Regenerative Place-sourced designer Jenny Andersson paid a visit to the Urban Leisure & Tourism Lab Amsterdam and its local eco system on Tuesday, September 19. Jenny Andersson is the founder of the Really Regenerative Centre via which she hosts the learning journey: Power of Place. Both our lab lead Roos Gerritsma and professor New Urban Tourism Ko Koens follow(ed) this learning journey with deep interest. As we are aiming to contribute toward regenerative placemaking and tourism within our labs in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, multiple ways of exchanging ideas and practices took place.
Learning director Zac Woolfitt had a long talk with her on our lab pedagogy and to what extent the Urban Leisure & Tourism Lab contributes to the capacity building of our lab learners (students). He kindly took her to the ferry that would take her to the Northern part of Amsterdam after a 15-minute ride.
As water management and building ships are deeply rooted in our country’s DNA; we visited two former shipyards (NDSM and de Ceuvel). At the Ceuvel, we had a wonderful exchange with Anouschka Truschke from Tours that Matter. Tours that Matter is considered as one of our close partners in co-designing regenerative tourism in Amsterdam North. Tours that Matter also took our lab learners on a special tour last week, by the way, and shared some insights about their bottom-up approach.
All this was followed with a visit to our physical lab at Modestraat, where Jenny and some of our students, learning coaches Jeroen Jager and Cécile Brand, Ko and Roos had a truly inspiring exchange. Many different topics were discussed, such as: going fast and slow, working locally on global issues and getting to really understand a Place. Specific questions were raised vice versa about the challenges the lab learners currently work on for SAIL Amsterdam and Startblok Elzenhagen in Amsterdam North.
Next semester in April Jenny will come to the Netherlands again to visit our labs.