Beat Carnival director, David Boyd, and musician in residence 2014, Katie Richardson, are currently in Amsterdam for the Trans Europe Halles conference/meeting no. 77. The Future Is Not What It Used To Be is a three-day, interdisciplinary working conference on new culture strategies. Katie is blogging from the conference – here’s Day 1! (For Day 2, click here.)
Day 1: Travel and Tapas
Apart from a strong, fresh coffee there are very few things I love more than travel and the arts, so when the Beat asked me if I’d like to go to Amsterdam with David to attend an interdisciplinary arts conference run by Trans Europe Halles (TEH), Melkweg and P60, the answer was a resounding “ABSO-FLIPPING-LUTELY!”
The Future Is Not What It Used To Be will look at new cultural strategies and the programme offers thought-provoking keynotes, hands-on workshops, in-depth masterclasses and think tanks, all with an international character. It has attracted 340 individuals from arts organisations all across Europe and as Beat Carnival’s Musician in Residence, I am really excited to meet lots of new, interesting people, hear about their work and perhaps even make some connections for potential future projects and collaboration.
I’ve been to the ‘Dam a few times before and one of the many things I remember fondly is the beautiful food the city has to offer. After a bit of wandering and searching we got a great recommendation to go to a place called ‘Pata Negra’ which was a short walk away. It was a beautiful and eclectic Spanish restaurant with writing expressively carved into the walls and ceiling by previous visitors, beautiful painted tiles, loud Spanish music, a bustling atmosphere and best of all an impressive menu of incredible food. We might have ordered a little too much but it was worth the following food coma just for the experience alone. Beer, coffee and tapas was all very, very good. We waddled home through all the curious shops and galleries by the canals and somehow managed not to get lost!
Katie
