City Talks Amsterdam: Breaking Cycles, Building Futures

Sharvin Ramjan is a polymath working across the Dutch cultural landscape who strives for greater plurality, equal opportunities, and stronger representation of marginalised groups within the arts, culture, and creative sectors and beyond. Through his work as a writer, presenter, and moderator, he questions the social and cultural norms we often take for granted. In 2025, he published his debut book-essay Nooit genoeg, an intimate reflection on boundaries in relationships, work, identity, and power through a queer and intersectional lens.

How can entrepreneurship, wellbeing, and social responsibility come together to create more supportive and accessible urban spaces? Marcha van Glaanen Weygel is an entrepreneur and sports professional driven by a lifelong passion for movement, care, and empowerment. From a young age, she dreamed of running her own gym. Today, Marcha leads a personal training and functional small group gym on IJburg. After also running four childcare locations for a decade, last year she founded Diva Ride - a taxi app that responds to the growing need for safety, autonomy, and inclusive mobility by offering the option of female drivers

What happens when the technologies we use every day begin to shape how we think, behave, and relate to one another? Artist, researcher and digital & human rights advocate Julia Janssen critically explores the power of Big Tech, data and artificial intelligence, asking how we can break harmful digital patterns and reclaim agency over our technological futures. Through installations, performances and research, she takes audiences behind the surface of apps and platforms: aiming to radically reshape the use of data and our relationship with AI.

© Jonna Bruinsma

Cheroney Pelupessy is a dancer, choreographer and theatre maker with Moluccan, Indonesian and Dutch roots. She creates a distinctive movement language where traditional influences meet contemporary dance, exploring cultural identity, memory and intergenerational stories. Last year she created Mama’ku, an intimate dance and documentary project about the relationship between mother and daughter and the transmission of stories across generations.

Ewa Scheifes works at the intersection of visual art, societal issues, and public space. As a freelance curator and moderator, she collaborates with institutions such as the Van Eesteren Museum and the Creative Industries Fund NL. In her practice, art is a connecting force: between makers and audience, between city and society, and between urgent questions and new ways of imagining the future.