We Gave the Opening to a Street Artist. Here Is Why

Most festivals start the same way. A host walks on stage. There is applause. Someone important says something important. The day begins.

ORAM Next Gen Festival 2026 starts differently.

Frankey is a Dutch street artist. His work lives in public space — not in galleries, not in conference rooms. He makes small interventions that stop people mid-stride. A combination that does not belong. A joke that lands as a question. An image that makes the ordinary feel suddenly worth examining.

He has been doing this for years. The work is internationally recognised. But what matters here is not his CV — it is what he does.

"Frankey shows you what happens when you stop using the same categories."

On August 28, he is opening our festival with a keynote that does exactly that.

Why this opening.

ORAM Next Gen Festival is built around four structural dilemmas that the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area cannot defer. Energy. AI. Skills. Logistics. These are not simple problems. They are complex, contested, and resistant to the kind of thinking that produced them.

The hardest part of any transition is not identifying the problem. It is letting go of the frame you have been using to look at it.

That is what Frankey will do — in 10 to 15 minutes, in front of a room that has never been fully together before and will never be again. Through real examples and unexpected combinations, he will make visible what linear thinking keeps hidden: that the frame you are using is a choice, not a fact.

When he finishes, the chair of the day closes with one sentence: "That's how we work today. Not from your job title — from what you see."

Then the day begins.

What this says about the festival.

We could have opened with a policy expert. We could have opened with data. We could have opened with a summary of what is at stake.

We chose not to. Because the people in this room already know what is at stake. They work on it every day. What they need is not more information — it is a different angle of entry.

Frankey gives them that. And the fact that he does it as a street artist, not a consultant or a professor, is not incidental. It is the point.

"The best insight often comes from outside the frame. We are starting there."

ORAM Next Gen Festival 2026. August 28, UP Events Amsterdam. Doors open at 15:30.