Culture of Peace NL — Amsterdam, Creative City for Culture of Peace
The Question We Are Researching
How can Amsterdam use its creative energy to advance peace?
Culture of Peace NL is the Dutch chapter of RYB Global Development. We connect local cultural life to UNESCO’s Culture of Peace programme — and we are researching a new step: bringing this work into the UNESCO Creative Cities Network.
Our working concept is Creative Cities for Culture of Peace. It asks whether cities can use their arts and creative industries as deliberate tools for peacebuilding — not as side projects, but as core civic strategy. Amsterdam is where we test that idea first.
This is active research. We are mapping the city’s cultural infrastructure, speaking with cultural policymakers, and documenting how Amsterdam’s neighbourhoods already use creativity to bridge social divides. As our analysis develops, we will publish frameworks, case studies, and policy briefs here and on RYB’s Creative Cities hub.
Why Amsterdam? Why Now?
Amsterdam already draws artists, students, and global development professionals from 193 countries. It hosts world-class museums, a thriving design scene, and neighbourhoods where dozens of languages coexist. The city has the density, diversity, and institutional capacity to model what a Creative City for Culture of Peace looks like in practice.
But the deeper reason is historical.
In 1917, as Europe tore itself apart in the trenches, Dutch artists founded the De Stijl movement in the Netherlands. Mondrian, Van Doesburg, and their collaborators chose red, yellow, and blue — the primary colours that cannot be divided further — as a visual language for universal harmony. They believed abstraction could transcend nationalism. Bauhaus and Dada carried that message across postwar Europe.
A century later, RYB revives that same palette to connect 193 countries. Amsterdam, the birthplace of that vision, deserves its own chapter. We are building it.
Three Ways to Engage
We speak to three audiences, and each has a clear path in:
For development professionals and policymakers
We are producing research on cultural diplomacy, creative-city peacebuilding, and UNESCO programme implementation. Explore our research agenda [future page: /research/] or visit our introductory framework on RYB Creative Cities.
For students and researchers
We curate resources on cultural policy, gender and peacebuilding, and the history of the Culture of Peace programme. Browse our reading list and thesis opportunities [future page: /resources/].
For artists, cultural practitioners, and visitors
Amsterdam’s creative spaces are already doing peacebuilding work — often without calling it that. We document those stories and connect practitioners to a global network. Discover Amsterdam’s culture-of-peace landscape.
Culture of Peace NL in Context
We do not work in isolation. Culture of Peace NL sits inside the RYB Global Development platform, which connects local stories to national and global frameworks.
Explore the Netherlands’ full development profile on RYB:
- Netherlands Global Development — Aid, tax, climate, and trade
- Netherlands Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — Data & Progress
- Culture Women’s Day Netherlands — Women’s Right to Vote in the Netherlands
- Gender Gap The Netherlands — Pay, power, safety, and education
Stay With Us as We Build This
Culture of Peace NL is moving from concept to platform. Every page we publish, every partnership we form, and every research brief we release will be documented here. Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on our research, events, and the evolving Creative Cities for Culture of Peace framework.