I visit her at home in one of Amsterdam’s historical canal houses, where she explains to me her personal manifesto that epitomises the powerful vision of her art. A statement so important to her that it graces the cover of her autobiography. “If people ask me ‘Is that art?’ Then I say it might not be definable as art for everybody, I just do it this way. I deliver the visual image. Somebody asked me once how I would describe my art. My art is not recognisable as such, is that clear?”

As I ponder this thought I wonder where the passion to develop and express herself as an artist was conceived. She grew up in a small town in the county’s south, as one of six children. Her father was a composer from whom she learned to sing and perform for an audience from an early age. “When my dad wanted people to hear his latest composition he would invite a couple of friends over to listen. There was a piano at home and I would join in the occasion. That’s where I got used to people hearing my voice. I also loved going with my dad when he was performing at concerts. I was extremely proud of my him, I was absolutely a daddy’s girl. I really admired him from head to toe, I wanted to be just like him.”

After completing the first part of her studies at St.Joost Art Academy, Moniek headed to Brussels for an internship with costume designer Yan Tax. “I first studied sculpture and then switched to fashion because I liked illustration and film. Nowadays that’s called multi-media. I graduated with a full-length 16mm film, that’s something more significant than just making a small video.” Soon after, she began performing in various theatre productions while studying at the Amsterdam Conservatorium, completing the second part of her studies at age 27.

I ask her what she thinks about today’s students being advised to specialise themselves in one area, since she herself is broadly educated. “I think it’s complete nonsense to focus purely on one thing. You should only specialise yourself when you need to. In my opinion, if you don’t know certain fundamental skills, where do you depart from? Some people just jump into life and say things, but they don’t know anything about the broader perspective of life. I know it’s very old fashioned as everyone uses a computer nowadays, but I still think handwriting is the proof of your character. I can tell from an autograph what kind of person I have in front of me. I can see if he’s a listless loser or if it’s someone with a strong personality.”

Politicians are not in her favour at the moment, with the government’s decision to impose massive budget cuts across all art and cultural institutions in The Netherlands. She shakes her head in remorse. “I’m really furious about the cuts they’re making. It’s a cultural impact that knows no mercy. It’s revenge on creativity. They don’t want people to think differently, so they eliminate anything that might encourage people to do so. They want people to sit in their chairs, watch television and enjoy their social security. In Amsterdam it’s going to be really nasty for artists.”

Moniek has been married several times in her life and describes love as something that just happens to you. Her opinion about marriage is quite unique, “I always say; either you marry often or you don’t marry at all. I’m definitely going to marry once again. I think it’s such nonsense and a completely unnecessary activity. I mean you stand in front of a celebrant, because that’s what the law requires you to do, and this complete stranger declares You are now husband and wife. I mean, we were already that before, I didn’t change gender did I?”

A sad glow suddenly comes into her eyes as Moniek tells me her chance on marrying once again will be small as she has phase four lung cancer. Her sarcastic yet semi-serious way of dealing with the illness shows me another side of her. “Half of the people discover they have lung cancer when they’re already in phase four, which I’m in. Those are the hopeless cases with no chance of being cured. I didn’t realise it was this severe until other people started to worry about me. The reality hit me because of the people around me. I’m glad I don’t have any children. I never wanted any, not for myself at least. Don’t get me wrong, I love kids, but I can’t deal with the responsibility of having one of my own. I don’t know how long l have to live. It’s kind of a pain in the ass when it comes to planning, but I’m an optimist so I think it will take a while. I’m not fighting against cancer, I don’t see it like that. You can do chemo therapy but that’s chemo therapy, it’s not going to battle. If I die I don’t want a sentence like She fought fiercely or something stupid like that said about me.

I ask Moniek to share some words of advice with me and she answers: “Well I’ve been guiding my niece for many years now, and I always scream at her You have to be radical! RADICAL!”.

I visit Siri in her home and discover that she herself is heavily pregnant with her second child. We sit on the couch where she shares with me stories of her many travels, her amazing trust in life itself, and the path that led her to becoming a doula.

Siri grew up as the oldest in a family of five girls. Her parents divorced when she was six, after which her mother moved to France, while she stayed living with her father in Amsterdam. Coming from a truly multicultural background with Jewish roots, Siri was raised as a Sikh Ashram in the Guru Ram Das Ashram. This meant that by age 12 she was impelled to go to boarding school in India, where she was away from friends and family for nine months every year.

