My Wish for the Future of Amsterdam “Bonds per Stitch – Here, Where Threads Remember, We All Find Home”
As Amsterdam marks 750 years of history, we are invited to dream of what lies
create a co-authored textile narrative—one that honors multiple perspectives and
ahead. My wish is for a future Amsterdam where everyone—especially
gestures toward mutual belonging.
immigrant women—is not only welcomed but recognized as an essential voice in shaping the city’s story. A place where belonging is not granted from above, but
Drawing from sociologists Boccagni and Fathi, who conceptualize home as a
made together, stitch by stitch.
mobile, affective, and socially constructed experience, this project approaches home not as a structure, but as something formed through relationships, gestures,
My project, Bonds per Stitch, was born from this vision. It is a participatory
and spaces of care. In this way, the act of stitching becomes both method and
textile practice rooted in the Indian tradition of Godhari quilting, developed
metaphor—a soft yet insistent intervention into the masculinized, institutional
through intimate collaborations with immigrant women in Amsterdam. In quiet,
cityscape. Each thread says: We are here. We remember differently. We belong.
one-on-one “quilt talks,” we gather discarded fabrics and memories to co-create soft archives of care, history, and resistance. At its heart, the project asks: What
My wish is for an Amsterdam that sees these contributions not as peripheral, but
does it mean to belong? Who gets to tell the story of a city?
central. A city where culture is not just presented in museums, but shaped in living rooms, community centers, and quilt circles. Where care is as valued as
This question becomes even more urgent in a time marked by rising nationalism
innovation, and storytelling is seen as civic infrastructure.
and the silencing of migrant narratives. Inspired by Henri Lefebvre’s Right to the City (1996), which argues for the reappropriation of urban space by its
Amsterdam has always been a city of trade, migration, and exchange. Its richness
inhabitants, my wish is for a more inclusive Amsterdam—one that moves beyond
lies in its diversity. My hope for its next 750 years is that it embraces not
symbolic multiculturalism and embraces shared cultural authorship. Lefebvre
dominance but reciprocity, not erasure but deep listening. That quilting, caretak-
called for citizens not just to inhabit the city, but to shape its social and symbolic
ing, and memory-making are understood as political, spatial, and cultural acts.
life. This remains a radical and necessary invitation.
Above all, my wish is simple: that Amsterdam becomes a city where no one is a
In the layered fabric of Amsterdam’s urban identity, immigrant women are often
guest. A place where to belong is to be heard in one’s full, layered, beautiful
woven in silently—present, yet invisible. Bonds per Stitch seeks to change that by
complexity. A city tenderly stitched together—by all of us.
making visible the emotional geographies of home through collaborative quilting. Each woman produces a quilt reflecting her memories and longings. In turn, I respond with a corresponding quilt shaped by our shared dialogue. Together, we