Coming soon

This month we’re glad to be teaming up with Caffènation Amsterdam, a fantastic addition to Amsterdam’s specialty coffee scene. They will bring their quality coffee from Flanders to the Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond on Friday the 24th!

If you have reserved a ticket but are unable to make Friday’s event, could you kindly ‘release’ your ticket for someone on the waitlist? Just sign in to your account and press 'release ticket’ on the event page.

As usual, we will open the doors at 8:30am, enjoy a delicious cup of coffee, and start the talk at 9am. See you nice and early!

April’s speaker is Jeroen Smeets, founder of the agency YOUR:OWN, Eight Magazine and The Jaunt. Providing different platforms for artists and creatives with his agency, Jeroen will discuss the global theme “Humility” on Friday April 24th at De Brakke Grond.

CreativeMornings: What is your creative profession?

Jeroen Smeets: It’s hard to sum it up in one title, but I suppose ‘creative entrepreneur’ covers it best.

CM: What will you be sharing with the CreativeMornings community on Friday 24 April?

JS: I’ll be sharing my story about running an art agency, publishing a magazine and sending artists all over the world for inspiration. And my attempt at juggling all of these things at the same time.

CM: How is Amsterdam and its creative scene special to you? 

JS: I’ve lived and worked in Amsterdam for 10 years before moving to Copenhagen 3 years ago. I love coming back to Amsterdam and being thrown back in the creative and collaborative energy that Amsterdam has to offer.

CM: If stuck in a creative rut, what’s your trick to get free and let loose?

JS: I go with my family to our summer house on the Danish coastline and chop down trees, bbq on the beach and swim in the ocean.

Thank you, Jeroen! We look forward to welcoming you and the CreativeMornings community at our new venue, De Brakke Grond, on Friday the 24th from 8:30am on.

Don’t forget to get your (free!) ticket on Monday the 20th at 9am!

A new month = a new theme!

This month we’ll be discussing the global theme HUMILITY at our new location Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond on Friday April 24th. Stay tuned for the speaker announcement!

(Illustration by Sean Tulgetske)

March’s speaker is illustrator and visual designer Francesco Zorzi, who will talk all things “Ink” on Friday the 20th at Rockstart. The Italian designer, recently featured on Grafik.net in their Talent-section, “loves when graphics and illustrations meet matter and objects, becoming somehow tactile”. We agree, and are very much looking forward to hearing of Francesco’s summer adventures, experiments with thermal paper and much more! Before Friday’s event, get to know Francesco in our short interview:

CreativeMornings: What is your creative profession?

Francesco Zorzi: I’m a designer and illustrator, working on the edge between objects and images.

CM: What will you be sharing with the CreativeMornings community on Friday 20th of March?

FZ: I will connect a few of my recent works to the topic of INK. It will be a personal exploration of the special meaning ink has in my life, a dialogue between colours, illustration, calligraphy and paintings.

CM: How is Amsterdam and its creative scene special to you?

FZ: I moved to Amsterdam just a few months ago so everything is still quite new to me. There is something that I experienced since the first day though. It’s a liberating sense of freshness, of freedom to experiment, of letting yourself go.

CM: If stuck in a creative rut, what’s your trick to get free and let loose?

FZ: When I’m stuck I do something completely different. I listen to good music, I take my bicycle or my skateboard and ride around the city. No real destination, just discovering the city and getting inspired by it. Some fresh air is always good for fresh new thoughts.

Make sure to get your (free) ticket for this month’s event tomorrow from 9am on. See you on Friday!

For the past two months we have enjoyed radically good coffee by Moyee Coffee served with delicious baked goods by Plan B at our events. 

Plan B is a project by Zhenia Sveshinsky of Image Matter, and it is about all the things we love doing besides our regular work. According to Zhenia, “it’s the things we always say we’d be doing if we did not already have a dream job. It is our hobby and our meditation. It is all the things that make us happy without the necessity of knowing what the next career move is. Plan B is our side-project that sometimes comes into the foreground.”

For this month’s global theme, Ink, Plan B has experimented with some natural ink possibilities – have a look at their Instagram and find out what’s cooking!

Image © on a hazy morning

In January we introduced you to on a hazy morning, a talented creative duo who were in charge of the photography at our events for almost a year. This time it is our videographer’s turn - thus without further ado, meet our videographer Luke Davies!

1. What triggered you to become a part of the CreativeMornings team in Amsterdam?

I attended one of the first CreativeMornings at The Thinking Hut in Autumn 2013, and they made an appeal for a videographer to record the next. I was happy to volunteer, and look forward to hearing peoples stories each time.

2. How do you spend your time outside the CreativeMornings activities?

Well, on one hand, I produce a lot of video. I’ve been freelance for a few years now, after many years in TV and commercial post-production. On the other hand, I spend an increasing amount of time teaching Improvised Comedy to adults and high school kids. I also perform in Amsterdam and Den Haag with two comedy groups, easylaughs and The Cyclepaths.

