Meet Femke
Femke Nijdam Rosenbaum…
…grew up on the edge of the dunes in Bergen, The Netherlands, in a family that often asked, "Why do you always have to do something different?" As a child she loved all kinds of creative expression: drawing, acting, and making things. She became a teacher and came to the United States, where she met and married Slug Rosenbaum.
When Femke and Slug moved to JP in the mid-70s, they learned about a plan to put a 4-lane "arterial road" along Amory Street, and Femke joined the community's protest. Going door-to-door to talk with neighbors about alternatives, she was told by one woman: "Girl, you're talkin' paradise!" The first Wake Up the Earth Festival in 1979 brought people together to celebrate the decision to create a park where the highway would have divided our neighborhood.
Femke has always wanted to "change the world" by helping build a society inclusive of everyone. She had been doing "Festival Arts" – making banners, lanterns, giant puppets, etc. with a plethora of recycled materials – first in her home and then in the basement of the Firehouse Arts Center (now JP Licks). The JP Arts Council did not consider festival preparations "real art", however, and so Spontaneous Celebrations was created in 1991 as an official organization to unite people who cared about community building through the arts.
When the abandoned building at 45 Danforth Street became available, Femke and friends – with the RE agent – toured the dark, damp space. After a brainstorm of ideas inspired by this visit, which she remembers taking place around her dining room table: "I took notes on everything that people said, and a few weeks later I sat at the computer and the words floated out of my brain into a poem!" Femke & Slug were able to buy the building with a mortgage on their house, and the help of Art Johnson and Barbara Kaplan.
A few of the poem's lines that move her most: "A village house with a family feeling..." and "A place where we help each other be strong, A place where we learn to change what's wrong."
Attracted by the dunes that remind her of where she grew up, Femke camped on Cape Cod every summer while her children were young and now lives part-time in Wellfleet – joining campaigns against the use of herbicides and the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant. Every year she's returned to JP to help with Wake Up The Earth preparations. Walking by Spontaneous Celebrations with her dog, the day after Trump was elected when it felt like the world was falling apart, she met D'En in the parking lot and was encouraged to become more actively involved again.
Femke's greatest joy in this work over the past 20+ years has been seeing the building full of children and other people working together on preparations for the Tropical Fiesta, Wake Up the Earth Festival, and Lantern Parade. She looks forward to sharing the vision expressed in "Imagine!" and to a renewed commitment to programming that brings our multicultural community together through the arts.
