Last year, we were approached by Den Bosch Partners asking us to participate in the ‘Heilige Huisjes’ (Holy Homes) Festival to celebrate Christmas in our beautiful city.

For this, we devised a cottage in German half-timbered style in which everyone was welcome to stamp their own nativity scene. The stamps were designed by ourselves and 3D printed. The idea is that the family composition as we see it in the nativity scene is not always of this day and age so the nativity scene is slowly disappearing and that is a shame. You could thus put together your own nativity scene to show it to the public or take it home. We also built a small annex where, together with city composer Bart van Dongen, we built musical instruments and used them to perform a piece of music composed by him. Finally, city poet Doeko Langhorst dropped by with ‘The Revolver’, a performance where he invited spectators to take a seat in an improvised bed to listen to this poem. All completely free of charge and in the hope of an inclusive experience of Christmas for all.

images by Kranen/Gille and Mari Durieux