A Dogger Bank Cultural Diplomacy programme in Museum Panorama Mesdag:
June 4 2026, 13.00 – 17.30 (including a visit to the exhibition drift. dune to dogger bank)
This programme is in English
The Embassy of the North Sea and Museum Panorama Mesdag are pleased to invite you to the programme Dogger Bank Cultural Diplomacy: From restoring to restorying the Dogger Bank, taking place on 4 June 2026, from 13:00 to 16:30, in Museum Panorama Mesdag.
This afternoon programme explores new ways of understanding multispecies cultural diplomacy. It approaches the Dogger Bank not merely as a resource or a shared space for interstate cooperation, but as a political actor in its own right, an entity with intrinsic value that we engage with, listen to and represent. Grounded in perspectives and storytelling from the Netherlands and the UK, artists, curators, researchers and diplomats are invited to rethink and reimagine cultural diplomacy not about but with the Dogger Bank.
This programme is part of the exhibition DRIFT: Dune to Dogger Bank (21 March – 13 September 2026) at Museum Panorama Mesdag, an initiative by Museum Panorama Mesdag in co-curatorship with the Embassy of the North Sea and in collaboration with Stroom Den Haag, Doggerland Foundation, Stichting Duinbehoud, and Dunea.
Rewilding Dogger Bank
The Dogger Bank, a vast shallow sandbank in the North Sea, is a vital nursery for sharks, rays, herring and cod, as well as a year-round rich feeding ground for whales and seabirds. It is a Natura 2000 Marine Protected Area. This protection, however, exists mostly on paper, as harmful activities and ecosystem decline continues. Largely out of sight of the public, the Dogger Bank serves as a diplomatic space where the Netherlands, UK, Denmark and Germany negotiate competing interests such as fisheries, energy, environmental protection and shipping.
Since 2025, an international coalition with NGOs from the four Dogger Bank countries — Doggerland Foundation (NL), Embassy of the North Sea (NL), ARK Rewilding (NL), Blue Marine Foundation (UK), BUND (DE) and WWF (DK) — have joined forces to restore a healthy and resilient Dogger Bank. Through the Rewilding Dogger Bank Programme, together we pursue legal action, reef restoration, research and imagination, while fostering a broad, democratic dialogue on the future of the North Sea.
We cannot protect what we do not know
As part of the Rewilding Dogger Bank Programme, the School of Dogger Bank is an experimental platform for learning and engagement, inviting artists, researchers and audiences across the four Dogger Bank countries to develop unconventional perspectives, artistic research and design approaches that strengthen the Dogger Bank’s cultural, political and legal position. Outcomes take the form of publications, artworks, public programmes, assemblies, expeditions and exhibitions, with selected artists also featured in DRIFT: Dune to Dogger Bank.
One of the School of Dogger Bank’s first aims is to understand our complex relationship with this distant seascape, because we cannot protect what we do not know. In the UK, stronger cultural and economic ties shaped by proximity to the Dogger Bank, fishing traditions, maritime culture, historical events and ongoing economic interests mean that the submerged landscape of Doggerland features more prominently in the public imagination.
This afternoon, we will explore British and Dutch perspectives on Dogger Bank storytelling – historical, political, cultural and multispecies – to deepen our understanding of this vital North Sea ecosystem and spark cross-border collaborations across the four Dogger Bank countries and beyond.
