In October 2025 the city of Amsterdam will celebrate its 750th anniversary. Many festive events will be organized, and the city is stimulating and (co-)funding special initiatives and projects. Within that frame, the project group ‘Amsterdam Diaries’ was established with the aim of showcasing Amsterdam’s long history of diversity: what do diaries and other life stories of (ordinary) subjects who live and lived in Amsterdam, tell us about their thoughts, feelings and experiences in their day-to-day lives in the city? The project especially concentrates on the stories of exiles, migrants and refugees as ‘transnational’ subjects, and explores the ways in which they negotiate their multiple allegiances at the local, national, European, and global level. Other themes that the project focuses on include: places of arrival and places of meeting; encounters in the city; issues of (non-) belonging; commemorative events.
Aims
- To explore the possible uses of personal life stories in helping to create a history of multicultural Amsterdam
- To contribute to more inclusive (diary) archives by actively collecting personal stories of individuals and groups living in Amsterdam
- To find and create ways to share these stories with a broad audience
- To help establish a stronger collaborative network of academic, cultural and city partners
Among the possible deliverables are: an exhibition, a storytelling event or play, a podcast, a publication for a broad audience, an academic conference.
Partners involved
Amsterdam Museum
Amsterdam Time Machine
ATRIA
Hogeschool van Amsterdam
Imagine IC
Indisch Wetenschappelijk Instituut
Nederlands Dagboek Archief
OBA
Riboet Verhalenkunst
Rose Stories
Stadsarchief Amsterdam
Stichting Bevordering Maatschappelijk Participatie
Stone Stories
Storytelling Centre
Time Machine Amsterdam
Tracing Your Roots
University of Amsterdam
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
The five living lab sessions have been scheduled as follows:
- Collecting stories (October 2022)
- Storytelling, participation and co-creation (November 2023)
- Storytelling, participation and co-creation (January 2023)
- Digitization and education (February 2023)
- Final session: Formulation of plan of action (March 2023)
