De Schrijver’s-werf is a project that aims to create a community of writers, poets and theatre-makers who are connected by the Dutch language commonality. This language commonality allows for participants to comprise individuals from a vast range of countries and regions. These countries and regions include but are not limited to the Netherlands, Flanders, Suriname, Aruba, Curaçao, Saint Martin, South Africa, and Namibia.

A play on the words Schrijver’s (writers), Werf (Workshop in Dutch and yard in Afrikaans), the project aims to create a hub for writers with this language commonality.

Since the participants come from various parts of the world, a crucial element of this laboratory is that collaboration between participants will be nurtured. This means that the laboratory participants will foster cross-pollination on a model that is diverse, multicultural, and transdisciplinary. Furthermore, it is through this collaboration between participants that interdisciplinary and experimental text-based creative outputs will be perfected.

The laboratory’s workshops will focus on innovative ideas, establish, and develop strategies to adopt traditional ways of thinking, challenge beliefs about creative literary output and innovate exciting language-and-text-based works within the creative Dutch language community.

These workshops took place online, with the outcomes being presented at the Vrystaat Kunstefees 2-8 October of 2022. In addition to the lab itself, participants will be allowed to network and share previous work. We hope to shed light on the different dialects and faces of the Dutch language.

The project partners include de Taalunie and the Delegation of Flanders in Southern Africa, who have graciously provided the project funding.