My Month at SAMA — Notes from a Founder

I've been meaning to start a monthly column for a long time, so here we are!

There are months at Street Art Museum Amsterdam that feel like a year compressed into four weeks. This was one of them. Somewhere between funding applications, VR testing sessions, neighbourhood breakfasts, strategic meetings, European project calls, interviews, poetry unveilings, broken technology, hopeful young people, redevelopment discussions and endless coffee, I suddenly realised again what SAMA has quietly become over the past 5 years, having been created in a real neighbourhood, rather than inside of a brick box. Not a museum in the traditional perception of an average visitor. Not a project organisation. Not even just a cultural platform anymore. But something much messier, much more human and — honestly — much more beautiful. A living ecosystem.

And somewhere between all the larger trajectories and ongoing organisational work, there were also a few smaller personal moments that quietly stayed with me.

This month I was selected to join a multidisciplinary klankbordgroep for Cultuur+Ondernemen focused on digital participation, public-facing platforms and user experience development. What I appreciated most was not simply the selection itself, but the recognition that perspectives emerging from community-based cultural practice also have value within broader conversations around innovation, accessibility and public engagement. It felt like another reminder that many of the things we have been experimenting with for years inside SAMA are increasingly resonating far beyond the cultural sector alone.

Another unexpectedly meaningful moment happened during the national Freedom Day celebrations in Nieuw-West, where our Plein ’40-’45 became one of the locations receiving the eternal liberation fire carried by runners from Wageningen. In between neighbourhood breakfasts, poetry unveilings and conversations with residents, I found myself briefly speaking with the Mayor of Amsterdam.

It was one of those slightly surreal moments where different layers of the city suddenly overlap: public memory, neighbourhood life, civic ritual and years of grassroots cultural work all temporarily meeting in the same square. Perhaps these are what I increasingly think of as “little wins.” Not grand milestones or polished achievements, but small signs that long-term relational work slowly begins creating unexpected bridges between worlds that do not always naturally meet each other.

Between demolition and future

Much of our work this month revolved around Dichtersbuurt in Amsterdam Nieuw-West — a neighbourhood currently standing between demolition and rebuilding, uncertainty and transformation. These transitions are never just physical.When buildings disappear, stories disappear too. That reality sits underneath almost everything we do. This month we continued developing the Living Archive around the poetic invitation:

“Diep in mijn wezen leeft liefde.”

Residents shared memories, fragments of conversations, words, worries, hopes and stories about the neighbourhood during Easter gatherings, Groene Kans weekly voedselbank and 4en5mei events. Some through interviews. Some through poetry. Some over breakfast. Some while watching children play next to murals that may physically disappear within a few years. And somewhere in those moments, I am constantly reminded: street art was never only about walls. It is about visibility. About memory. About who gets to leave traces behind.

Building digital heritage with almost no roadmap

One of the biggest milestones this month was finalising large parts of the Digital Street Art Depot evaluation and reflecting on everything that happened during the project. Honestly? The process was rock-n-roll. We started 10 years ago (2016) with a simple but difficult question:

How do you preserve an art form that is designed to disappear?

Since then we somehow found ourselves building VR environments, immersive archives, participatory metadata systems and open-source heritage infrastructures — often while inventing the methodology as we went along. The original technical path collapsed halfway through.Funding structures changed.Expected co-financing disappeared. Technology evolved faster than the project itself. At one point, AI suddenly made workflows possible that would have been financially unimaginable when we first wrote the proposal in 2023–2024.

And yet… somehow the core vision survived. Actually, it became clearer. Technology alone is not the answer. People are. That was perhaps the most important lesson of all. The strongest insight from the whole DSAD trajectory was seeing how visitors, students, teachers and residents responded not to the technology itself, but to the stories behind it:

• the neighbourhood context,

• the artists,

• the disappearing artworks,

• the emotional connection,

• the possibility to revisit memory.

This month also brought a growing number of conversations around the future relationship between culture, education, technology and societal innovation. Participating in trajectories connected to SURF Futures Day and broader discussions around immersive technologies, digital infrastructures and future-oriented learning environments reinforced how rapidly these worlds are beginning to overlap. The recurring question within many of these conversations was not simply what technology can do, but how it can become socially meaningful, accessible and grounded within real communities.

At the same time, exchanges connected to innovation and creative-industry networks such as CIIIC increasingly highlighted how experimental cultural practices are becoming relevant far beyond the traditional arts sector alone. Topics that have long existed somewhat on the margins of cultural work — immersive storytelling, participatory heritage, AI-supported workflows, digital accessibility and community-based innovation — are now moving into wider conversations around education, urban transition and public innovation ecosystems.

