Help preserving the old Liberal Arts place

Preserve the Carriage House (koetshuis), the Garden Halls (tuinzalen), and the Studio (atelier) as a free space for the future. We need your voice!

Preserve the Carriage House, the Garden Halls, and the Studio as a safe space for the future. We need your voice!

In September of this year, Triodos Bank was supposed to start the public sale of the Carriage House, the Garden Halls, and the Studio at the Reehorst Estate in Driebergen-Zeist. The Reehorst Estate was originally purchased for the Free University of the Arts and also became home to the Association of Free Schools and many other initiatives. The unique opportunity has arisen for this to happen again! It has now become known that Triodos Bank has postponed the public sale until further notice.

The Carriage House is the perfect spot for the arts and crafts classes of the Free School and as a workshop space for independent artists. The Garden Halls will continue being the valuable meeting place they already are, run by Antropia. And the Studio is being turned into a wool and art space for the Claudy Jongstra Foundation. Together, they’re setting up a cooperative so the place can always be filled with art, crafts, education, and gatherings. The Iona Foundation is making an offer in September with the idea of never selling the place again. The buildings are falling apart, but our plan is very much alive. So we can get started right away. We just need to convince Triodos Bank, and we need your help with that.

Courtyard

We made a call hoping that we could show that the Coach House, the Garden Rooms, and the Studio aren’t just any places. However, we could never have guessed that we would receive such beautiful letters. It really strengthens us to know we can lean on such support in trying to preserve these free spaces for the future.

We still need you with your story, memories, and dreams for the future to help make this dream come true on this piece of estate! Tell Triodos Bank, through a letter, a podcast, a piece of art, or another form, why you hope the above plan will succeed. If you don’t want to write yourself, we have a fill-in letter (editable PDF, in Dutch) ready for you.

Atelier

Letters, essays, diary entries, artworks, poems – everything can be sent to Roos Naves via iona@iona.nl (clearly mention ‘Koetshuis’ in the subject) or by mail to Iona Stichting, attn. Koetshuis, Herengracht 276, 1016BX in Amsterdam. All submissions will be included with the bid. This gives the bid a strong voice.

Let’s fill the Reehorst again with arts, crafts, education, anthroposophy, parties, nature, and lots of young people!

The photos in this post are a representation of the developed renovation plans by Natrufied Architecture and Swiep Interior Design