From studio to ecosystem: Why the Netherlands needs its own ‘The Lighthouse’.

Tomorrow's infrastructure is not just digital. It is also made of concrete, wood, cables, tables and conversations. Right there, at the intersection of space and idea, The Lighthouse shows what a new cultural engine can look like. It is high time the Netherlands took that example seriously.

Digital culture today is made everywhere and anchored almost nowhere. Makers work from bedrooms, cafés and temporary hubs, scattered around the world, connected through platforms but rarely through a shared place. That seems efficient, but it also has a downside: fragmentation, a lack of exchange and little room for depth, experimentation and transfer. It is precisely into that gap that The Lighthouse itself. Not as a co-working space, not as a traditional production house, but as a physical infrastructure for the creator economy. And that is precisely why it is such a relevant example for the Netherlands.

 That positioning also makes it immediately clear what The Lighthouse is NOT¹. It hardly compares to Dutch initiatives like De Coöperatie. A quick look at the website and the annual report on 2024 by The Cooperative even gives the impression that this type of model is now struggling to say the least, and may be in a closing phase.

At one time, the idea was clear and sympathetic: shared, affordable workspace for journalists, combined with the idea that collaboration would also lead to better journalism. But the premise was primarily text-based, individual and cost-driven.

Fundamentally different

 The Lighthouse is something fundamentally different. This is not a writers' space, but a production environment with heavy and expensive infrastructure: studios for video, audio and photography, post-production facilities and even test kitchens. Not primarily, therefore, the writing press, but the audiovisual creator is central. In the United States, membership costs about $5,500 a year. That seems a lot, until you compare it with the professional facilities that come in return. Then the amount is modest rather than excessive.

 The Lighthouse, with campuses in Venice Beach and Brooklyn, among others, was set up from a simple but powerful idea: even in a digital world, proximity continues to matter. Makers thrive when they meet, see each other's work emerge and have access to professional facilities without immediately getting bogged down in institutional logic. It is a place where podcast makers, photographers, chefs, journalists and video makers do not work side by side, but actually with each other. Not from formats or airtime, but from ideas.

Ecosystem

 What The Lighthouse offers is an integrated ecosystem. Members get access to high-quality studios for audio, video and photography, editing facilities and presentation rooms. But equally important is the programmatic layer: workshops, master classes, informal meetings, shared lunches and spontaneous collaborations. Here, creation is not seen as an end product, but as a process that benefits from friction, proximity and shared curiosity.

 Moreover, The Lighthouse is not an abstract idea, but a place where very concrete productions emerge. Chef and entrepreneur Marian Cheng uses the test kitchen to film cooking demonstrations for social media, scaling up her restaurant and frozen dumpling line nationwide. Podcast producer Becca Ramos (iHeartMedia) develops new series there, from editing to recording, without the friction of external studio rental. Photographer and director Brad Ogbonna uses the studios for both commercial and editorial shoots, while at the same time deepening his own artistic practice.

In addition, collaborations arise that were not thought of beforehand: a meeting leads to a new format, a master class to a paid assignment, a shared shop floor to an unexpected crossover between disciplines.

Non-linear

 All this contrasts sharply with how production in the Netherlands - and certainly within the public cultural media sphere - is traditionally organised. Here, creation is often linear: an idea is submitted, assessed, financed and eventually broadcast. That model still delivers quality, but is increasingly out of step with how creators work today and how audiences consume culture. Experimentation, hybrid forms and cross-platform thinking fit poorly into commissions, formats and subsidy rounds.

 This also makes it immediately clear why the question about the model for a Dutch independent maker with an annual turnover of €25,000 is actually easy to answer: no professional commercial production ecosystem can be built for that. The Lighthouse explicitly chooses not to want to be everything to everyone, but to build an infrastructure that takes quality, professionalism and sustainability as its starting point, in a country that is much larger and has a strong commercial market.

Opportunity for NPO

This is precisely why it is interesting to shift the focus to public broadcasting and the cultural sector. NPO and broadcasters collectively have more than a billion euros of public funding per year, with a huge amount of existing infrastructure for all forms of media production. If one wanted to, a model à la The Lighthouse could be organised relatively easily within existing budgets. If necessary, by negotiating a share of any revenues or exclusive broadcasting rights.

 Indeed, such an initiative would also be excellent in a public-private partnership. Involving commercial parties, platforms and creators themselves not only lowers the threshold, but also increases the feasibility. It would be a concrete way to actually give new creators a flying start, rather than just talking about it in policy terms.

Strength in openness

 A Dutch ‘The Lighthouse’ should thus emphatically not be a new broadcaster, nor an extension of existing cultural institutions. Its strength lies precisely in its openness. Makers can work on projects that eventually land with NPO or cultural institutions, but just as easily on their own channels, international platforms or in live forms. The public task thus shifts from transmitter to sanctuary: enabling culture in the making.

 What is also important is what The Lighthouse is NOT. It is not a real estate concept disguised as a creative hub, not a setting for networking drinks or pitch events. Its success lies in daily practice: working together, learning together, looking together. Knowing that someone at the other table has just that perspective that takes your idea further. That social infrastructure is difficult to capture in KPIs, but crucial for cultural innovation.

Innovation is also social

 In the Netherlands, innovation is often discussed in terms of technology: AI, data, platforms. The Lighthouse reminds us that innovation is just as much social and spatial. That progress starts with meeting. And that public value is not only created by distribution, but by creating conditions in which creators can take their work seriously.

 A Dutch The Lighthouse would therefore be above all a statement: that we no longer see creators exclusively as suppliers of content, but as carriers of culture. That we understand that the future of public media and cultural institutions lies not in more control, but in trust. And that we dare to invest in places where it is not yet certain what will come out of it.

 Tomorrow's infrastructure is not just digital. It is also made of concrete, wood, cables, tables and conversations. Right there, at the intersection of space and idea, The Lighthouse shows what a new cultural engine can look like. It is high time the Netherlands took that example seriously.

1. The Lighthouse in this story is also not this (beautiful) coworking space in Lithuania ︎

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