One of the great joys for me was discovering how complimentary the two areas are. My video production clients are often asked to appear on camera with little or no experience, and my years of teaching novice stage performers comes in increasingly handy.

3. What makes Amsterdam a great city for creatives?

Well, someone once suggested the terrible weather forces people to go indoors and do interesting things. I think I can relate to that. For me, Amsterdam is small enough and diverse enough that if you have a chance encounter, chances are, you’ll encounter them again. Through teaching improv, I have the privilege of seeing shy individuals, who may have just moved here for the first time, challenge themselves to meet others and make connections. Through a creative pursuit, and a joyful experience, people are able to form relationships and start creative collaborations together. That is always gratifying.

4. What is your favourite CreativeMornings talk?

Colour is the new black by Kris Hermansson and Franc Cheetham. This talk resonated with me on a number of levels. I love to see people collaborating, people who are clearly close friends working together. They got geeky about colour and technology. They showed some fantastically quirky and irreverent projects, and were obviously doing stuff that they liked themselves. And they were funny. I think we’d all be very lucky if we could work a little more like that.

We couldn’t agree more with you, Luke – creating something one likes is truly a privilege. We are happy that you are helping us to create Creative Mornings here in Amsterdam! 

Tickets for our next event go live on Monday 16th of March at 9am. Get yours and join us for a talk on Ink by Francesco Zorzi!

Image © on a hazy morning

Hi there!

The global theme in March is INK, presented by Squarespace. It was chosen by our Melbourne chapter and illustrated by Gemma O’Brien. 

Our speaker on the 20th of March is illustrator and visual designer Francesco Zorzi. For the last time for now, we’ll gather at Rockstart. We look forward to welcoming Francesco and all of you in just a bit over two weeks!

February’s speaker is Joris Lohman. He is the chairman of the <32 Slow Food Youth Network and a member of the Executive Committee of Slow Food International. He also co-founded the Food Film Festival in 2011. Joris will talk on the global theme “Climate”. Make sure to get your (free) ticket for the event on the 20th at Rockstart! Get to know our speaker as he answers our short interview below:

1. What is your creative profession?

As a member of the Board of Director of Slow Food International, and chair of the <32 Slow Food Youth Network, I coordinate and manage a global network of young change makers in the field of food and agriculture. We bring together people from different disciplines, from chef to farmer, policy maker, designer and journalist, to tackle the issues that surround the food system.

2. What will you be sharing with the CreativeMornings community on Friday 20 February?

I’m fascinated by how the food system works. Food is something so close to all of us, we eat three times, every day, and the way we eat defines us culturally. At the same time, almost everything about the way we organized our relationship to food is wrong: farmers don’t earn living wages, food production destroys the environment, and the food we eat is in many cases bad for our health. I feel like we are in a transition towards a different way we organize our relation to food, and we need the new generation of creative entrepreneurs to create new businesses and projects that provide key solutions to fix the food system.

3. How is Amsterdam and its creative scene special to you?

I am Amsterdam born and (partly) raised. I feel very much at home in the city. I know a lot of people say this about their home town, but I really feel Amsterdam might be one of the best places in the world to live in. Not due to the weather, but because the Netherlands is such a well networked, rich and not hierarchical country. If you want something, you get in touch with almost everyone, at any level. Also, Amsterdam is a small city but with a rich, internationally oriented culture. I think the Amsterdam creative scene provides fertile ground for innovation and new projects.

4. If stuck in a creative rut, what’s your trick to get free and let loose?

If I’m stuck, instead of backing down, I ‘flee forward’. I make as many appointments with as many people in a short period of time possible. I try to look outside of my scene and network. Most of the times this creates new ideas for projects that are stuck.

Thank you Joris for this interview! We look forward to your talk on “Climate” on Friday the 20th. The ticket release is on Monday at 9am - do not snooze on this one!

Happy February! 

On the 20th of February we will be talking about Climate. This great global theme was chosen by our chapter in Ottawa, Canada, and illustrated by Dave Arnold. 

Stay tuned for the speaker announcement and join us for an inspiring morning at Rockstart on the 20th!

In January we invited artist, composer and director Gabriel Shalom to talk about the global theme Ugly. Thanks Gabriel for sharing your story and inspiring us all to appreciate the things often considered ugly by the masses. And not to forget: thank you for the amazing on-the-spot beatbox performance!

Special thanks to Aquent and Rockstart for making this event possible. The delicious breakfast was provided by Plan B and Moyee Coffee. Photos of the event by on a hazy morning are now to be found on our Facebook page.

We’ll be announcing our next speaker shortly, thus be sure to watch this space. See you on the 20th of February at Rockstart with a talk on Climate!

Image © on a hazy morning