What if we listened to all life and not just the voice of humans?

We cordially invite everyone to Animal Day on 4 October 2025 for the official launch of Zoöp Amstelpark. Together with the Zoönomisch Instituut, we are presenting Zoöp Amstelpark as a learning space for the city to all residents of Amsterdam, to help them learn to live better with the enormous diversity of life that populates the city.

A Zoöp is an organisation that strives to represent the interests of all life in everything it does. Zoöp Amstelpark will start as a collaboration between Zone2Source, the Zoönomisch Instituut and the Municipality of Amsterdam. After the launch, several other social and educational institutions and stakeholders from the Amstelpark will become part of the Zoö.

So our question is:

Can Amstelpark – where many encounters between human and more-than-human city dwellers take place every day and where Zone2Source has been working with artists since 2013 on new representations and relationships between humans and other living beings – become a testing ground for the city to experiment, together with politicians and citizens, with the systemic change needed to create a liveable world for all life?

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PROGRAMME Saturday, 4 October (Animal Day), 2:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.

14:15-14:30 Meet at the main entrance to Amstelpark (entrance near Rosarium restaurant). Be on time!

Walk through the park accompanied by the Speakers for the Living.

15:00-16:00 Official launch and ceremony at the pavilion in Dahliarama with speeches by Rocco Piers (district administrator of Stadsdeel Zuid) and deputy children’s mayor Lauren, Alice Smits (director of Zone2Source), Klaas Kuitenbrouwer (Zoönomisch Instituut). Introduction of the Speakers for the Living Anne de Andrade and Theun Karelse. Joint ceremony

15:00 – 15:20 Musical improvisation accompanied by Nadine Strang (Kobranie Foundation) in which we will compose together with the living world.

16:00 – 16:30 We raise a glass.

16:30-18:00 Three guided tours of Amstelpark accompanied by artists and ecologists, in which we will wander through the park with new antennae:

1. Join a guided tour and learn more about our artist gardens, small-scale testing grounds in which artists take people on a journey into alternative relationships with our living environment. Zackery Denfield of Genomic Gastronomy talks about the Genomic Gastronomy Garden, which is activated around projects that focus on our food.

Next, Jonmar van Vlijmen of the artists’ collective De Onkruidenier takes us to the SchaduwTuin (Shadow Garden), where we are introduced to Mrs. Buxus.

2. On Friday 3 October, the Multispecies Assembly, a project by Elmo Vermijs, took place, in which gardener Nicole de Rop presented a case study based on the maintenance of Amstelpark: should a tree still be allowed to be a tree? With 25 participants, we will explore how we can decide on this if we consider the importance of all life, and not just the safety and interests of humans. Anne de Andrade and Theun Karelse, who are part of the team, take you to the installation where the Multispecies Assembly took place and tell you about what happened.

3. Artist Jules Davis-Dufayard facilitates experiences with/in the living world to develop internal and collective space for growth and transformation, by making us aware of the web of relationships we are part of. Join us on a meditative walk around Amstelpark with invitations to somatic exercises that attune our perceptions to more-than-human life and rhythms. This walk is in English.

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[more info:]

Zoöp Amstelpark as the first public Zoöp

Zone2Source, a testing ground for art and ecology, invited the Zoönomisch Instituut to explore, together with the municipality and other guests, whether the Amstelpark could be a zoöp and learning place for multispecies politics. In response to a request from the city council to investigate how rights for nature could be introduced in Amsterdam, the zoöp organisational form was mentioned as a realistic option. After three group discussions with citizens, interested organisations and the municipality in early 2025 and a positively received initiative proposal to the Alderman for Democratisation, the Municipality of Amsterdam has agreed to work with us to establish the Amstelpark as a Zoöp and a testing ground for the city.

An ecological monument for the future

The Amstelpark was originally designed as an exhibition site for the 1972 Floriade World Horticultural Exhibition and has been a monument since 2024. Zoöp Amstelpark therefore asks the question: how can an ecological monument fulfil a role now and in the future? Humans do not own public space, but they do influence it through their social institutions and citizens. We want to form a Zoöp to jointly explore our role and responsibilities in public space with politicians and redesign it as a multi-species society.

Zoöp Amstelpark, where politicians and citizens learn together

At Zoöp Amstelpark, we connect art and science to policy in order to bring together thinking and doing, learning and experiencing in the park’s public space. Zoöp Amstelpark will be a unique learning environment where, together with citizens and the local council, we will explore in practice what is needed if we take the interests of all life into account in our decisions. If we put life at the centre and no longer just humans, what does this mean for political and legal processes, design, planning and maintenance of the city? Zoöp Amstelpark will be a place where we will actually practise new practices and experiences in the here and now that are necessary for a better society of humans and all other life with which we share our earth.