Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cambridge visited The Netherlands on 11th October for a day of official engagements in The Hague and Rotterdam.
On arrival, The Duchess of Cambridge was pleased to have the opportunity to pay a courtesy call on His Majesty King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands at Villa Eikenhorst.
The Duchess then visited the Mauritshuis in The Hague for the exhibition ‘At Home in Holland: Vermeer and his Contemporaries from the British Royal Collection’. The 22 works selected for this exhibition are some of the finest 17th-century genre paintings by Dutch artists in the Royal Collection. The 22 works have been loaned from the British Royal Collection to the Mauritshuis where they will be on display from 29th September 2016 until 8th January 2017. The Duchess will tour the gallery’s permanent collection before visiting the exhibition, meeting children taking part in the gallery’s learning programme, and attending a short reception with museum supporters.
Next, The Duchess attended the British Ambassador’s Residence in The Hague, where Her Royal Highness has convened a roundtable discussion on the themes of addiction, intervention, family and mental health. The discussion brings together professionals from renowned Trimbos Institute in The Netherlands, with two UK charities of which The Duchess is Patron, Anna Freud Centre for Children and Families and Action on Addiction.
Her Royal Highness then travelled to the neighbouring city of Rotterdam to see Bouwkeet, the social Makerspace of Bospolder-Tussendijken. This is a new community focussed initiative in the centre of an economically deprived district which provides a creative design and technology workspace. Local residents can use the facilities, and ‘pay’ by sharing their skills with others, providing education, skills and positive role models within the community. The centre works with local schools to bring young people in the area into workshops, where they learn to design, create and build their own projects.