“Because of the religion of my parents I went to a boarding school in India for Western kids,” says Siri. “My Mum wasn’t keen on me going, but my dad really preferred that I go. I agreed to that of course, as aware as you can be when you’re 12 years old. It wasn’t really a conscious decision. The time in India was a period of love and hate. On one hand, it was quite difficult at 12 years old to be without my family; but on the other hand, I had so many friends there with whom I had quite some adventures. I’m a very social person and as a teenager that became more important than my parents at a certain point.”

For five years, Siri travelled back to Europe every summer to visit her family; yet there was one year that she will never forget. During her final year of boarding school in India, she caught the life threatening illness typhoid fever. She was hospitalised for weeks, making it impossible for her to meet her baby brother from her father’s side in Amsterdam that summer. Deciding to go the following winter to meet her newest family member, Siri was then injured in a severe car accident.

”We had just visited my Dad and were on our way to France to visit my Mum on the 1st of January. I don’t remember much from the accident as I was asleep when it happened. Apparently everyone in the car had fallen asleep, being tired from New Year’s Eve and having not slept much. My entire right side was crushed into the tree we hit. Luckily I wasn’t paralysed but it was pretty severe. I remember that I woke up in the hospital five days later. After the typhoid fever and the car accident I told myself, “and now you’re going to make your own choices.” I got into those situations because other people had made decisions for me. Of course I didn’t realise that at the time, but now I can say it really pushed me to become my own person.”

Siri decided to stay one more year in India before returning to Holland to complete high school. Here she discovered a greater freedom to make her own choices and after graduating she set off to explore Europe and experience other cultures and meet new people. At the age of 21, during her anthropological studies, she met her now-husband while on holiday in Mexico. After this she spent many years juggling her life between Amsterdam and living in Mexico-city, when she asked he husband if he wanted to come and live with her in Amsterdam.

“I wanted to go back to Holland to finish my studies and I asked him to come with me. I completed my bachelor degree and was looking for a job so he could stay with me in Amsterdam. I had to prove to the government that I could make enough money to support both of us, since he wasn’t allowed to work here. I was working at an Israeli travel agency when I unexpectedly got pregnant. It wasn’t planned but very welcome from my side, as I always knew I wanted to have kids and I was 26 years old. I grew up as the oldest in a large family and I remember all my sisters being born, this was always very special to me.”

Siri’s own experiences as a young mother were the inspiration for her becoming a doula, someone who guides women through pregnancy and provides emotional support during labour and childbirth. In The Netherlands couples can themselves choose to give birth in the hospital, or in the safe environment of their own home. Midwives have an important role monitoring and caring for women throughout their pregnancy and during home births. But for Siri, traditional midwifery is too medically focused, and she says it’s important to support couples emotionally as well as physically.

“While a doula does not replace the role of a midwife, they build trust and confidence and remain a constant emotional support during the whole birth process,” Siri says. “Childbirth is a very intimate experience yet there are so many practical things you need to learn to give birth to a child. I like to give parents the freedom and space to connect with each other and themselves. It all comes down to creating the environment in which you want to welcome your new baby into the world.”

I first pose the question to Ravi: “The most important lesson is to learn to share with other people, this is something you’re taught at school and living with your parents. I think there’s a lot of egoism in the world, like the presidents who abuse their power and make it worse for the people.” .

Melle on the other hand thinks being able to stand on your own by learning how to cook, clean and wash is a necessary lesson to learn in life. “Being independent from my parents and standing on my own feet is important to me,” he says.

Both are exceptional musicians for their age, playing piano and clarinet. And they know how they want to live their lives. Says Ravi: “Although I love playing the piano I’d like to become a cartoonist when I’m older. I get extra drawing lessons each week from Peter Pontiac, a professional cartoonist. These lessons are special because I don’t have to draw realistically, but instead I can be very abstract. My favourite cartoons are Guust and Dirk Jan, because each story is usually set up in three balloons, which ends with a payoff that gives it a sarcastic twist.”

For Melle, music is his life passion. He started to play the clarinet two years ago and dreams of becoming a professional clarinettist. “The hardest part is finding the discipline to practice every day. It should be like brushing your teeth, but sometimes I can lose myself completely in reading a book like Harry Potter.”

