De Appel is sadly leaving Amsterdam Amsterdam Nieuw-West, after seven years of being welcomed and hosted by different communities in this district. We would like to mark this with both a farewell and celebration of our now shared history with the neighbourhood, as we would like to take some of these stories along to our new location and also link the two locations together. Like so many other buildings in this neighbourhood, Broedplaats LELY is being refurbished for a new purpose and a new audience. The trajectory of this old school building reflects the gentrification processes in this formerly heavily segregated area.

The programme unfolds over a full day. One part titled “Moving de Appel” where the ecosystem attached to de Appel comes together to remember and think forward; and a second part titled “The People’s Plan” where designer Rosa te Velde and journalist and historian Tayfun Balçik bring together the wider community of Nieuw-West around questions of the overlaps of socio-econmic class, gentrification and displacement.

During the Lely Assemblies we will practise collective remembering and learning. We would like to discuss various questions with our ecosystem such as: What did you learn from de Appel, what did de Appel learn from you, what should de Appel have learned? What do we take with us, what do we leave behind and how do we keep nurturing friendships and connections? Artists Yuri Veerman and Farida Sedoc will be harvesting the conversations making posters which will be printed and disseminated after.

Soumaya Bazi is a storyteller, writer and filmmaker. She has lived in Nieuw-West almost all her life. Soumaya also has experience in presenting and moderating She has followed many labs at the Meervaart Studio, a place she describes as” a warm nest: for young creative people.

Melissa Koutouzis is a journalist and lives in Amsterdam. Melissa has been a housing activist and co- initiator of the Woon protest since 2018. She also works for the Transnational Institute

Saundra Williams studied Social Sciences at Utrecht University. With more than 26 years of experience in the social and cultural sector, she has held various positions in recent years, as a youth worker, coach, diversity and inclusion trainer, business operations manager at the Bijlmer Parktheater, artistic director of the Production Performing Arts course at the AHK and for the past 2.5 years she has worked as program director for the Masterplan ZO in Amsterdam South East. In this position she profiled herself as a changemaker in the field of community-based working. She currently works as a freelancer, focusing on inclusion, coaching, innovation and change.

The Nationaal Programma Samen Nieuw-West started as “the Masterplan Nieuw-West” in 2021. The goal of the program for the upcoming 20 years is to tackle subjects such as inclusion,democration, safety, work, livelihood, living and environment and the inequality of opportunity for kids and youngsters. 65 partners signed a covenant in March 2023.

Tayfun Balçik is a historian and journalist for the news platform De Kanttekening. Since 2021 he has been involved with the housing association De Bundel, and the action group Nieuw-West in Verzet, that both stand up for affordable housing in the city district of Nieuw-West. Tayfun is part of the research group of the Lectorate for Social Justice and Diversity in the Arts at the Amsterdam University of the Arts.

This assembly is organized by Tayfun Balçik and Rosa te Velde, who are both part of the Lectorate for Social Justice and Diversity in the Arts. Starting in 2019, Rosa investigated the histories of the Lely building and the district of Nieuw-West where de Appel is housed. This resulted in the publication Drafting Futures: Remembering a building, looking into how the “politics of forgetting” function in segregation and gentrification. In March 2022, Tayfun gave a lecture as part of this research.