From: 2006 to 2007
In 1987, people reconstructed a settlement in the Natuurpark at Lelystad. I spent many weekends and work weeks there. Much has happened since the first farm was built: the settlement moved within the park to a top location near the entrance and the story changed in the important transition phase from the last hunters to the first farmers (new Stone Age).
This era, to which the settlement is friendly dubbed ‘Swifterkamp’, is important to the identity of the Province, the conception that before the ‘polder’ fell dry, there had been people living here before. From the beginning of the 2000s, weather started to turn bad at the Lelystad horizon: content wise, organisation wise and finance wise.
In 2006, I was invited together with Bert van Valburg. The settlement really needed to act and change, else it would soon be ‘end of operation’. We were hired by the Province Flevoland and by the Summer of 2007, a plan unfolded, supported by the four important parties: the Flevoland Province, the City of Lelystad, Flevo-Landschap & the Nieuw land Erfgoedcentrum.