Being born and raised in the centre of Amsterdam has made them open-minded and worldly-wise. They have experienced a variety of different cultures living in the city and also travelling abroad.

“Our favourite holiday was to Cuba,” says Ravi. Melle agrees: “The whole atmosphere, the houses and people were so different. Although it was quite strange to see imported Dutch busses which still had ‘No service’ or ‘Rotterdam’ on their displays. What I like most about Amsterdam is all the different types of people and I don’t have to bike far to see my friends or enjoy my hobbies. I think Ravi and I could easily live in the countryside, but I don’t like to bike too far to get somewhere.”

A local legend who runs the family sports centre ‘Kops’ in Amsterdam, Bert Kops looks back at 30 years during which he competed in more than 20 national and international wrestling championships.

Bert is the self-proclaimed mayor of Amsterdam’s Weesperzijde. He greets almost every passer by while sitting in front of the gym he founded with his two sisters in 1985. Kops has become an inspiration for anyone in the city who lives for combat sports such as wrestling, boxing, kickboxing or mixed martial arts.

Born and raised in Amsterdam, Bert built his fighting reputation from a young age when he learnt from the very best, including his father Bert Kops Sr, a multiple national title winner. “My dad was a well-known wrestler in his time, as a young kid I thought that was amazing,” says Bert. “Seeing these big guys wrestle was something I looked up to. Back then it was my dream to become as strong as them. My goal was to be national champion, and at the age of 13 it came true for the first time. Another gratifying moment was when I won a bronze medal at the 1978 world championships in the youth division.”

His career knows many highs, yet the greatest battle he ever fought was not against an opponent, but against himself when he was in a severe car accident in 1982 and almost lost his life.

“I guess I was overdoing it at training as it was just before I was about to compete in another world championship. I had a black out in the car while driving to Amsterdam for training and I crashed into a tree. It happened right in front of a hospital; the guy who saved me was a first aider who saw it happen and ran to help me. He had to pull my jaw back into place as it was almost in the back of my neck, blocking my ability to breath. When I gained consciousness, apparently I tried to punch him in the face because I didn’t understand what was happening. I still wanted to go on and head to training. Six months after the accident I was back on track and wrestling my first competition again, although my leg has never been the same since.”

Growing up in Amsterdam, Mr Stift always wanted to become an engineer on a steam ship, a childhood dream that unfortunately was never realised. He was drafted at age 18, having just finished pre-marine school, when the Dutch joined the Allies in WWII.

His family remained in Amsterdam to witness the horror, while he was deployed to England as a member of the ‘genietroepen’, an army division taking care of supplies and ‘cleaning up’ battle areas once the front line had moved through. I asked him if he ever feared for his life: “No not really. You didn’t think about it that much, at least I didn’t. You were a small cog in an enormous machine. Of course you thought about your family back in Holland. But when you are young you’re not aware of the risks you take.”

After 5 years at war, the Allied forces were close to liberating Europe. Mr Stift returned home to his family in 1945, but it was too late for him to study to become an engineer. “After the war I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I just sailed off with ‘Maatschappij Nederland’,” he says. “It was a big shipping company where I worked for the civil service, a completely different role than I had in mind in the first place. At 25 I was far too old to become an engineer in the engine room and I didn’t feel like studying anymore.”

This job offered M Stift the chance to sail around the world with passenger lines and cargo vessels across countries from Indonesia to America – journeys from three up to 18 months were no exception.

He met his wife at a New Year’s Eve ball in Amsterdam in 1948, shortly after one of his first trips. “We met each other at the ball but I had to leave on a trip 2 days later. So I sent her flowers for her birthday while I was at sea. We married in November of 1948, although I was away quite a lot in between. She always waited for me though, for sixty years.”

Mr Stift and his wife were not able to conceive, so after many years they decided to adopt. They contacted a friend who worked for a Foster Care organisation to help them with the adoption procedure. It was a special moment when the doctor called his wife to announce that a baby was available for them to adopt.

“We didn’t know in advance, not even my wife. So she took a blanket and went to the house where the baby was born. We didn’t have anything for him, not even a bed. I wasn’t at home, I was in Sydney where I received a telegram that I had a son. It was a truly special moment in my life. I was dumfounded.”

