Will you help us transform areas in and around Amsterdam Noord into attractive places and better connect them with each other?

From Amsterdam central station, you can travel by metro to Amsterdam Noord in a few minutes and find yourself right in the heart of our living lab! On Buikslotermeerplein, the Urban Leisure & Tourism Lab is located in the cultural breeding ground: Modestraat. We chose this location on purpose, because an incredible amount is happening here around Buikslotermeerplein, also known as Amsterdam North Centre. New houses, shops, hotels, green areas, museums, offices and sports areas are being created at a rapid pace. The changes are almost impossible to keep up with and sometimes cause frustration among various users of this district. 

Some residents and organisations think it is going too fast, others cannot wait to get started. You will meet many of them and become immersed in this place and the areas around it. Tourists and visitors from other parts of Amsterdam and the Netherlands, are increasingly coming to Noord, but don't really know what there is to do. How do we inform and entice visitors to shop in Noord and then cycle on to Rural Noord to enjoy local foods, for example? On the other hand: how do we ensure that tourists/visitors contribute to the community in a positive way?

In the Urban Leisure & Tourism Lab Amsterdam, you will use your creativity and skills to design solutions that show how tourism and leisure can help us make an (even) better and more sustainable city.  Ideas and inspiration will be provided in many different ways. Each week, you will meet organisations, experts, entrepreneurs and residents who will share their experiences and help you on your way. We will also go out together, so you will learn to look, listen and experience from different perspectives: because what one person finds attractive, another finds unsafe or not appropriate for the neighbourhood....

Together we ask questions such as: How do we ensure that everyone gets and/or stays involved in Amsterdam Noord and its surroundings? We get signals that residents, entrepreneurs and visitors experience some places in and around Amsterdam as unsafe and lacking in vibrancy. What are the police, municipality, entrepreneurs and residents actually doing about this themselves? And to what extent can we contribute thanks to an innovative range of tourism and leisure activities? How can we use methods such as design thinking, storytelling and regenerative design? How do other cities approach this? We will therefore also explore in Rotterdam and just across the border with our lab partners in Ghent (Belgium).​​​​ ​​​​​​​

Examples of concepts/prototypes that could be developed within the lab track:

Develop an experience tour with stories from the local community, a creative neighbourhood event through which residents and visitors get to know each other or how about a new fitting Nordic Icon in the middle of the square?

We do not yet know exactly what you and your project group will deliver during this lab minor. That is precisely the exciting thing: first, you will have extensive opportunity to talk to all stakeholders and explore and understand their needs. By testing your concepts and prototypes within the community of Amsterdam Noord, it will become increasingly clear what you will eventually make. By the way, each group will also have some money available to help you do justice to your design.

We work with three overarching learning outcomes or competences. These are:

Experimenting
You design and create creative solutions for complex issues from the metropolitan agglomeration on the basis of analysis and through various iterations and development loops. You do this in collaboration with partners from the professional field and other disciplines from the creative domain.

Interdisciplinary collaboration
You bring in your own (professional) expertise and value and use the perspectives of others for jointly solving problems. You play an active role in teamwork and work together constructively and in a solutionoriented way.

Professionalization
You (proactively) direct his professional development by making substantiated choices, formulating personal learning questions and learning goals, using feedback and reflecting on your professional actions.

• You are at least a third-year bachelor student (propaedeutic year has been completed).
• You are enthusiastic, creative, innovative and can work autonomously.
• You can handle uncertainty and see this as a chance to learn.
• You are passionate to tackle complex challenges together with stakeholders and peer groups.
• Your development is self-directed supported by setting your own educational goals.
• You choose your own educational path supported by a teachers’ coaching and within the opportunities of your team.
• You are open for new and pioneering forms of education and assessments (portfolio development, feedback and reflection).

You are in the lab three days a week on average.

Group Project and individual portfolio

The spoken language in our lab is English. In addition to international students, students from Dutch-language programmes also participate in this lab track. They are allowed to speak Dutch with their coach and students from their project group. You will work together with international students in a project group.

Join us on a trip to an inspiring city abroad with a similar issue that you will work on in our lab track (costs approximately 500 euros). Or visit one or more cities in the Netherlands with us, which can be reached with your public transport card. Additional costs for activities are approximately 50 euros excluding food and drinks.

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It may happen that there are not enough registrations for a module, which means that it has to be cancelled.