Museum Nacht

I'll be walking late into the night with my Aunt and Uncle who are visiting me from Gouda. Tonight is museum nacht here in Rotterdam which means the museums are open until 2am in the morning. I'm reminded of the Open Doors event that we have in Toronto, Ontario, Canada once a year where (parts of) buildings that are normally off limits in everyday life are open to the public on this special night.

This of course makes me think about the openness of Dutch space. The majority of my work has been centred around the semi-public place of the buurt centrum, the meeting places of the neighbourhood groups that I've joined, as well as the time I've spent with workers from government institutions who while accessible to the public albeit by booking an appointment during work hours. In my original research design I had focussed on accessing "public spaces" and these spaces have turned out to be those places where residents of the neighbourhood or individuals interested in a particular neighbourhood may go. The buurt centrum where I spend my time is an open (after the doors are unlocked by a scheduled host) and accessible place (to those who know where the building is, who are interested in it's chosen activities for the day and who are available to come out during the day). The point I'm trying to make is that although I'm using the semi-public places within a neighbourhood to understand how people from seemingly different backgrounds are coming together in everyday life, the activities that I am learning about and from are still only available to a certain number of people. Whether it is one's job schedule or the fact that their interests lie outside of the neighbourhood, trying to identify who participates in neighbourhood projects, interests and who doesn't, is not something that is easy to determine.