“Uh ..well actually I’d like to interview you.” I try to negotiate without blinking an eye. He looks at me in surprise “Oh of course!” A few hours later I drop by his friend’s restaurant in the centre of Amsterdam, where I come eye to eye with his creations of wonderful women.

Starting off with a pencil when he was a little kid, his repertoire now includes experimenting with all kinds of techniques, applying them on many different materials. “I’m self taught so I’ve experimented a lot. You do need a basic knowledge of the materials, for example acrylic paint dries really fast, but not fast enough for me. Usually I paint on three canvasses at the same time, like you finish the basic layer on one and then you go on to the other one, it’s sort of like an assembly line. I often go to exhibitions to see what’s out there and to get inspired.”

He moved to Istanbul for an eight month long internship at the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Art (IKSV). It was here that he discovered his own way to build bridges between cultures. “I love Istanbul because it’s the bridge between Asia and Europe. There’s a lot of difference in the Eastern and Western cultures; religiously, geographically, but mainly it’s cultural. The language we all speak is music and art. These are unspoken words spoken everywhere.” After returning to Holland he put this into practice and used art to express his stories and reach people from different backgrounds.

Frank uses his personal life and experiences abroad as sources of inspiration. A crucial moment was when his now ex-girlfriend broke up with him after he hadn’t painted for a year.

“That was kind of a sign to me, it inspired me to start again. You can focus on the negative side of life, but you can also turn it into something positive. I thought lets put all this energy into something else. I started painting furiously, made a portfolio, went to a lot of galleries and one of them picked me up immediately. That got the ball rolling and the rest is history.”

We sit down and I adjust to the sound of needles buzzing in the background as Hollywood Mark (43) starts to relate the special journey that brought him to Amsterdam.

Growing up in the barrio (poor Spanish neighbourhood) of Los Angeles as the youngest of seven kids, Hollywood Mark soon realized he had to take any opportunity for a different life. At the age of 12 he took a test to enter another school in LA, which changed his perspective on his future.

“I got out of my neighbourhood which was kind of Mexican, black, lower class and ghetto,” he says. “That’s when I started to go to Hollywood, and that also had a big impact and changed the way I viewed the world. I was exposed to a lot more interesting people because they came from all different parts of LA and from every corner of society. My motivation to become an artist was conceived through that experience.“

Yet he never thought about becoming a tattoo artist, not even when he began to hang out at the tattoo shop of one of his friends. “I didn’t know what I was going to do, I was in art school and bouncing around from job to job but it was always art related. After I got off from school I usually went to Charlie’s tattoo shop to hang out. I didn’t really think of it as something for me, I just thought of it as hanging out with my friend who had a tattoo shop. But after a couple of years of doing that they asked me if I’d ever considered working as a tattoo artist because they thought I would be pretty good at it since I was always drawing.”

He made that decision pretty quickly, and tattooed his first artwork at the age of 23. He worked in his friends tattoo shop for only one year when another life changing opportunity arose. Henk Schiffmacher, a well-known Dutch tattoo artist came to visit the shop and asked Mark to join him as his apprentice in Amsterdam, an offer he couldn’t refuse.

“That took me out of LA into Europe and showed me new cultures and a whole other way of living. I met some of the best tattoo artists during this time because they all worked for Henk. So my education as a tattoo artist was incredible. One door opened with Henk but after that hundreds of doors opened because he introduced me to so many people in the celebrity and tattoo world.”

When I asked Mark for some last words of advice, he says: “So many people do things in life for the money. Money is there when you’re good in what you do, so you might as well enjoy what you do because I think you’ll have a more profitable life. At one point you’re going to look back on your life and wonder what it is you’re doing here and how you spend your time.”

As a youth, Joris pulled apart his camera to examine its inner workings. Nowadays, he roams the globe capturing the latest street styles in the major fashion capitals.

Quitting his communications studies seven years ago, wiz-kid Joris Bruring has since become one of Amsterdam’s most promising fashion photographers. As we cruise the canals on his boat, Joris explains how his achievements as a photographer came often by accident.

Having first taken pictures at high school with a borrowed camera, Joris soon got himself work at several agencies after first moving to Amsterdam. With a little guts and a huge amount of ambition, he always found the right people to impress at the right places.

“I got a backstage pass for this Models at Work event and I was standing there looking eye to eye with Maartje van der Hoeven, the founder of the company, as she thought I was a professional photographer.”

