The Cool Ceramic Hunt is a project in which Princessehof and EKWC connect professionals from the ceramics industry, designers and museums in a European-Asian context. It will be conducted among creative makers with an average age under 30. It consists of expert meetings followed by trend research in Europe and Asia. The Cool Ceramic Hunt culminates in a symposium that will be held in Leeuwarden in October 2018 during a larger ceramics convention that has already been planned. EKWC is part of the community of the best ceramic residencies in the world, among those in China, South Korea and Japan. Following the first edition in 2016, EKWC and Princessehof will organize an international ceramics conference as part of the Culture capital 2018. The convention brings international experts and stakeholders together to discuss the future of traditional ceramics producers. For this event they plan to specifically invite traditional Japanese, Korean and Chinese producers to participate.

Lokaal Internationaal is an international program that stimulates, develops, and fosters long term international creative collaborations during their start phases.

Lokaal Internationaal represents our casual and sincere way of working, and how we feel that the creative sector here in the Netherlands works. It also represents our hope for how international collaborations can be created and further developed as a whole; now and in the future. The driving force behind Lokaal Internationaal is the idea that trust and face to face contact are the most important aspects of starting to work together, especially internationally.

By bringing together international networks of graphic designers, creative thinkers, photographers, visual artists, musicians or other people who want to approach the creative process in a different way, we hope to make it that much easier for people to connect, share, exchange and develop new and interesting things (whatever they may be) anywhere in the world.

Lokaal Internationaal does not claim to be anything more than a network — an informal one if anything. As such, it goes without saying that, we work with various people and groups to achieve various different goals. These might be working together to create a more acceptable and proper government policy, it might be a to create new creative infrastructure, etc. Either way, we try and create the best conditions for a new, less formal, and trust-based network to develop.

So far we are working with the following groups and people to achieve some of those goals.

Hello Asia is a multi media art project portraying the upcoming generation of millenials in East Asia. It searches common ground and a new narrative shared by millennials in Eastern and Western parts of the world.

Six cities, six weeks

In project Hello Asia, Lucas De Man (Belgium/The Netherlands) and Hyunsin Kim (Germany/South Korea) take you on a fascinating journey to meet their peers in Asia. As cultural contexts of Europe and East Asia differ greatly Lucas and Hyunsin find out there’s lots to learn. Mostly millennials attempt to answer the same basic life question: How to be happy while making our society future ready?

Lucas and Hyunsin travelled, together with documentary director Joep van Osch, to 6 key East Asian cities in 6 weeks: Seoul, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Taipei and Shenzhen. They met and spoke to over 100 millennials. Ranging from students to professors, corporate business owners to social entrepreneurs, experts in robotics and artificial intelligence to experts in love and sex. Educators, activists, sociologists, politicians, environmentalists, artists, men, women, married, single, gay, hetero, you name it.

What Lucas and Hyunsin found is an inspiring generation dealing with surprisingly similar societal issues and personal questions. A generation that is finding their voice and is ready to use it.

Multimedia art project
Multimedia art project Hello Asia takes on different forms. Right now a 6 episode (online) documentary series and a lecture performance tour by Lucas De Man are being developed. Both go by the name: Meet the Millenials. These different forms of storytelling enable us to connect to as many different audiences as possible, in both Europe and East Asia. We love to meet you! Not only in theaters, but also at festivals, universities, conventions etc.