Zoey’s fifth birthday!

This month Zoey Foundation for Arts and Culture celebrated her fifth birthday. On February 13th Zoey organized a great party for everyone in the office at Van Asch van Wijckskade. We were so happy to see that so many wonderful people attended our party! Artists from the neighborhood, youngsters who participated in previous projects, municipality of Utrecht, friends, family and many more were present to celebrate this special day with us.

The party started with a speech from our chairman of the board Gerard van Wolferen, who always has something interesting to say. His beautiful opening speech will be available here soon.

After Gerard’s lovely words it was time to present the results of the youth projects of 2009. The first project which was presented was Under Construction. The project had already started in December 2008 and was finished six months later. During the presentation the Under Construction Website was presented to the public. On this website all the results of the project are published, including all the films and songs made by the participating youngsters. Also some of the films the youngsters made where displayed. Two of the Dutch participants, Otmann and Azedine, were very enthusiastic and wanted to share their experiences with us.

They told us how happy they were to have been a part of this wonderful project and how rich they field with all the experiences they had and all the people they had met during the project. We were very pleased to hear that the youngsters now, one year after the actual meeting, are still in contact with the friends they made during the exchange in Portugal. They had so much to tell and in such an enthusiastic way that everybody got excited and a couple of plans for partnerships and new projects were made that same afternoon!

After the Under Construction presentation the presentation of Technology Penetrates Tradition started. Three of the Dutch participants, Laurens, Mark and Nolan, were present and happy to tell the audience about the project.

Besides the wonderful new friends they made during the project and of course the extraordinary musical results, the youngsters were specially grateful for all the things they learned during the project. For example, the cultural difference made them realize that the process of making a musical composition can be just as important and interesting or maybe even more then the result it self.

After listening to these interesting elaborations the Technology Penetrates Tradition documentary was displayed. This gave a good impression of the project, the atmosphere and of course the musical compositions.The trailer for this documentary will be available here soon.

After this formal part of the presentations everybody was invited to stay and have a drink, a bite to eat and a conversation with each other. It turned out to be the best birthday ever!