New Canterbury Tales 2071

New Canterbury Tales is back! From September 13 to October 27, our project space Next will be transformed into a travel agency, setting our time machine to 2071.

Future travel—can it be done? Yes, it can. How? There are several routes you can take, all with one common denominator: imagination. Last year, you had the chance to meet the residents of New Canterbury. What have the eight inhabitants of New Canterbury experienced over the past year? Discover it in the future. Entry to Next is free, so step into 2071!

In addition to future scenarios created in various workshops, the residents of Breda shared their ideas and dreams with artists Liselot Cobelens and Jochem van den Wijngaard. The artworks inspired by these ideas are also on display in the museum. Moreover, you can create your own future story through an interactive game.

Sustainable Time Travel 

Over the past two years, various forms of ‘time travel’ have been explored as part of the project The New Canterbury Tales, a research project initiated by the Sustainable Built Environment research group at Avans University of Applied Sciences. The outcomes are not fixed, making this project an exciting exploration of future concepts and potentially planting 'seeds' for a sustainable future.

Partners of Stedelijk Museum Breda in this project include Avans University of Applied Sciences, Cambridge School of Art, Stichting KOP, and game company Zerow. The project is also supported by funding from Click-NL.

The title ‘The New Canterbury Tales’ is inspired by Geoffrey Chaucer’s book ‘The Canterbury Tales,’ a 14th-century collection of stories about people traveling to the English city of Canterbury. The New Canterbury in this project is a fictional place in Scotland, where the small town of Golspie is now located.

Visual material for this project has been created using AI image generators Midjourney and Metahumans and serves as inspiration.