In January 2026, after our first start-up Canon II meeting in Brussels, the team met again in Amsterdam. It was a chance to dive deeper into our research, exchange ideas, and visit a few fascinating institutions along the way, including our associate partner, the Allard Pierson museum.
We started with a visit to the Dutch National Opera & Ballet, where Cor van den Brink and Coen van der Hoeven welcomed us warmly. The lighting designers, working for the NO B lighting department, gave us a fascinating look at how opera lightings designs are documented in practice. We saw a wide variety of drawings, material lists, notebooks and photos, as well as the digital file structure used to store and reuse lighting designs. Later, we learned that this is actually a standard method used by many European opera houses.
Afterwards, we continued the discussion at the AHK Amsterdam – Academy of Theatre and Dance, where we met for a project meeting and reflected on what we had seen.
Next day we visited the Allard Pierson archive in Amsterdam Zuidoost. In a rather plain-looking building on the edge of the city, we were warmly welcomed by Lisa Lucassen and Gonneke Janssen, two collection specialists working with the Theatre Collection.
We split into two groups for a guided tour of the archive. Lisa and Gonnneke had already laid out some designs by Henk van der Geest for us, based on materials we had requested in advance. There was a lot to explore: drawings, lists, and original documentation, including th “PanCan” – a kind of moving mirror stage light. During the visit, we also looked at theatre spotlights from the collection and saw a book by Nicola Sabbatini.
Besides our own meetings at the AHK, one of the highlights for me was the visit of the Baron van Slingelandt model theatre at Allard Pierson museum. Made in the 18th-century as a chamber theatre of Baron van Slingelandt. This miniature stage was used in living rooms to demonstrate how theatre worked. With real set changes and lighting.
Artist Arne Hendriks has created his own version of the principles of the Slingelandt Theater that visitors can touch, explore and work with themselves. It was a great reminder that theatre heritage is not only something to preserve, but also something to experience and keep alive.
March 2026 post from Sweden by Anders Larson.
At the beginning of the year, it became clear that STTF, the Swedish OISTAT, together with a number of theatre technical organisations and universities, had received approval for the Erasmus+ project Canon II and would be able to start the three-year work. The kick-off meeting for the project was in Brussels in September 2025 and the first physical project and working meeting was held on 14 – 17 January of 2026, which this time was in Amsterdam.
In the Canon II project, SLF (The Association of Swedish Lighting Designers) is responsible for building up in-depth knowledge and information on how lighting design could be documented and archived for the future. One of the reasons why SLF will be responsible for this is that after the passing of the two lighting designers Hans-Åke Sjökvist and Torkel Blomkvist, the Music and Theatre Library had to take over a large amount of drawings and other documentation, and this will also be the focus when the group gathers for the second physical meeting, which will be in Stockholm on 10-14 June this year.
During the meeting in Amsterdam, the entire project group was able to learn, among other things, how the Dutch National Opera & Ballet works to manage its documentation from the productions that are performed at the opera. They showed an overview of how it has been done previously, mainly in paper form with photos and printouts of direction and running charts from the various productions.
Nowadays, they have increasingly collected all documentation in a digital archive, but this was more like a systematized file management system for all information about a production, than a fully designed digital system to future-proof the lighting information about a production.
As well as looking at how we interpret archives from the past, the Canon II project will produce guidelines that will help theatres and designers now who need to document their work.
