DutchCulture Walk-In: Let's talk about Residencies

What makes a residency meaningful for those taking part and those hosting it?

Join the DutchCulture | TransArtists team for a Walk-in with a special focus on international residencies. Whether you are interested in joining a residency abroad, developing a residency programme, or simply learning more about how residencies can create meaningful international exchange, come and talk to us.

Residencies can offer the time and space to develop your practice, encounter new contexts and build international connections. But a successful residency is about more than providing a studio or travel opportunity. It depends on the relationships between residents and hosts, the expectations of both sides, and the conditions created for exchange.

For creatives, this raises questions such as: How do you find the right residency? What should you look for before applying? How do you prepare for working in a new context? And how can a residency become more than a temporary stay?

Hosts also face practical questions: How do you find the right participants? What should you offer for a fair and meaningful exchange?

Come with your questions

During this informal drop-in session, the DutchCulture | TransArtists team will be available to discuss:

• finding and applying for international residencies
• what to consider when choosing a residency
• funding and practical aspects of international mobility
• developing or hosting a residency programme
• expectations and responsibilities between residents and hosts
• creating conditions for meaningful and reciprocal exchange
• how a residency can connect to longer-term international collaboration

You can bring a specific question, a residency opportunity you are considering or an idea for a programme you want to develop. You are also welcome if you simply want to learn more.
 

Eva van der Zand combines being an artist, a program maker, a residency host, and a placemaker thriving at the intersection of art, ecology, and place.

She is the founder of Plot Twists, an organisation that develops new possibilities for existing plots of land. From this, she developed The Moraine / De Stuwwal (2021), combining artist residencies, workshops, and collective learning, and two greenhouse gardens in Almere and Utrecht functioning as artist studios, residencies, and cultivation spaces. A residency in Japan is currently in development.

Her artistic practice explores ethnobotany, food heritage, and the cultural relationships between people, plants, and place, investigating how land can become a site for artistic production, knowledge exchange, and collective imagination. She wants to investigate: Do we find the right place for a residency, or does the place tell us what kind of residency it needs?

If you would like to continue the conversation, you are warmly invited to join us at Mediamatic from 16:00–18:00 for meet-the-makers: Zoöp Connections

The event brings together the four 2026 Zoöp Connections residents and their hosts to share experiences from their residencies at Dutch Zoöps. It offers a concrete look at what happens when international creatives are embedded in a new organisational and ecological context; and what can emerge from that encounter.