Exploring future scenarios for Atria

Atria, the Dutch knowledge institute for emancipation and women’s history, collects, manages and shares women’s heritage. Atria has an archive and library of national and international status and conducts research to support policy-making. To continue playing a valuable role in the field of emancipation and women’s history in the future, Ecorys examined possible future scenarios for Atria.

Atria has both a heritage function and research function. These functions include maintaining the archive and library collection and conducting applied academic policy research and advice to influence policy. Because these functions do not always combine as a matter of course, Atria has commissioned an exploration of a future-proof positioning of the institute.

To fulfil this, Atria asked Ecorys, in collaboration with Ton Brandenbarg, to carry out a positioning study. This was carried out in the first half of 2023. An important building block for this is the development of a number of relevant potential scenarios. From these, the substantive, legal, organisational and financial consequences follow that clarify the playing field for Atria’s future development.

To prepare the study, stakeholders were surveyed and (group) discussions were conducted with Atria staff. The study was substantively guided by a steering committee consisting of representatives of the Executive Board, the Supervisory Board, the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and the National Archives. 

The analysis shows that a number of the scenarios outlined are future-proof. The results of the study served as a basis for decision-making on the future perspective by Atria’s Supervisory Board.