New audiences
Since 2022 the Holland Festival has actively sought to attract new visitors in the 20 to 39 year old age category. The audience keeps getting younger, and with this more diverse overall. This was very apparent in the venues and at the different locations. We saw a strikingly young and diverse audience, particularly with Arthur Verocai in the Concertgebouw, HARDKOOR in Het Sieraard, The Second Woman in ITA, The Bird of a Thousand Voices in the Muziekgebouw and with the various exhibitions in Frascati. By programming Crossings, the piece that Christiane Jatahy made exclusively for the festival, in Amsterdam’s North and South East districts and actively involving local residents, the Holland Festival seeped into the fibres of the whole city.
The programme with various Brazilian makers also saw many visitors from the Brazilian diaspora and other South American countries attending performances. In order to give them an extra warm welcome, the welcoming message before the Brazilian performances was not just in Dutch and English, but Portuguese as well.
This year also saw the festival forging alliances in order to reach target groups other than the regular theatre and concert audiences. Collaborating partners this year included One World, Glamcult, Winq, Stadspas, the Brazilian embassy and Brazilian influencers. For the timeslots with a sign language interpreter for The Second Woman, we worked with Theater met Tolk. There were special offers for healthcare workers via Tickets for Goods, as well as for students via the Humanities faculty of the University of Amsterdam. In collaboration with the Red Cross and Doctors without Borders, tickets were offered for the performance Dans la mesure de l’impossible. On top of this, some 4000 high school and university students and CJP card holders bought tickets.
The efforts to attract new audiences proved successful. Random samples and ticket sales analyses show more than half of the audience visited the festival for the first time.
Campaign
After a five-year collaboration with design studio thonik, in 2024 we chose to work with the KesselsKramer agency. The artist/person is at the heart of the new campaign, in which we use the pay-off line ‘Holland Festival groundbreaking performing arts’. Four artists from the festival served as models for the campaign: Yannis Kyriakides (Mutability), Flavia Pineiro (The Unborn), Joshua Serafin (PEARLS), and Naomi Velissariou (HARDKOOR).
The campaign visuals could be seen in the five major cities and surrounding municipalities, while Amsterdam was festively dressed up once again with flags, advertising columns and decorated venues. The new campaign visuals also featured on cars and electric bicycles.
There were seven different advertisements on Radio 1, Radio 4, Sublime and BNR.
We published three programme booklets, including one in English, which were printed in a climate-neutral fashion. The booklet provided a clear overview of the various performances and other activities. Each programme item concluded with three hashtag-like keywords meant to stimulate and evoke associations.
Social media
On Instagram and Facebook, we shared behind-the-scenes looks, had artists talk about their work, looked ahead to the programme and offered short informative videos to give further information about the programme. Our collaboration with the various artists, productions, venues and Westergas allowed us to reach an even larger and more diverse audience. The HF community on Instagram grew from 11,500 to nearly 15,000 followers. The number of Facebook followers slightly increased.
In seven episodes of HF Weekly before the festival, Cathelijne Blok talked with different influencers each time about which performances they were looking forward to and curious about. We also made a series of six HF Lectures aimed at people still unfamiliar with the festival. In a playful way, these go into how the festival came about and which free programmes are offered.
The HF Weekly episodes had over 50,000 views on Instagram, while the HF Lectures drew over 90,000 views. The videos with associate artist Jatahy received a lot of attention on social media, generating over 83,000 views altogether. The videos about The Second Woman with Georgina Verbaan were popular too and had over 100,000 views.
Attention in the press
The festival drew a great deal of attention in both the printed and online press. Dailies like Het Parool, De Volkskrant, NRC and Trouw published a special and several in-depth stories about the makers and their work prior to the festival. Holland Festival specials were also made by De Groene Amsterdammer, VPRO Gids, Cultureel Persbureau and Scènes.
The festival did well on radio and television too, with items on Een goedemorgen met... on Radio 4, Opium Radio, Nooit meer slapen and De Ochtend van 4. The VPRO once again made two Holland Festival specials, which were broadcast Friday evening. The opening performance Rite of Spring was broadcast live by NTR and is still available for listening. NPO Cultuur did a 24-hour live blog on The Second Woman in ITA for its Instagram channel. Media partner De Groene Amsterdammer made introductory podcasts about the makers and their performances for nearly all performances at the festival, which drew lots of listeners and are still available for listening.
Website
Apart from the programme, the website also has announcements, in-depth information and interviews with the makers. HF Digital has podcasts, videos and streams that will stay up until long after the festival has concluded.
Like last year, the evening programmes were available online only because of environmental considerations. These were included in the service emails and could be found on the website’s programme pages. By now the audience is used to there not being any printed booklets, and download statistics show the evening programmes were widely read.
Sustainability
The Holland Festival will continue its efforts towards making the festival greener wherever possible. Sustainable production was key when choosing materials made especially for the festival. This is done in front of and behind the scenes. Like last year, the festival consulted with the various companies and decided to no longer hand out fresh flowers during the applause out of considerations over sustainability. The basket of artificial flowers proved to be a good alternative that can be re-used every time.
This year’s edition saw the materials for the flags that grace the city each year used for handbags and other products that could be purchased at the Holland Festival merchandise stand. All companies were provided with water bottles that they could refill as an alternative to cans and plastic bottles. Artists who wanted to keep the water bottles could do so, though many left them behind after use. These will be cleaned and used again next year.