Mutual support & representation

HB supports its members by providing a platform for collaboration, knowledge sharing and exchange. The platform empowers the creative sector by supporting the community and providing opportunities to share expertise and resources. The Hague is known for its dynamic creative sector and HB represents its members in consultation with policy makers and stakeholders, to ensure that artist initiatives are recognised for their valuable position within the city’s ecosystem. By uniting initiatives and amplifying their collective voice HB advocates for their needs, and their ambitions to grow and develop together with the city. The network aims to collect, document and visualise often obscure creative and organisational processes and data, making them available internally as well as publicly.

Organisation

HB is an association (Vereniging) where the voices of its members can be heard and represented through meetings internally and externally.

Work groups address a variety of urgent topics that respond to the dynamics of the sector as well the city. Currently, the core group has taken on the role of establishing an association.

Core Team

There are currently ten active members in the Core group: Katarina Petrović (independent/SW2/WD4X), Zahar Bondar (Annastate), Lilian Kreutzberger (independent), Nadine Stijns (Daisy Chain/WD4X), Ruben Verkuylen (WYSIWYG), Frits Dijcks (…ism project space), Peter George d’Angelino Tap (independent), Jacob Wallett and Ayşe Emre (Patch studios).

All members are welcome to take part in platform meetings, core and other workgroups.

1. Information & Knowledge sharing

We share best practices, information, experiences, opportunities and expertise as well as important news and opportunities to stimulate The Hague’s creative sector.

• Meetings (ALV) four times a year
• Exchange sessions (workshops, field trips, lectures, expert meetings)
• We run online platforms:
  • Website
  • WhatsApp Community Group
  • Monthly newsletter
  • Social media communication (Instagram, LinkedIn)
  • Loket: archive of initiatives, spaces, org. documents, etc.

2. Community building (activities)

Stimulating engagement and commitment amongst artists and initiatives to strengthen the creative community. We partner with: Hoogtij, Bermuda Open Studios and other similar initiatives.

• Annual city-wide HB party
• Bike-tours / Broedplaats-fari 
• Laagtij (spaces on the canal – Hoogtij alternative tour)
• Other: Broedplaatsen Olympics (Yun Lee), Haagse Schule (Nest)

3. Advocacy 

We advocate the intrinsic value of art for the well-being of the city and for its role within the creative industry, and for secure, sustainable and affordable spaces for artists.

• We have a seat at the table at The Hague’s municipality, to help shape cultural policies to the needs of the creative sector
• We collaborate with Buro Broedplaats and the Municipality in facilitating more work spaces for artists and artist initiatives in the city
• In partnership with Stroom we employ the Broedplaatsmakelaar (Buro Broedplaats)
• Offer advice to the municipality and stakeholders to ensure contractual certainty, affordability and sustainability for artists’s work spaces and rental agreements.
• We are a member of Haagse Cultuur Overleg

4. Visibility

We want everybody to become more familiar with The Hague’s art initiatives and spaces. We are easy to reach and we actively gather and share valuable information about what is happening and will happen.

• We are a point of contact for all stakeholders to access The Hague’s artist initiatives 
• Mapping art initiatives within the city in order to strengthen professional relationships and to promote the artistic work of our members.
• Sharing public events (exhibitions, screenings, workshops) and other activities of artists and artist initiatives via the whatsapp public group (where members share)
• We are working towards an annual HB publication

A “broedplaats” (literally “breeding ground”) in the Dutch cultural/urban policy sense refers to a building or space — often a former school, factory, warehouse, or office building — that’s made available at low cost to artists, creative entrepreneurs, and small start-up businesses as a place to live, work, and experiment.

“A city that wants to seize opportunities for the future needs people with ideas, with a different view of the everyday and with different solutions, people who can add value to the existing. Other ideas, a different perspective or solution will be researched, development and experiment in advance (…) “

The concept emerged as municipal policy, where the city government identifies vacant properties and rents them out cheaply to creative practitioners (visual artists, musicians, designers, small creative businesses, etc.), specifically to prevent them from being priced out by rising commercial rents. The goal is to preserve space for cultural production and innovation within the city, often as a counterweight to gentrification.

“This process of research, development and experimentation is also the essence of an ‘incubator’.” – Boekman Foundation

Broedplaats is essentially a “subsidized creative hub” or “artist incubator space” — a building where the city keeps rents artificially low specifically to give creative and cultural entrepreneurs room to develop, rather than losing them to expensive real estate markets.

History

The first ‘broedplaats’ in The Hague date from the 1980s. Squatters took over vacant buildings. De Blauwe Aanslag (“The Blue Bill”) is best known in The Hague (Image above: De Blauwe Aanslag in 1987). This former tax authorities building has been empty since 1978. In 1986, after acquiring the building, the municipality signed a management contract with the squatters. Some of the residents and workers from the Blauwe Aanslag then went to live and work in De Grote Pyr, a former educational building, in 1999.

The ‘broedplaatsen’ of the past had a different character than today. They were free places with a political and social stature where makers also lived and worked.

The first initiative as we know it today is the DCR on Constant Rebecqueplein. Based on the first Broedplaats Memorandum (2005), this cultural hotspot opened in 2006. The building is owned by the municipality of The Hague.

In 2024, The Hague has many maker initiatives that mainly work from municipal buildings. Some of them own the building (Maakhaven and De Besturing). In addition, many initiatives work from temporary locations that are used by corporations or developers.

Broedplaats policy has been in place since the first Broedplaats memorandum in 2005. Several updates to this policy have now been published. The most recent policy is from 2025 – Broedplaatsenbeleid 2025-2030.

Read more about the broedplaatsen in The Hague:

1980 – Broedplaats avant la lettre De Blauwe Aanslag

2001 – Manifest Broedplaatsen van het Platform Haagse broedplaatsen (vrijplaatsen)

2002 – Verkennende notitie Culturele Broedplaatsen gepresenteerd aan toenmalige Raadscommissie

2005 – Notitie broedplaatsen als onderdeel van programma Creatieve Stad

2021 – 2024 – Nota Culturele Broedplaatsen

2024 – Boekmanstichting: Broedplaatsenbeleid onder de leop

2025 – 2030 – Nota Broedplaatsenbeleid

Cultural subsidies from The Hague Municipality:

• Subsidie culturele broedplaatsen aanvragen – Den Haag
• Subsidie makersregeling aanvragen – Den Haag
• Subsidie kunst- en cultuurprojecten aanvragen – Den Haag