Meanwhile, the museum itself continued functioning as an open learning environment in the most practical sense of the word. Over the past month we welcomed school groups, students, researchers and educators who visited SAMA not only to look at murals, but to discuss broader questions around public space, non-formal education, neighbourhood transformation, participatory storytelling and digital heritage practices. Increasingly, our guided tours are becoming something between walking lectures, workshops and informal research exchanges — spaces where academic questions, lived experiences and street-level realities continuously intersect.

What continues to surprise me is how naturally these different worlds now meet each other inside the ecosystem around SAMA. One moment we are discussing immersive futures and AI within national innovation conversations; the next moment we are standing outside in Nieuw-West with students, residents or researchers talking about why a mural matters to a neighbourhood. Somehow, both conversations increasingly feel connected.

Young people need places to practice

One moment from the DSAD opening stayed with me strongly this month. During the launch, there was a reflection on how important it is that young people from the neighbourhood were actively involved in creating the Immersive Archive. He spoke about how rare and valuable it is when non-profit organisations create actual space for experimentation —

places where younger generations can learn, fail, test ideas and engage with emerging technologies without needing permission from large institutions first.

That sentence stayed with me because it captures something I have been feeling for years. A huge part of our work is not producing finished outcomes. It is creating conditions. Conditions where:

• young people can try;

• artists can experiment;

• communities can participate;

• researchers can test ideas;

• and unexpected collaborations can emerge.

That layer is often invisible in reports and statistics. But without it, nothing sustainable grows.

At the same time, SAMA continues to function as a meeting place for young people arriving from very different backgrounds and parts of the world. This month we spent time working alongside interns Linh and Noa from Vanier College in Canada, who joined us within the daily rhythm of the museum, neighbourhood and ongoing projects. Like many young people who pass through SAMA, they quickly became part of the wider ecosystem — somewhere between cultural exchange, practical experimentation and collective learning.

There were also quieter moments that somehow say just as much about this place as the larger projects do. Long conversations over dinner at ARCA with Moryz and Furkan about technology, art, cities and future possibilities. Preparing new ideas while simultaneously trying to keep existing projects alive, thank you Pim and Salim. And in between everything else, waiting for Isabelle to arrive from the United States and wondering which new energy, perspective and stories she will bring into the space next. Perhaps that is also part of what SAMA has become over the years: not only a museum or platform, but

a temporary intersection where people, ideas, neighbourhoods and disciplines continue to meet each other in unexpected ways.

The strange role of a founder

People sometimes imagine founders as visionaries standing confidently at the centre of everything. The reality is usually much stranger.

This month alone I moved between:

• writing European project proposals;

• discussing governance structures;

• translating interviews;

• fixing VR headsets;

• cooking for meetings;

• speaking to researchers;

• mentoring interns;

• discussing demolition plans;

• preparing educational pilots;

• helping with social media;

• thinking about business models;

• and rewriting policy language at midnight.

Somewhere over the years my role slowly shifted from curator into translator between worlds: between academia and neighbourhoods, between institutions and communities, between policy and lived experience, between technology and people. And perhaps that is also why this month unexpectedly made me reflect on the future more than usual.

Realising we built something larger

This month I started applying for opportunities and positions outside the immediate cultural sector for the first time in a long while. What surprised me was realising that many of the things we built organically inside SAMA now have names inside institutional and academic worlds:

• impact development;

• ecosystem building;

• participatory infrastructure;

• civic innovation;

• living labs;

• co-creation methodologies;

• knowledge valorisation.

For years we simply called it: “trying to make things work.” But looking back now, I realise SAMA became something much larger than a street art organisation alone. It became a place where people from very different worlds can temporarily meet each other and imagine alternative futures together.

What comes next

The beautiful thing is that the story is still unfolding. Over time, many of the ideas, methods and conversations developed through the Digital Street Art Depot have gradually started finding their way into new projects, collaborations and learning environments — both within SAMA and beyond it.

What began as an experiment around street art preservation increasingly opened broader questions around participation, storytelling, digital accessibility, neighbourhood memory and the future role of cultural institutions within rapidly changing urban environments. Exactly where these developments may lead is still evolving. Some paths are already becoming visible through ongoing collaborations, educational trajectories and cross-sector conversations. Others are still in an early experimental phase — shaped slowly through dialogue, testing and the people who continue to gather around the project.

And meanwhile, the neighbourhood continues living around us. Children cycle past murals on their way to school. People stop for coffee in the garden. Some stories disappear quietly. Others suddenly emerge when someone decides to share a memory. That is perhaps the paradox of this work. We spend enormous energy trying to preserve fleeting culture, while knowing that change itself is part of the story. Although, perhaps preservation is not about freezing things forever. Perhaps it is simply about making sure that people, memories and communities leave traces behind strong enough for future generations to know that they were here too.