LOKAAL INTERNATIONAAL is an international program (intimated in 2016) that stimulates, develops, and fosters long term international creative collaborations during their start phases.
Lokaal Internationaal represents our casual and sincere way of working, and how we feel that the creative sector here in the Netherlands works. It also represents our hope for how international collaborations can be created and further developed as a whole; now and in the future. The driving force behind Lokaal Internationaal is the idea that trust and face to face contact are the most important aspects of starting to work together, especially internationally.
By bringing together international networks of graphic designers, creative thinkers, photographers, visual artists, musicians or other people who want to approach the creative process in a different way, we hope to make it that much easier for people to connect, share, exchange and develop new and interesting things (whatever they may be) anywhere in the world.
Lokaal Internationaal does not claim to be anything more than a network — an informal one if anything. As such, it goes without saying that, we work with various people and groups to achieve various different goals. These might be working together to create a more acceptable and proper government policy, it might be a to create new creative infrastructure, etc. Either way, we try and create the best conditions for a new, less formal, and trust-based network to develop.

Now that that is out of the way… a lot has been happening.

2017: PROTOTYPE, supported by the Dutch Embassy in Tokyo and the City of Amsterdam

We invited three people over to Amsterdam to see how things are here.
— Koichi Sei: owner and founder of Bar Bonobo in Jingumae
— JEMAPUR: sound artist extraordinaire
— Toru Hachiga: Editor in Chief of and founder QUOTATION MAGAZINE, as well as founder of +81, Gas Project, and various other magazines.

As a test we sent Pepijn Lanen and Steven Lummel (the Tokyayo team) to Tokyo to link up with new and old friends, to develop new projects and possible collaborations. This resulted in a special edition book, and exhibition in Tokyo. The book was re-released in a much smaller version to be distributed with the new Fuji Instax camerawomen that was brought out — they sponsored Steven and Pepijn’s install camera a film for their trip in October 2017.