Biography

Loesje was born in Arnhem, Holland on Thursday, November 24th, 1983 at 6:40 p.m.. Some weeks before, her birth had been announced by posters on the streets. So to be precise, the idea was born in the spring of 1983, when a group of nine people met in Arnhem. The purpose
of the group was to
develope a new
initiative to escape
from the continuing downward spirale of the critical political movements of that time. Wittingly a girlsname
was chosen to sign the texts, to make them more personal, to reflect the clearness and simplicity of the ideas.

Street-girl

Thus, she turned up in the streets of Arnhem on the 24th of November
1983 to start an energetic life as a postergirl. By the
choice of refreshing texts of a growing-up girl, these posters excited new reactions
and interest.

In September 1985 Loesje had member-groups in several cities in Holland. New wild ideas were starting. Loesje joined the national elections for the parliament for example. Heaven-storming, she reached further than the height of the jumping-pole and
exceeded the contents of het purse. But Loesje
was welcomed and enthusiastically supported. Luckily, Loesje did not win the race for a parliament seat and Loesje as a poster association was a big success.

At the beginning of September 1986 Loesje
had grown into a
national association
with 340 members in 67 local groups.

Jumping over borders

In the years 1988-1990 borders were broken everywhere and Loesje broke out of Holland. Shortly after the wall came down, Loesje was already visiting Berlin with a group of fifty members and in the
Spring a small group travelled for seven
weeks through all the former Eastern Block countries. Contacts were made, a special series
of slogans about the topical developments in all countries was put up, and new members kept applying.In September 1990, Loesje started to publish a monthly international series of posters, besides the already existing
national and local slogans. First in nine languages for local groups and members,
which continued
expanding and right now we have a text archive with posters in more
than twenty different languages. This
expansion was also reflected in the growth of cooperation within
the organisation. The cooperation resulted in that we started with yearly international sumercamps where members from all over the world

met eachother and shared their thoughts.

In the first years of Loesje International the office was sited in Arnhem. Due the rapid expansion of Loesje in former Eastern Block countries it was decided in 1995 that the office was to move to Pezinok, Slovakia. In January of 1996 this was realised but practical problems forced us to move the office to Linköping in Sweden in may 1996. During the summer of 1999 it moved back to its roots, Arnhem.

Loesje is still a street-girl, an open-door association, an ideas-exchange and an efficient service all rolled into one. And worldwide if you please.

Loesje in practice

When thinking of Loesje, don't think of a strongly organized association whose members are meeting right on time, based on some formal leadership of a burocratic board. Rather, Loesje is the practice of the things she expresses with her posters. A loose association which runs on enthusiasm and personal motivation, on ideas and initiatives. Enthusiasm and action, that's what it is all about.

Loesje works on trust. Anyone who becomes a member gets access to Loesjes's signature. Thus, he or she is able to make posters which can appear the next day. In practice this is almost never misused. We encourage members from the same town to gather together to make their own slogans. But people have to initiate action themselves and local groups have a mandate to publish local slogans. The only thing we ask them is to send the local texts to the national office. Because we want to learn form each other and the slogans can be published in the bulletin which can lead to further discussion and new texts.

Loesje's identity

Loesjs's identity is based on a world view which concentrates on the idea ¨forward¨. We intentionally don't choose the word ¨progress¨, because of it's technical sound. Loesje is for everything which makes the world and the people ¨go forward¨. At first this criterium seems insufficient to make possible to select a position in all cases: developments are often complicated and multi-sided. Still the ¨forward¨-criterion remains our guiding principle; we always seek for solutions of which the whole world with all it's cohetence, humanity in totality, profits most. When a concrete matter or development is supported, this does not mean progress for progresses sake, there must be a positve contribution to the world an humanity. So we constantly seek the largest connections even in the smallest matter.

1. Quality

Loesjs's view on quality is based on the principe that every human being is able to recognize quality and to acknowledge it. For the Loesjs texts this means that everyone can make a selection: which texts have a certain quality and which texts do absolutely not. We can see this view being confirmed during the first selection round, when the list of hundred texts is quickly reduced to about 25 textsproposals, with great consensus. These proposals all have a chance to come into the monthly series.

2. Versatility

It's not easy for Loesje to tell what is really important in life, society, or in the world. Ofcourse some things are more topical than others. If you concentrate on one specific text for a while, then you can not loose sight of the rest. That's why Loesje is making posters about everything and everyone. We call that versatility. We like this to be one starting point in every series. So, we will certainly not only publish posters about politics or school or boyfriends, but a larger variation in subjects, themes and items will be represented. Becasue of this starting condition some texts are eliminated

3.Flexibility

Loesje is known because of the positive atmosphere she radiates. For us, it is a condition that most posters are more showing possibilities, rather than pointing out the difficulties.

But this condition doesn't mean that we never make any critical remark. If it's necessary we say very clearly what is going on. For this we use many types of humor. Then we lay the texts next to each other and we use these criteria for the next level of selection. Only nice and funny texts are not enough, and a hard slogan needs to be relativated.

4. Giving inspiration

Easy to understand, but hard to do. You can say something in many different ways. declaring, asking, poetical. In this you need proficiency of the language, playing with the language is something Loesje likes very much. It adds something to the message you want to bring across. We push our reader in proficiency of the language and literary abilities. Don't we all like to write very beautiful love letters? As much as possible posters in one series differ from each other, not starting with the same sentence structure or sharing the same rythem. That's an important point to think of.

5.Recognizable

Loesje doesn't focus on one special group. Young, old, thin, fat, middle class or football fan: to Loesje everyone is interesting. To enlarge the recognizability for different groups, we also make use of the whole family of Loesje. Grandfather, grandma, cousin Carl, Uncle Herman and Loesje's kid brother are often taking care of some ¨Loesje speeches¨.