From 2026, our Connect program will be incorporated into Club VHDG, which will be the main track for all our talent development trajectories. This program is aimed at a diverse group of artists, makers, and creatives, in the first years of their practice, who are based in the North of the Netherlands (Friesland, Groningen & Drenthe).
About Club VHDG
Club VHDG serves as a self-organized community of either aspiring or professional artists, writers, producers, educators, and cultural workers, who are based and active in the North of the Netherlands.
For members of the Club, VHDG facilitates a program of meetings, experimentation, peer-to-peer learning, and the presentation of their work. Together with our Professional Advice Sessions and the VHDG Art Market, we offer concrete opportunities for development and presentation, where emerging artists can showcase their work, receive feedback, and strengthen their networks.
Together, the Club forms a community in which members organize cultural events, such as workshops and art presentations, while learning by doing and from one another. The Club is self-directed and operates based on the needs and ambitions of its current members, with support from a coordinator.
The Club facilitates a number of programs for its members as well as for fellow makers in the region, focusing on support, guidance, and the development of emerging artists.
Club VHDG’s program includes
- Group exhibitions and one-day events
- 4 one-month residency periods per year
- Hands-on workshops and lectures, by artist and other art professionals
- Individual 1-on-1 coaching and mentorship guidance
- Group feedback sessions
- Professional Advice Sessions every first Friday of each month
- VHDG Art Markets
- Network borrels
- Field trips & meet and greets with different institutions outside of the North
- Material and medium-based site visits to specific workshops and workplaces
- Studio Club, where members are welcome at VHDG every first Friday of each month to work in the space as a temporary studio, and also meet fellow members
Join the Club!
Does this appeal to you, and would you like to join the Club? Send a short e-mail to club@vhdg.nl telling us something about yourself, your studies, or your current practice, and briefly state why you would like to join Club VHDG. You will hear from us soon. We are also open to questions, suggestions, and collaborations!
What can you expect once you join the Club?
The Club counts with a growing community of makers, forming an inspiring group with a diversity of practices and different backgrounds.
Through a monthly calendar of activities, VHDG shares with its members the upcoming events and programs that they can join: openings, workshops, education activities, events, open calls, feedback sessions, etc.
The Club keeps in touch via two main channels of communication: a Signal group chat and a monthly newsletter including general updates. Members are encouraged to use these platforms to also share opportunities, such as open calls or funding possibilities, as well as exhibitions they are part of or events taking place in the region.
Club VHDG is an intrinsic part of VHDG, which is an art initiative based in the North of the Netherlands. As a member, you can therefore expect that the main program takes place at our location in Leeuwarden.
Curious about previous activities organized by the Club? Find out more about the Club Expo ‘Everything on the Table, the Club Night, and their duos exhibition ‘Kinship’!
Professional advice sessions
Part of the Connect program is to facilitate monthly Professional advice sessions for the local creative community of Leeuwarden every first Friday of each month. People can reserve a timeslot and pitch an idea, share their portfolio, or ask for advice from one of the team members of VHDG. You can sign up here!
Artists-in-residence 2026
Artist-in-residence: Jens Huls
The work of artist Jens J.T. Huls (Vriezenveen, 2000) takes the form of (fictional) essays, texts, multimedia installations, and performances that explore identity, (auto)biography, fiction, and myth. His artistic practice is interested in a critical approach to relationality: what role does identity play in this? How and where does this take place? Which identities are allowed to (re)appropriate space, and if so, where? Community, open dialogue, resistance, mysticism, and queerness play a central role in this. Through long-term collaborations, Jens takes on the role of scriber, focusing on legends and memories.
Artist-in-residence: Samantha Pellarini
Samantha Pellarini is a visual artist and researcher whose work navigates the spaces between water and land, the human and the more-than-human, and observation and embodiment. Her practice is rooted in a self-developed ‘Rhizoaquatic’ methodology, in which the branching, adaptive rhythms of water shape both the locations she visits and the way her work unfolds.
Performance lies at the core of her practice, serving as a method to ‘read’ the landscape. It is a way of inhabiting environments, tuning into ecological processes, and allowing bodies, materials, and non-humans to co-create. She designs narratives, costumes, and frameworks that invite participants into the landscape, enabling organic interactions between humans, non-humans, and environments. Working with scenography, installation, sculpture, costume, and film, she shapes experiences that emerge from the rhythms of water, soil, and living bodies, where learning arises through presence and adaptation.
In collaboration with communities, ecological practitioners, and researchers, she explores themes of resilience, care, and transformation. Her projects question how humans can inhabit a changing world in relation to other life forms.”
Artist-in-residence: Marijke Dijkstra
Marije Dijkstra is an artist working at the intersection of ecology, textiles, and material research, actively involving the landscape in her artistic process. By collaborating with nature, scientists, and local communities, she creates textile works that explore ecological and cultural issues surrounding landscape and climate in a tactile, poetic, and investigative way.
During her residency for Club VHDG, she will focus on the landscape of the Frisian Wadden Sea coast. From her textile practice, she initiates collaborations with the landscape, investigating how the sea and its natural processes can contribute to the artistic process as an active co-creator.
Artists-in-residence 2025
Artist-in-residence: Maaike Meindertsma
We are delighted to announce the first artist-in-residence of our VHDG Connect program: Maaike Meindertsma! Maaike Meindertsma (1999, NL) is a visual artist from the northern Netherlands. Want to learn more about Maaike? Click here!
Working period: Hugo Tekstra
Hugo Tekstra (1992) is a visual artist from Leeuwarden and studied Fine Arts at Academy Minerva in Groningen. Read all about Hugo here.
Artist-in-residence: Lila Veloo
Lila Veloo (2000, Groningen) is an artist and writer based in Groningen, and one of our artists-in-residence in 2025. She works with installation, publications, and text, and her practice explores the tension between desire and the unattainable. Through language and its materiality, her work investigates the possibilities of fiction as a research tool—where stories intertwine fact, fragment, and fabulation. Read all about Lila here.
Artist-in-residence: Marijke Klamer
Artist-in-residence: Marijke Klamer‘In my drawings and ceramics, you see birds, hares, plant roots, marshes, and flowers with faces. The pencil drawings are monochrome, and I give each part equal attention and detail. This blurs the contrasts between the creatures and their environments. I don’t see the drawings as classic landscapes, but as portraits of living worlds,’ says Marijke. Read all about Marijke here.