“I got a backstage pass for this Models at Work event and I was standing there looking eye to eye with Maartje van der Hoeven, the founder of the company, as she thought I was a professional photographer,” Joris explains.

“I told her I didn’t have my big camera with me because the lens got humid after photographing a concert – something I made up very quickly to disguise the fact that I didn’t yet have a large professional camera. I ended up bringing some pictures to her office that week and I shot a few jobs. After that I not only began to photograph for them, but as time went on I also began to do their marketing concepts.”

Joris’ drive for success developed from a young age, when his family went through a difficult time and moved from a house into a flat, which he didn’t enjoy. “We barely had money in that time so new clothes were an exception. It really motivated me to stand on my own and make some good money doing what I wanted. That’s what I did the first years I lived in Amsterdam. The first time I made money I bought all kinds of shit, it was gone in an instant. Now I want to save and invest in bigger things.”

Time for friends and family was rare, but that changed when Joris realised there are more important things in life than money and work. “A year ago I was working so hard I noticed I didn’t have any real friends; so I invested more time getting to know people here. I didn’t have the feeling anyone would have my back if something went wrong. I sort of felt alone sometimes. That’s completely changed now as I put my friends first.”

World in a Shell is a fascinating experiment to which Hans Kalliwoda has dedicated the last 25 years of his life. A fully self-sufficient vessel equipped with the most advanced technologies to survive in any extreme environment, World in a Shell is an ambitious design built in collaboration with 50 engineering students from the TU Delft.

I ask Hans Kalliwoda why he founded the project in Amsterdam, opposed to his home country Germany. “In Germany the project wouldn’t have had a chance,” he says. “In the academic circuit there’s no vision. I also like Amsterdam as a place to live, I feel comfy here. It’s cosmopolitan; there are so many different foreigners here that make it interesting. I couldn’t live here with only Dutch people.”

Hans is constantly exchanging and collecting experiences, stories and cultures to store in his Shell. A great storyteller himself, he shares one of his experiences travelling through Africa as a nomad.

“We were travelling in a Landrover on what is now called the Trans Kalahari Highway and picked up a hitchhiker. This was in Namibia in March of 1990. It was the fortnight before Namibia’s independence, and Ziggy Marley was invited to play at this celebration in the capital Windhoek. As soon as the hitchhiker stepped into the car I was curious about him and started to ask questions. He spoke Afrikaans and fortunately so did my travelling mate, John. The hitchhiker was born in a small village in Namibia’s Northeast, close to the boarder of Botswana and was on his way home. He told us that years ago he was recruited as a soldier by the South African army to track and fight against the SWAPO (South-West Africa People Organisation). Now the war was over and he was afraid to go back to his village without any work. The only thing he had ever learned was to fight.”

The 23-year-old Frisian was passing through Amsterdam on her way to her next job when she visited my house to share her hopes and dreams.

As a make-up artist in the demanding fashion industry, Tynke must create a flawless look in a short time. How does she handle the pressure? “I like it when something is ‘off’; nobody is perfect and you shouldn’t pretend that you are,” she says. Since graduating from The House of Orange at the age of 19, Tynke has quickly learned how to survive in the sometimes vicious fashion trade.

Tynke moved to Zaandam, a small town near Amsterdam, after graduating and initially struggled to realise her dreams. “I didn’t know what to do, where to go to or who to talk to,” she says. “During that difficult period of my life, my sister sent me a postcard with some encouraging words saying that she believed in me and that everything would be alright, ending the note with a little heart she’d drawn. I later tattooed it on my back to symbolise the love of my sister, and to help me remember that there is always someone looking out for me, even when I’m alone.”

At age 17, Tynke already knew the fragility of life when her father was involved in a serious motorcycle accident. It was a turning point that forced her to re-evaluate what she really wanted in her life.

“Me and my closest friend, Marloes Horst, aspired to become models so we signed ourselves up for a small modelling contest in our home town,” she says. “With the accident still fresh in my mind, I began to second-guess my decision and I quickly withdrew from the contest. Why would I work my ass off for something I didn’t even know was for me? However, Marloes ended up being really successful and has lived in NYC for several years now. I’m very proud of her and still visit her twice a year. It’s funny how life goes sometimes when you make certain decisions.”