Connecting different worlds with art projects

Culture Connection is a Dutch non-profit organisation with an international focus and scope, founded in 2007. Culture Connection consists of a flexible team of professionals with experience in the cultural sector and creative industry and a supervisory board with expertise in the arts, law, finance and international affairs.

Culture Connection aims to connect different worlds through art projects. The intention is to create an open space for people of different cultures, lifestyles and religions to meet, while respecting each other’s values.

Culture Connection focuses on creating platforms for cultural exchange and artistic encounters by organising festivals, performing arts productions, community arts programmes and dialogue activities and cultural cooperation programmes with Mediterranean countries.

The starting point and source of inspiration for the programmes is the cultural dynamics of the metropolitan society.

Since its foundation in 2007, Culture Connection, based in Utrecht, has developed the following activities: Festival Culturele Karavaan, vocal project Sacred Songs, Festival Sacred Songs, performing arts production Women’s Voices and the international cooperation projects rabic Poetry Meets Kytopia and Arabic Crossroads – Music & Poetry.

From 2008 to 2013, Culture Connection organised the Culturele Karavaan festival, where people from different cultural and eeligious backgrounds made their artistic contributions. One of the most successful festival programmes was the vocal production Sacred Songs. The Culturele Karavaan festival was held in Zierikzee, Terneuzen, Middelburg, Rotterdam Noord, Utrecht Kanaleneiland, Utrecht Overvecht and Utrecht Centrum.

Since 2015, Culture Connection has organised international collaborative projects with young, groundbreaking performing artists from North Africa and the Middle East, such as Arabic Poetry Meets Kytopia and Arabic Crossroads – Music & Poetry. A new edition of Arabic Crossroads can be experienced in Utrecht in September and October 2024.

Since 2016, Sacred Songs has been touring as an independent project in the form of a vocal production with local choirs and extensive context programmes: 2016 and 2018 in The Hague; 2017, 2019 and 2020 in Rotterdam; 2018 in Amsterdam; 2021 in Dordrecht; 2023 in Rotterdam Delfshaven.

Starting in 2018, Culture Connection created the production Women’s Voices, each time with different performing artists. Women’s Voices spotlights remarkable female performers who bring spiritual stories and music by and about courageous free spirited women to life in sparkling, moving multidisciplinary performances. So far we have organised 3 different Women’s Voices performances: in 2018 in Amsterdam and The Hague, in 2020 in The Hague and in 2022 in Utrecht. In 2025 we will initiate a Women’s Voices edition in Rotterdam.

Culture Connection is the initiator of the festival Sacred Songs with Amare and theatre De Vaillant. The first edition of this biennial festival took place in 2016. Festival Sacred Songs has its origins in the vocal production Sacred Songs, which Culture Connection organised in The Hague in 2016, for which we sought out the most beautiful singing voices.

Since 2015, Culture Connection has organised international collaborative projects with young, groundbreaking performing artists from North Africa and the Middle East, such as Arabic Poetry Meets Kytopia and Arabic Crossroads – Music & Poetry. A new edition of Arabic Crossroads can be experienced in Utrecht in September and October 2024.