All good things come to an end, so they say .. and unfortunately, now that is the case for the Community Museum (Museum van de Wijk) Oude Westen, the project I have been working hard on the last couple of months together with the great guys from Cretopia Rotterdam. As the building our pop up museum was in, officially has been sold to a new owner, and with no other option to start elsewhere, we have to call it quits.
At least for now.
We have no idea what the future might bring, as Rotterdam's economy is booming and the whole property development market is growing at lightning speed, so, unfortunately, to prices and affordable accomodation for smaller creative initiatives is becoming more and more rare. The same goes for opportunities to start a something on a temporary or pop-up basis: they are getting scarce, too.
So, this not only means an end to The Museum van de Wijk but also to what over the last couple of years has been a small gem of local creative and social entrepreneurship and community building: Toko51. Which has been an open and openminded space for creative artists and makers from the neighborhood. It's a sad thing to see this place go and I wish both Piet Hein en Lennard, the driving forces behind this all, a lot of strength with having to break down what they built up over the last two years.
For those of you who are Dutch (or are able to read Dutch), please read this blog in which I wrote about why, to me, Toko51 was such a unique place in the cultural scene of Rotterdam:
''Het Museum van de Wijk in ''De Toko'': een plek als geen ander!
Here's the last and final footage from that special place at de West-Kruiskade.
Bye Toko51, you will be missed...
But, as they say... when one door opens, others will open so this is hopefully not the end of what has been a great collaboration. On to new adventures, we go!
