Cultural student center CREA in Amsterdam celebrates its 50th anniversary: ”We were crazy”
The cultural student center of the UvA and the HvA – CREA – is celebrating its 50th anniversary. CREA was founded in the late 1960s to give students the opportunity to express themselves creatively. Soon, a range of courses was created: dance, theatre, film, photography, writing or painting. Everything was – and still is – possible.
Half a century of CREA is of course cause for celebration. Although that party could have been celebrated two years ago, according to CREA director Dennis van Galen. “It is not clear when CREA really was the starting point. There is no deed of incorporation of anything similar. At the end of the sixties everything went a bit together with what is now CREA.”
It is certain that it started on Herengracht 88. “There were a number of students with a choir, and there was a film club. They sat down together in a building on the Herengracht, with the idea of doing things together. That was a very noisy, messy time, but there it is. the start of CREA.”
In the beginning of CREA, a lot was given. Much to the chagrin of many students. You shouldn’t talk about art, you should do it. And that’s how the courses and workshops, which according to Van Galen, still form the soul and heart of CREA, are created.
Arjo Klamer joined CREA in 1972 as a young student. “There was a kind of CREA. What clubs expected those things. But then we thought that we really had to have a place and that CREA would provide a foundation for the creative activities of the students.”
messy
A mensa was built on the ground floor of 88 Herengracht, a nightclub above it and a ballet hall above. Klamer remembers a fantastic time, but ‘a messy mess’, “There used to be a bicycle in the canal, and we had a bouncer who just threw the bartender out.” Klamer also secretly tore the pages with all black income and expenses from the cash book when the tax inspector started on the doorstep. “That was miraculously successful. We were really crazy.”
CREA has been operating in the old diamond polishing factory on Roeterseiland for ten years now. To let the people of Amsterdam celebrate the 50th anniversary a little, space video projections can be seen on the building. Director Van Galen: “We use this to show the city in a grand, colorful and imaginative way who we are and what we can do.”
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