OSAKA.- This Sunday 13 April 2025, the World Expo 2025 will open in Osaka, Kansai, Japan. This international event will bring together more than 160 countries and organisations. In the context of the World Expo 2025 theme Designing Future Societies for Our Lives, they will share knowledge and showcase innovations and new products in the fields of health, food, energy, construction, agriculture and technology. Expo 2025 expects to welcome 28 million visitors from all over the globe during its six opening months.

Nieuwe Instituut has been commissioned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science to curate the cultural programme of the circularly built Dutch Pavilion, which was designed by RAU architects with Tellart, DCMR and Asanuma. Nieuwe Instituut has involved Studio The Future as co-curator and is working closely with various cultural funds to make the programme possible.

Activating Common Ground

With Activating Common Ground, the Nieuwe Instituut contributes to the Dutch Pavilion’s overarching theme: the 425-year relationship between the Netherlands and Japan and the importance of shared values and interests in tackling global challenges such as climate change, the energy transition, food security and global health.

Activating Common Ground is an interdisciplinary programme that will take place over six months in the Dutch Pavilion and elsewhere. The thread running through the programme is the collaboration and exchange between Japanese and Dutch makers and the recognition that culture and identity are not fixed, but emerge from a world full of exchange, interaction, curiosity and dialogue.

The programme format was inspired by the Dutch magazine Avenue (1965 – 2003). Avenue was known for its open and experimental approach to literature, fashion, food, design, shopping and photography, all of which it treated equally. A second inspiration was the Dutch pavilion at Expo 1970 (also in Osaka). The daring industrial design by Jaap Bakema and Carel Weeber presented the Netherlands as a total concept in which themes such as society, politics, economy and culture were interwoven through fashion, architecture, film, music and design.

Aric Chen, General and Artistic Director, Nieuwe Instituut: “There is no autonomous culture. Each evolves as an accretion of interactions between people, things and ideas from different places. While Expo 2025 Osaka is organised around national pavilions, perhaps its greatest value lies in the intersections it creates between nations and cultures. This is exactly what the Nieuwe Instituut aims to achieve with the comprehensive cultural programme Activating Common Ground.”

Dewi van de Weerd, thye Netherlands’ Ambassador for International Cultural Cooperation: “Culture fosters mutual understanding between people and countries. It evokes emotions and helps us understand each other beyond words. Culture is therefore a pillar of our diplomatic work, as it helps create ties with people who share an interest in thinking outside the box, seeking innovations and forming new bonds. To encapsulate this in policy, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science have a joint International Cultural Policy, which focuses, amongst others, on long-term collaborations, the creative industries, and heritage.”

Christianne Mattijssen, Director of Heritage and Arts at the Netherlands' Ministry of Education, Culture and Science: “Expo 2025 gives us the opportunity to foster and strengthen our existing relations with Japan while also providing a platform for new talent. The Expo is a catalyst for relations.”

Live magazine

Activating Common Ground will be structured as a public ‘live magazine’ that will unfold over six months in the Event Space of the Dutch Pavilion and at other locations.

The Specials form a common thread that runs through the programme: seven commissioned projects by the Dutch-based makers Introdans, affect lab, Arne Hendriks, HOH Architecten, Tomoko Mukaiyama, Benjamin Herman and Field Records, all in collaboration with Japanese makers. The results of these collaborations will appear in the pavilion as Showcases: thematic presentations of works from the Specials, complemented by other Dutch projects that have not yet been seen in Japan, as well as in several different places throughout Japan. The themes and the different practices will be discussed in a series of Talkshows with Dutch and Japanese guests.

Parts of Activating Common Ground will take place outside the Expo site. For example, a series of six Editorial Studios has been developed in collaboration with Toshiaki Koga (Associate Professor of Art, Culture and Design Studies of Musashino Art University in Tokyo). Under the guidance of a Japanese and a Dutch editor, a group of professionals will reflect on the Expo and produce an editorial poster in response, which will be available in the pavilion. From the Netherlands, these will include Sandra Kassenaar, Saeda Nourhussen and Nuraini Juliastuti.

In addition, in collaboration with the Creative Industries Fund NL and designer Lisa Konno, a group of five Dutch textile and fashion designers will visit Japan at the end of July to investigate the latest local developments in fashion and to set up new collaborations. From a group of eighteen applications, Anouk Beckers, Chenda Fekkes, Denzel Veerkamp, ​​Michèle Boulonge and Yamuna Forzani have been selected.

Finally, six Japanese magazines in the fields of fashion, graphic design, photography and architecture – High(er), Quotation, Too Much, Neutral Colors, Study and Worksight – will publish specially produced supplements featuring Dutch makers.

National Day

On 21 May, which is Dutch National Day at the Expo, His Majesty King Willem-Alexander will visit the Expo and the Dutch Pavilion. To mark the opening ceremony of the National Day, Adriaan Luteijn (Introdans) and Dai Matsuoka (Land Fes) will create the special choreography, UNUM: an intergenerational dance piece about the power of interaction and creativity through movement.

In addition, the special relationship between Japan and the Netherlands in the field of design will be showcased in the presentation Bridging Past & Future. For the first time, the results of various collaborations, such as those of Delta x Hasami, Hozan Zangana x Dave van Gompel, Koen Tossijn x Sugikojo, Raw Color x Fujiyoshida and Sabine Marcelis x CraftxTech, can be seen in a single presentation.