After two years of Corona silence, indoor and outdoor events are up and running again at Wester-Amstel. Of course, we are still keeping a close eye on the latest government guidelines and will make adjustments if necessary. With that said, we proudly announce the following events:
Amstelland Encounters
By the time you read this, the first event will already have taken place. On 1 May, nature philosopher Matthijs Schouten engaged and conversed with the esteemed audience gathered in our Park Hall. The theme of the talk was the relationship between humans and nature, and we hope that it will be the first of many 'Amstelland Encounters'. Organised by Stichting Beschermers Amstelland..
Amstelland Day | Sunday 12 June | 10:00-17:00
The next event on our list is the time-honoured Amstellanddag, which takes place Sunday 12 June from 10:00 - 17:00. Wester-Amstel will once again be participating fully in Amstelland Day. This event, which is also organised by Stichting Beschermers Amstelland, sees 60 sites in the Amstelland region present themselves to the public. This year the official opening of Amstelland Day will take place on Wester-Amstel, from 10:00 and 11:00. You can expect opening remarks by Renske Peters, the chairman of Stichting Beschermers Amstelland, a contribution by Mayor Tjapko Poppens of Amstelveen, a musical overture, followed by coffee, tea, and Amstelland Day cake. The entire opening programme can be found here.
At 12:00, 13:00, 14:00, and 15:00, our volunteers will be giving guided tours of the park and gardens. They will tell you all about the typical idiosyncrasies of Dutch 'pleasure gardens', including their histories, garden culture, people connected to them from the distant and not-so-distant past, and the special animals that used to call them home. The tours are free of charge, just meet at the front door. The maximum group size is 25 people.
In addition to the tours, from 11:00 and 16:00 there will be various stalls open on Wester-Amstel. They will be sharing information, selling products, and more. Our volunteers will be more than happy to tell you about our new plans and activities. They will also be selling the most current range of Wester-Amstel products, coffee, tea, and lemonade at modest prices. The Farmers of Amstel will also have a stall, which will include tastings of their products.
Book launch and lecture 'Farmers at the Buitenplaats' | Friday 17 June 2022
Gerrit van Oosterom will present the first copy of his book'Boeren op de buitenplaats: De relatie tussen de landbouw en buitenleven in het Amstellands Arcadië (1640 - 1840)'.
Gerrit van Oosterom researched over 160 estates in Amstelland, which included their owners, tenant farmers, and land ownership. Wester-Amstel is one of the cases he describes in detail. Our Park Hall is therefore the perfect setting for a lecture on this previously unknown part of Amsterdam's country life.
Van Oosterom is a landscape architect and landscape historian. He is fascinated by phenomena that manifest themselves in the margins of country estate culture and investigates country estate landscapes on a regional scale. He will obtain his doctorate on 9 June at the University of Groningen for this research.
For more information about this lecture and how to order tickets, click here.
Further down the road…
There are already several events being planned for the autumn. Amongst them is Open Monument Day, which is a regular on our agenda. For further announcements, keep an eye on our website (under Agenda) and Facebook page.
By: Søren Ludvig Movig