‘Embracing the future’ is the main goal of the Groninger Forum, the new cultural centre in the heart of the city which will be completed by the middle of 2019. The impressive building will host a range of cultural institutions and functions, including the city library, a movie theatre, Storyworld (a museum of comic strips, animation and games) and debates. The marketing and programme director, Hans Poll: ‘The Groninger Forum is to become an easily accessible meeting place for curious people of all ages and backgrounds. The programming will focus on three domains: current affairs & society, popular culture, and knowledge & technology. With our programming, we want to prepare people for the future by giving them an opportunity to get acquainted with the many new developments that are facing us. Themes that will be covered include nanotechnology, robotisation, artificial intelligence and popular image culture. Our principle is that it's better to have a future that you can see coming than a future that happens to you.’

The aim is to achieve integral programming whenever possible, combining the strengths of the individual functions in the shape of workshops, playgrounds, courses, exhibitions, lectures and master classes. Poll remarks that they are ‘always playful and accessible, because fun is a condition for success.’ There are literally no walls between the library, exhibition space, debate area and movie theatre. ‘We are a single organisation and not a kind of multi-tenant office building. That makes it possible to highlight themes in a joined-up and multidisciplinary way,’ he explains.

It is not only the Forum's programming that is geared towards meetings and interaction but also the striking new building. There will be activities aimed especially at audiences who are less likely to visit the city centre, such as families with children. ‘It's no longer at the football club that we meet each other but at the library and soon also at the Groninger Forum,’ says Poll. ‘We have deliberately opted for an easily accessible building with a transparent column in the centre of an entrance hall which works its way up ten floors in the shape of an apple corer.’ Attached to this column are multiple ‘plazas’ providing space for the library, interactive installations or workshops. ‘And catering facilities, of course’.