Den Haag’s Creative Scene: Small, Serious, and Nothing Like Amsterdam
I came to Den Haag because Amsterdam was too expensive and too loud and too much about itself. I found a live-work studio in Laakhaven for a rent that would be impossible in Amsterdam and set up my practice. That was three years ago. I am still here.
What Laakhaven is
Laakhaven is an old industrial harbour area on the western edge of the city centre. It was warehouses and light manufacturing. It became, over the last ten years, the place where artists, designers, makers, and small creative businesses ended up when everywhere else got too expensive. The buildings are large, the light is good, and until recently the rents were affordable.
The building I work in has a graphic designer, a ceramicist, a small furniture maker, a music production studio, a textile artist, and three architects. This is not unusual for the area. The concentration of making is genuinely impressive and almost completely invisible to anyone who does not already know it is there.
The scene
It is small. Den Haag has a population of 550,000 but the creative community that knows each other is probably a few hundred people at most. This sounds like a limitation but it is actually an advantage: connections are real. If you make good work and show up, you will know the relevant people within a year. There is no layer of PR and positioning between you and the actual community in the way there is in Amsterdam.
The Wijnhaven area next door is developing similarly. The Binckhorst, further east, is where the next wave is happening — larger spaces, rougher edges, earlier in the cycle.
The tension
The rents are rising. This is not a surprise. It is the same cycle that happened in Amsterdam, in Berlin, in every European city where creative people found cheap space and made it interesting. The municipality talks about preserving the creative character of these areas. The developers are more persuasive than the municipality.
I do not know how much longer Laakhaven will be what it currently is. Five years, probably. Maybe ten if the preservation plans work. The people who got here in 2015 got the best of it. We who arrived around 2021 are still early enough. Anyone coming now is arriving late.
For visitors who want to find it
The open atelier weekends happen twice a year — spring and autumn. This is the easiest way in. You will see studios you would not otherwise access and meet people who are actually making things. Check the Den Haag municipality website for dates — they are usually announced a month ahead.
The rest of the time: just walk. Laakhaven is a 15-minute cycle from the centre. The studios are not advertised. But if you walk the streets around the harbour on a weekday you will see lights on in warehouse windows and hear the sounds of work. That is the creative scene of Den Haag. It does not advertise. It just works.
