Welcome 

This website provides information about my background and the various kinds of work I do. Please feel free to contact me if you are interested in organising or taking part in a workshop, a training programme or a course. 

 Art and education have been the two primary passions in my life and career so far. Over the past 15 years I have dedicated myself to training and educating people from the creative industries, the art world and the field of art in education. Currently I am working as the coordinator of MoccaAcademie and as a trainer and teacher for various organisations including Culture+Entrepreneurship. In addition, I am actively involved with Cre8 East Africa, an organisation that I helped set up together with a number of colleagues and friends. Cre8 East Africa has been carrying out projects and workshops with young artists in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania since 2006.

 After graduating from Agogische Academie Friesland with a degree in social and community work, I studied dance education in Amsterdam at Nel Roos Akademie (classical ballet) and at the Akademie voor Dansexpressie, both of which eventually merged with other institutions to form the Amsterdam University of the Arts (AHK). In the same period I also followed a course on management in the cultural sector at HKU University of the Arts Utrecht. More recent I was trained in fundraising at the Instituut Fondsenwerving (Fundraising Institute).  

 In the 1990s, after a career as a dancer and actor, I mainly taught dance. Since the late ’90s I have held a variety of management and consulting positions.

Enthusiastic, communicative, engaged, creative, enterprising, no-nonsense, clear-thinker, analytical, autonomous, hard worker, networker, bridge builder.

For Culture+Entrepreneurship I developed workshops and training programmes on various topics including product development and positioning but also marketing, presentation and negotiating skills. More recently I have worked with student teachers enrolled in a bachelor's course on Fine Art in Education (AHK), with various types of designers (Driving Dutch Design), with photographers (Fotoacademie Amsterdam) and with student teachers of dance (Stichting Strooom). In my workshops and training programmes I combine exercises and actual case material with applicable theory.

 

For MoccaAcademie I developed a course in fundraising in cultural education. More than 150 fundraisers from education and the cultural sector have followed this course in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, but also in Gorinchem (for the Province of Zuid-Holland).  

 

Over the past ten years I have trained more than 300 cultural education coordinators in Amsterdam. As from the academic year 2015–2016, I have also been teaching a post-bachelor course "Cultuurbegeleider" (Cultural Education Coordinator) in both Amsterdam and Utrecht, in a collaboration with Marnix Opleidingscentrum [Teachers' College].

 

For several years I taught the course "Beroepskunstenaars In de Klas" (BIK) [Professional Artists in the Classroom] in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Zwolle, and I occasionally still teach it as a guest lecturer.

 

In 2013–2015, in connection with the "TRaKS4A" Leonardo Project (under the auspices of the EU's Lifelong Learning Programme) that was coordinated by the International Creative Education Network (ICEnet), I worked with a group of European colleagues under the leadership of Creativity, Culture, Education (CCE) to develop the TRaKS4A tool, which enables artists to self-assess and polish their competencies with regard to cultural education.

 

Over the past 25 years I have gained considerable experience in working with multicultural groups both in the Netherlands – particularly with asylum seekers through Stichting Theater Organisatie voor Vluchtelingenkinderen [Theatre Organisation for Refugee Children] – and in various projects in East Africa. Together with Sami Gathii (Yaden East Africa) and Janneke Tigchelaar, I developed the “Cre8 in 8” method, an eight-step plan aimed at young theatre makers and youth groups to promote the development of community art projects.  In 2016, together with two colleagues from Kenya (Harrison Okwach and Dina Abok), I developed the “Cre8 in 8” training programme.   

 

As from the academic year 2016–2017 I am currently teaching part of the master's course in Art Education at Fontys University of Applied Sciences in Tilburg. Under my guidance, first-year students design a training programme about creativity for teachers and artists in primary education; I also supervise second-year students as they write their master's thesis.

 

Since 2016  I have been a group facilitator and moderator for in a continuing education programme for psychiatrists that is part of the “Vijfde Seizoen Academie”.“Het Vijfde Seizoen” [The Fifth Season] is an artists-in-residence programme at Altrecht, a psychiatric hospital in Den Dolder.