Yesterday, I attended The Hague Awards, which even further enhanced the pride I have of settling in this great city. This “city of three names”, (also known as Den Haag and ‘s Gravenshage in Dutch) continues to grow as a world-class international city, and is a fantastic place to visit, live and work. The awards recognised a number of fantastic local organisations in three categories: The Leisure Award, The Conference Aware and The Business Award.
Hosted by unique conference location, the Fokker Terminal, representatives from the nominees and other organisations and embassies here in The Hague enjoyed an evening of networking and great catering.
Before presenting the awards, Deputy Mayor, Karsten Klein launched “The Partners The Hague”, a collaboration between:
- The Hague Marketing Bureau (previously Den Haag Marketing)
- The Hague Convention Bureau
- The Hague Business Agency (previously known as the West Holland Foreign Investment Agency)
Together, these three organisations have the common goal of promoting this great city as THE place to live, work and visit.
This video was shown to explain the merger:
I love that the event was in a mix of Dutch and English – it sounded very much like the way we speak in our bilingual home!
It also shows what an international city The Hague is, making an effort to communicate beyond the borders with the international language of English, but also remaining true to Dutch culture and heritage.
For The Leisure Award, the nominees were:
And the 2017 winner is….
The Gemeentemuseum, with their fantastic 2017 Mondriaan year, which has influenced the whole city!
For The Conference Award, the nominees were…
And the 2017 winner is….
World Forum The Hague, with the diverse range of conferences they have hosted this year, but specifically for the “Future Force Conference 2017“.
And for The Business Awards, the nominees were:
And the 2017 winner is….
Jacobs, who opened a new international headquarters in The Hague in February this year, with around 1000 staff with 43 different nationalities.
The evening continued with a range of delicious international food: Asian spring rolls, Italian pizza, Mexican Tacos and of course, Dutch bitterballen….finished off with a delicious Haagse Hopjes ice-cream.
Was great to meet plenty of new interesting people, and was great to catch up with some I already know. Here’s just a few of the organisations that were represented (further to those already linked in the nominations above)
- TheHagueOnline
- ACCESS
- Zuiderstrand Theater
- The Hague International Centre
- Hotel Des Indes
- Innovation Quarter
- Rotterdam Partners
- Chinese Embassy
- Indian Embassy
- Steenworp Vestigingsadviseurs Haaglanden
It’s been a while since I’ve had an instant photo taken, I remember marvelling at them developing before my eyes when I was a kid. It was fun to have a few photos taken on the evening by PhotoFlyer:
The Twitter hashtag for the event was #thisisthehague.
Being a dual national Dutch Australian, I often miss my “other” home city of Brisbane, but after having lived and worked in The Hague for around 9 years now, I can truly say I have fallen in love with this beautiful, diverse, international city. Even the King and Queen live here. It’s where we are raising our children (currently aged 8 & 10) and where they will call home. I love working at The Hague University of Applied Sciences, teaching in the english-language IBMS Bachelor’s programme, and I recently completed my Masters of International Communication Managment there too.
Events like The Hague Awards do a great job of showcasing how much current and future potential lies here in The Hague.
Just as I’ve finished writing this blog post, I’ve found the official press release of the event, you can read it here.
Renee
Zestee 