City Talks Amsterdam: Ghosts of Past, Present, and Future
As the year comes to a close, this edition of CityTalks invites us to reflect on how the past, present, and future shape our lives and communities. We explore the connections between generations, nature, the stories and values we pass on, and the cycles we try to break. How can what we inherit from the past guide us forward with compassion and hope?
Inspired by ITA Ensemble, Hotel Modern & Guy Cassiers’ Oer en Andere Tijden, this edition celebrates cycles of life, the power of storytelling, and the bonds that keep us rooted and connected. After CityTalks, you can visit the play, or tie your skates on to take some laps at the festive ice rink on Leidseplein, right outside our door - a perfect way to start the holiday season!
The performer during this evening is singer Aafke de Vries. Aafke brings the heart of Amsterdam to the stage. She is one of those distinct voices: warm, expressive, and deeply rooted in the musical heritage of the city. At CityTalks, she will perform accompanied by her pianist, sharing songs that bridge generations and keep Amsterdam’s musical memory alive.
Location The Bookshop
Duration 60 minutes
Genre Perspective
Language English
We recommend you to buy your ticket beforehand. An entry ticket also includes one free consumption.
Poet & Moderator
Lin An Phoa
CityTalks Amsterdam is hosted by Lin An Phoa, who is a poet, performer and moderator in the cultural field. In her work, she explores vulnerability, resistance, power dynamics and (self-)care culture. Through poetry and conversation, she investigates how to create movement within rigid systems, with the aim to make societal issues tangible, facilitate connection and encourage change.
Photo © Gaby Jongenelen
Brand Manager & founder Heal Magazine
Selma Lemsaadi
Many of us move through life exhausted, carrying cultural and generational weight, and feeling unseen in mainstream conversations about mental health. Selma Lemsaadi is the founder of Heal Magazine, a platform dedicated to collective healing and culturally rooted storytelling. With a background in marketing and a deep curiosity for people’s inner lives, she created Heal as a response to the individualism of mainstream wellness culture, and the ways it often fails to reflect the lived experiences of marginalised communities. Through her work, Selma creates spaces and stories that invite people to slow down, feel genuinely recognised, and gently begin to move out of survival mode.
Photo: © Shannon Kanhai
chef & founder of NESSIE’S
Vanessa Wattimena
For Vanessa cooking is a way of carrying history forward. Raised in the Molukse community of Vaassen and taught by her grandparents, she learned early on that food can nourish far beyond the plate. What began as small takeaway meals grew into NESSIE’S: a culinary endeavour that preserves Moluccan and Indonesian flavours while bringing people together. As head chef and ambassador for the Stoelenproject, Vanessa also shows how food can build bridges — creating dignity, connection, and warmth where it’s most needed.
Music historian & music coordinator at Podiumkunst.net
Miles Niemeijer
Miles Niemeijer is a music historian and Music Coordinator at Podiumkunst.net, a national network connecting the leading performing-arts heritage institutions, where he preserves and reimagines the musical memory of the Netherlands. By integrating diverse music cultures - like hiphop, punk, and clubculture - into national archives and bringing visibility to genres beyond the traditional canon, he helps expand whose stories are carried into the future. Miles focuses on making music heritage accessible, connected, and alive - ensuring that the sounds of today and yesterday become part of a shared, evolving archive.
For bookworms and eager listeners aged 6 and up, we present The Bookshop Kids! Every first Sunday of the month, we transform our soft‑pink Bookshop into a place full of children’s stories where imagination has all the space it needs.
