Fifteen years, thirteen mascots and one community

I must have been nineteen, studying graphic design at the art academy, when Vero* from my balfolk dance class asked if I’d design a poster for a top-secret new Dutch balfolk festival she was working on with Louise: CaDansa. I felt so honoured! I had just learned the basics of this digital software called Illustrator, and it took me hours upon hours to draw a tree, an owl and some stars. I got a free ticket and some drink coins for it and I felt over the moon. (Ah, a moon: drew that too)**

Looking back at the posters of each year, I can really see myself grow. The second one was hand-painted in my student dorm at night, because art school left me no daytime: getting the colours right was a nightmare, since I’d painted them in yellow lamplight. Later, you can see the posters becoming more and more detailed. I’ve used a combination of hand drawn elements and digital editing for years (my desk filled with cut out drawings of little tents and canoes and otters and then I had to photoshop them in a somewhat realistic looking landscape: such a hassle!). I went fully digital in 2023, when I started drawing on a tablet. My desk is way less cluttered now. But I do miss the smell of paint.

Back in art school I quickly discovered I’m not a designer who lives for design. Trends, form, typography – I just couldn’t bring myself to care. It’s always been about content and concept for me: I want to use my creativity to create beautiful spaces where people feel welcome to be themselves, and to make space for -and together with- those who’ve always been denied it. That’s why I never just designed a poster: I wanted to create a little world. A magical fairytale to disappear inside for a few days. An excuse for silly puns and dressing up. And an invitation to show yourself a little more than you might dare in everyday life.

The third CaDansa was the first one with a decoration team I think. Back then it was me and Lydia with the help of a lot of volunteers. I remember we transformed an ugly office space into a beautiful hedge hog’s den with meters and meters of fabric and a lot of cozy lamps from the second hand store. A space for everyone to de-stress (or as we say in Dutch: ontprikkelen). And, to make it feel like CaDansa, we hung hundreds of colourful balls and balloons on the ceiling of the dance hall (cherry-picker time distribution has always been a classic CaDansa buildup theme – so we conquered our fear of heights on ladders.).

Over the years the decoration team became bigger and bigger, and more professional. We build moving glittering stage decors during deco-weekends, build photo booths and make-up stations, hid sooo many ugly paintings behind our own arts and crafts, and always hogged the cherry-picker hanging things from the ceiling. The past few years I’ve mainly done the print and digital-related things and the decoration team became a beautiful self-sufficient organism. There’s professional theatre decor makers, 3D printers, programming nerds, fabric sorcerers, musical theatre professionals: you name it. They are a-ma-zing. It’s so fantastic to see the worlds I drew on paper (alright, tablet nowadays) come alive in 3D in De Meenthe, and they deserve all the love they can get.

I’ve loved being a part of creating these worlds – and the other ways CaDansa let me make space: the community guidelines I made with Cecilia, organizing the glittery Space Whale (my favourite mascot!) performance together with Robin and Sous le Pont in 2017, the covid-safe creative alternatives in ’20 and ‘21, and my own side projects that weren’t related to CaDansa but were welcomed: the social dance pins, and the Code of Conduct posters we made with the (inter)national balfolk community. I’m so happy that the organizing team(s) and I always shared the idea that CaDansa should strive to be more than ‘just’ a dance festival.

And now it’s time for me to create space for something new again, by saying goodbye as a designer. Why stop? Because I’ve developed a lot as a maker in the past years. In my work I’ve slowly moved towards social design and art: I make installations and interventions around social justice, climate and community – using creativity not to make things pretty, but to make people think differently and connect. I get more energy from that than from drawing. You can find my work at: maartjedegoede.nl.

I kept doing CaDansa for so long because it feels like we grew up together. Through life’s ups and downs, through grief and heartbreak, through my developing confidence – CaDansa has always been there. You’ve always given me a lot of recognition – wherever I went internationally there would always be at least one folkie going like ‘ohhh you’re thé Maartje!’. It still feels strange every time, it still feels undeserved, but under that there’s a proud and happy layer.

I did one final edition so everyone who finds change difficult -myself included- gets a proper goodbye. And it gave the organisation time to find someone new with care. And they did!! I’m sooo happy to introduce Iris as the new designer. Her work is absolutely wonderful, and I can’t wait to see what she’ll make of our magical world! It’s yours now – or has it always been ours, dear CaDansians?

Thank you for all the love over the years. See you on the dance floor one last time as your CaDansa designer – and hopefully many more times just as a dancer! 💛

Maartje

* I’m using a few first names of people, like everybody knows them. Of course you don’t, but the text would have been too long if I introduced everyone. Just know that you’re a CaDansian whether you recognize names and themes or not, whether it’s your first or your thirteenth festival: we’re all one big group, here for the same thing.

** Did you know there’s always an easter egg in the poster? Until the tenth edition in 2023, I hid all the mascots of previous years in the shadows. Until the shadows simply became too full. So since then I’ve hidden other things. This year, as a final easter egg, I hid a tiny homage to that very first poster in the background. Did you see it?