Perhaps that is the question that may be asked more often in the run-up to the upcoming municipal elections. Not just what culture costs, but what ecosystem a city needs to develop. A city that wants to grow to 170,000 inhabitants needs more than housing and infrastructure alone. It also needs places where ideas emerge, where makers experiment and where young generations can connect to the city.
Apart from undeniable self-interest, citizens often judge their prosperity in the city on what is immediately visible: new buildings, big events, economic figures, safety, poverty rates or the green or non-green character of their city. But the real character of a city usually lies elsewhere. In the quiet networks underneath.
Mold threads
Looking a little deeper into urban ecosystems reveals that they look less like a plannable chain and more like what biologists call a mycelium: the underground network of fungal threads that connects forests and ecosystems. Through that network, nutrients, energy and information are exchanged. Most of it remains invisible, but without that network, life above ground would not exist.
Cultural development in the city works surprisingly similarly: what we see, a new building, a concert, an exhibition, a successful creator, are the mushrooms above the ground. Underneath lies a much larger network of rehearsals, studios, small venues, festivals, experiments, conversations and, whether or not, chance encounters. Artistic development is therefore not a straight line but often an ecology of relationships.
Cultural energy
In that network, art schools play a special role. Not only as places where knowledge is transferred, but as hubs where different worlds meet: young makers, teachers from the field, venues, festivals, programmers, collectives and audiences.
Cities become interesting not only through infrastructure or economic growth. They become interesting through cultural energy. By places where ideas emerge, where young makers experiment and where audiences remain curious about new discoveries. Art schools bring to this something that can hardly be organised or bought: a constant influx of creative young people and makers.
Take Enschede.
With the ArtEZ Conservatoire and the AKI ArtEZ Academy of Art & Design, the city has two relatively small art schools that together play a role that is bigger than their size would suggest.
Not just because they educate students, but because they constantly introduce new ideas, energy and connections into the city. Students play in pubs and small venues, organise projects, exhibit in unexpected places and collaborate with venues and festivals. Music teachers teach throughout the region and Music Therapists contribute to the well-being of residents. Some leave again after their studies, others stay and continue to build the cultural fabric of the city.
Network
ArtEZ Conservatoire plays a special role in this. In recent years, a broad network of partners in the city and the region has developed around the academy: venues, festivals, maker collectives, talent development programmes, music hubs and cultural institutions. Think of collaborations with Metropool, the Booster Festival, initiatives like Vestzak and projects like Border Frequency, as well as connections with (music) schools, hospitals, production houses and makers throughout the eastern Netherlands.
That network ensures that students not only study, but actively participate in a living music practice. They play on stages, collaborate with programmers, develop projects with other disciplines and already build relationships with the professional field and the city during their studies. This makes the conservatoire not only a place of education, but also a link in a larger network of talent development, a place where education, (maker) practice and cultural infrastructure meet.
The spectre of Kampen
This is precisely why this is also a relevant topic for the upcoming municipal elections. After all, local politics is not just about bricks and mortar, budgets or spatial planning, but essentially about what kind of city you want to be. A city that attracts young makers, offers room for experimentation and allows new generations of artists to take root, invests in a living ecosystem. A city that loses that network often only notices later what has disappeared.
An example close to home shows how fragile such ecosystems can be. Several art and higher vocational schools settled in Kampen in the late 1970s, including an art academy that later became part of the Constantijn Huygens School of Arts. The presence of hundreds of students changed the street scene, boosted hospitality and culture and temporarily turned the city into a real academy town. When the art school moved to Zwolle at the beginning of this century, not only an education disappeared, but also a daily presence of young creators fuelling (cultural) life. Ecosystems build up slowly, but often disappear quickly when one of the nodes disappears.
Dream this
Looking at talent development in music, this network is also very tangible in practice. Creators often start in small places, play their first shows in clubs or experimental venues, meet other musicians, producers or programmers there and slowly build up their own practice. Festivals like Booster, initiatives like aural laboratory Vestzak and regional partners like Metropool or production houses form links in this where students, alumni and makers meet.
The development of a band like Dream This (winner Culture Fund Pop Stipendium 2026) from the East Netherlands network shows how such ecosystems work: ideas rarely originate in one place, but grow through meetings, experimentation and collaboration. In that process, the conservatoire is not only a place where skills are learned, but also a place where such connections emerge and are passed on to the next generation of creators.
Economic boost
Students sometimes seem a modest group in economic statistics: low-income, temporary residents, few assets. But a closer look reveals that in an urban ecosystem, they function like food streams in a mycelium. They bring movement: they rent rooms, fill cafes and venues, organise projects, start collectives, work at local businesses and bring new ideas. Their presence keeps money, knowledge, energy and creativity circulating through the city.
Research on student cities shows that the economic boost from students is considerable. Not only through direct spending on housing, catering and facilities, but also through the businesses, initiatives and networks they build during or after their studies. Many creative enterprises, festivals and cultural initiatives emerge from informal student networks that later professionalise. This makes students not only participants in urban life, but also an important source of innovation.
Making life possible
Perhaps that is the question that may be asked more often in the run-up to the upcoming municipal elections. Not just what culture costs, but what ecosystem a city needs to develop. A city that wants to grow to 170,000 inhabitants needs more than housing and infrastructure alone. It also needs places where ideas emerge, where makers experiment and where young generations can connect to the city.
Or, to stay with the image of the mycelium, it is not only the visible results that make a city grow, but especially the network underneath that makes life possible.
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