screening, please send us an email on LON-PPC@minbuza.nl.

Join us on 8 July for a screening on North Sea, Nature Untamed at Bertha DocHouse in London

A fashionable stop in Milton Keynes

International Festival Milton Keynes have booked the show Pan~//Catwalk by Zwermers on Friday 18 and Saturday 19 July. The two Dutch performers will be in Milton Keynes for several days before the show to engage with thirty people from Milton Keynes who will be invited to share their wardrobes on stage, and through those wardrobes express their identities.

Another Dutch inclusion in the festival is NYX by Gijs van Bon. Van Bon's robotic creation will slowly move through the streets at dawn, presenting – in an illuminating manner – the poetry of the young Irish poet Maureen Onwunali to audiences in Milton Keynes.

To London for various big productions, and for 'meet the film director' sessions

BBC Proms has yet again programmed a famous Dutch orchestra. This year, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra takes the stage at the Royal Albert Hall. On Saturday 23 August, this mighty orchestra performs Mahler's Fifth Symphony . On Sunday 24 August, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra are joined by celebrated violinist Janine Jansen. Both concerts are conducted by the RCO's new Chief Conductor Designate Klaus Mäkela.

Two major exhibitions in London this summer are the result of close collaborations with museums in the Netherlands.
Kiefer / Van Gogh at the Royal Academy was developed with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, where many of the same works were shown from March 2025 until just over a week ago. The London exhibition opens on 28 June.
Meanwhile, Radical Harmony: Helene Kröller-Müller's Neo-Impressionists at the National Gallery in London has been curated in close collaboration with the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo. Helene Kröller-Müller was one of the first great female art patrons of the 20th century. She assembled the most comprehensive ensemble of Neo-Impressionist paintings in the world and made her collection publicly accessible through the museum that she founded in the Netherlands.

London is also a good place to see less well-known work. For instance, on 9 July, Barbican Centre is showing the film A Woman Like Eve by Nouchka van Brakel. Van Brakel was a true film pioneer in the 1970s and 80s. Excitingly, she is coming to London for this screening. A Woman Like Eve captures the feminist zeitgeist of the 1970s without softening the tough consequences of following your heart. It's one of Van Brakel’s best works. But the biggest treat is being able to meet this legendary film director in real life.

The Dutch Centre in London, in collaboration with Roze Filmdagen, the biggest and longest running LGBTQ+ film festival in the Netherlands, will screen four short films on 25 June, at 7pm, in celebration of London Pride. All films are in Dutch, with English subtitles. Tickets are available free of charge, but booking is required. Audiences will also be graced by the presence of the protagonist of one of the films: school teacher Musa van Maaren, who has converted to Islam, identifies as gay, and openly talks about those topics with his teenage students.

If you don’t have a chance to see the installations of Antonio Guzman and Iva Jankovic at Liverpool Biennial, then consider visiting their exhibition Dub Encyclopaedia at iniva in London. (And make sure to see them perform live during Frieze London in the autumn. Details of that performance have not yet been released, though.)

The same goes for Inge-Vera Lipsius' performances: if you don't hop off in Edinburgh, you can use this stop to attend the show in either Kingston upon Thames or Clapham.

Chatham, the place where the Dutch once famously sank British army ships

A mural of ceramic tiles, produced by Nicole Mollett from the UK and José den Hartog from the Netherlands, will be installed in Chatham this summer! The work has been years in the making, but it is now finished. It just need to be installed…
Get a sneak peek of the mural here, laid out on a roof above José den Hartog’s studio in The Hague. An impression of what the installed mural will look like can be found here.

Final stop: Folkestone

We started our tour in Liverpool, where Jennifer Tee is one of the Dutch visual artists whose work is exhibited. We end our tour in Folkestone, again with work from Jennifer Tee, but a very different kind of work.
As part of Folkestone Triennial, a major tree-shaped structure made of bricks, coloured with dyes made of local algae, is currently being installed. We’ve seen glimpses of the work being carried out and it’s even more impressive than we had anticipated. The Folkestone Triennial runs from 19 July to 19 October, so make sure to visit at least once during that time. Details about the work will be published soon on the Folkestone Triennial website.

A word from your drivers

Most of the activities featured in this virtual tour have been made possible with support from the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands 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, firstly, 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.

Enjoy your summer.

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

 

Cultural Counsellor Astrid de Vries, Policy Officer Koen Guiking and Support Officer Trudy Barnes