As we approach the end of the year, I would like to share some good news with you. In the coming year, The Museum of Black Futures will collaborate with the international platform for contemporary art, Contemporary & (C&).

Multidisciplinary artist Femi Dawkins and versatile composer and pianist Martin Fondse explore the power of the Wild Card: the unpredictable element, the joker that defies rules and moves freely between structures. In card games, the Wild Card is the trump card, the symbol of ultimate freedom. It can take on any role, break through playing patterns and bring unexpected twists.

To be held and erased at the same time... Choreographer Christian Guerematchi, born from both Central-African and Slovene heritage, moves along the delicate thread between tenderness and suffocation.. recognizing our experiences where double consciousness shapes and the proximity to whiteness wounds, and forms.

The Museum of Black Futures is a traveling art and heritage station that works with performance, ritual, music, and podcasts to imagine new futures. And during the Museumnacht Amsterdam, The Museum of Black Futures took over The Bookshop at Internationaal Theater Amsterdam. We center Afrofuturism, the imagination of Black Futures, and seek a state of zero colonial gravity. Together, we've turned the theatre into our own Radical Space Station.

We live in a time of fake news, gaslighting and deception by government leaders and popular media, but we also wear masks in our daily lives. Why are we so afraid of the truth? And what happens when we create the conditions for honesty and openness? For Radical Space, author Clarice created a work in progress, called Salon Verité - Under the Dragon's Blood Tree. She turned ITA's Bookshop-stage into a space where truth and art meet.

In 1595, two teenage boys were taken from Madagascar by Dutch traders on their first expedition to Asia. The traders renamed them Lourens and Madagascar. These boys became the first known enslaved individuals trafficked by what would later become the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Journalist Leendert van der Valk unearthed their story in the archives. Writer Clarice Gargard transformed Leendert’s findings into a powerful new theatre text.

During Lieve Stad 2025, our house, International Theatre Amsterdam, echoed differently. As part of the Lieve Stad festival, ITA welcomed two programs that completely transformed the energy in the building. In one room we had Amber Vineyard bring the house down with Pearl Dive, while Pro Wrestling Holland brought the house down in the other. This was a beautiful reminder that “theatre” lives in the soul and the body.

In this evening programme, we explore James Baldwin's legacy through the lens of music and historical sound clips from across the diaspora with DJ Lynnee Denise. Lynnee explores how sound cultures act as living archives and intellectual meeting places for the Black queer diaspora. Her work delves deep into underground club movements and musical movements within the African diaspora, using the power of music and sound to tell stories of resistance and survival.

Through music and poetry, Munganyende, Ashley and Djuwa remind us of the friendship between James Baldwin, Miriam Makeba and Nina Simone.

Phantom Wizard's A Day in a Life is a ritual of activation, a sonic invocation - ushering in The Bookshop as a site of transformation.

Since 2024, I have been responsible for programming Lieve Stad on behalf of ITA. For this edition of Lieve Stad, the festival was shaped by a clear thematic focus, The Mental State of the City, and by a collaborative curatorial model. Working with co-curators allowed multiple perspectives to coexist, deepening the program and reflecting the layered realities of the city itself.