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LIVING & LEARNING | 7 MIN READ

By Kim Donaldson | Images by Leanne Hoogwaerts

I was grieving futures I was educated to strive for.

That grief, and the quiet courage to let go, led Leanne Hoogwaerts ’10 from Amsterdam’s cultural sector to a remote island in the Azores. There, through her work as a policy consultant and co-creator of , she’ll be exploring what it means to live, work, and care differently, at the intersection of sustainability, culture, and the arts.

Learning to Let Go

Leanne traces the beginning of her unlearning to her time at ľ�ϸ���Ӱ�� College Utrecht. Alongside courses in sociology and the arts, subjects she was innately drawn to, she committed to a minor in economics and business, “doing what I thought I should be doing, but struggled.”

The classes that captured her attention were those taught by sociology professor Gerrit Dielissen, where something began to shift. “That summer course on Orientalism reframed my perspective,” she reflected. “It made me see how dominant narratives shape our understanding of the world. That course gave me the tools to ask better questions.”

Years later, those tools helped her and her partner begin asking different questions of their own: What if we chose a different pace? What if we didn’t wait for retirement? What if we tried to live in better alignment with our values?

For more than five years, Leanne had worked to strengthen the Dutch cultural sector through her role at Kunsten '92. She and her partner lived in a vibrant Amsterdam neighborhood, raising their young daughter.

And while on paper she was achieving many goals she’d set herself, they didn’t bring any added sense of fulfillment. Meanwhile, the consumer-focused culture around her felt increasingly at odds with the urgencies facing the planet. Something didn’t feel right. A growing sense of unease, coupled with delving into the literature around living within planetary boundaries kickstarted a process of letting go of the goals she thought she ‘should’ be reaching.

“I was grieving futures I was educated to strive for,” she said. “Futures that are no longer in line with my personal values, much less in favour of the future of our planet.”

Choosing a New Pace

This slow unlearning was marked by a few deeply personal turning points.

Becoming a parent deepened the sense that something needed to change. “Even though I told myself I would never let myself be changed by motherhood, I was kind of resisting that... I did change,” she said. “It brought into view how individualist our society has become. We were squeezing everything into these weekdays and living in the weekends. And it didn’t feel like living.”

Her father’s recent passing, just a year before what would have been his formal retirement, brought Leanne’s quiet questioning to the surface, turning discomfort into something undeniable. “I thought, I can spend my life stressing out and then not enjoying it. Or I could do something really radical and enjoy every day instead of trying to make money that I might not ever get to spend.”

With this slow unfolding, they eventually decided to take a leap.

They returned to a place that had stayed in their minds since a trip years earlier: Santa Maria, the smallest of the Azorean islands. To test the idea, they went back in winter, during bad weather. “We thought, let’s go in the worst possible weather. If we still like it, then maybe we’re serious,” she said.

Even in wind and rain, it still felt like the right place. While on the trip an opportunity came up to take over a unique property. “It felt like everything had aligned and we just had to take the leap”. 

This summer, they’ll become Santa Maria’s newest residents. “This isn’t about having it all figured out. We might come back in five years. That's fine,” she said. “We’re not calling it forever. But it feels right for now.”

What It Took and What It Means

Leanne is quick to name the factors that made this move possible.  “We have the huge privilege of social and educational capital, and the financial means to make it happen. We have online work to help with the transition. We have an amazing network across Europe, not just in the Netherlands,” she said. “That’s not nothing.”

But she also emphasizes that privilege doesn’t cancel out the work of unlearning. “Letting go of those futures meant actual grieving,” she said. “It meant accepting myself and what career trajectory or lifestyle fits me and my personality.”

She doesn’t present their decision as a model for others. “We’re not the first people to move to the island,” she said. “And though it feels completely right, there’s always a chance we might not stay. We just felt we had to try. This is one way. But it’s not the only way.”

Regeneration in Print

Part of that redefinition includes , a seasonal print journal exploring regenerative living, which Leanne is building together with her partner. Its goal is simple but ambitious: to make regenerative living tangible.

“Regeneration is often only thought of in the context of agriculture,” she said. “It’s about how we relate: to each other, to nature, our ecology, to our places and communities. How we rest. How we build life-sustaining futures that are equitable and sustainable.”

Meander will feature longform stories, profiles, and essays that challenge extractive narratives about work, growth, and value. The decision to go to print, rather than digital, is deliberate. “As Tom would say, the physicality of a print magazine invites presence. We want people to read it slowly. With a coffee. To sit with these ideas,” she said.

One future idea Leanne is thinking about is to convert part of their new property into a small artist residency. “But with no expectations for the artist to produce anything,” she added. “Just a place to be. That’s enough.”

It took grief. It took unlearning. It took allowing myself to want something else.

Choosing Differently

Today, Leanne continues her work at the intersection of arts, policy, and sustainability, as a consultant and as a board member of . She’s worked across sustainability, arts funding, and cultural advocacy. More recently, her focus has shifted increasingly from fairness to equity. “ is the coordinator of the , which talks about fair pay, fair share, and fair [supply] chain, and I think that’s really important,” she said. “But I also think there’s a step beyond that.”

She points to and the concept of radical equity as a compass. “Fairness implies someone gets to decide what’s fair. Equity considers how far someone’s had to come, and what weight they carry. It’s more relational. More human.” This perspective, she said, is especially vital in the arts. “It’s about how we treat the artists we work with, the audiences, the participants, the communities we find ourselves in, and ensuring those ways of working are not extractive but as radically inclusive as they can possibly be.”

This mindset shapes everything she’s trying to build. And trying, she insists, is the operative word. Values of equity, care, and presence now guide both her professional and personal life. “I don’t need to always perform,” she said. “I don’t need to win. I just want to live in a way that aligns.”

She knows their move to the Azores may not be permanent. But it has already shifted how she sees the world, and what she hopes her daughter will grow up understanding. “I want her to know that there are other ways to live,” Leanne said. “That the dominant story isn’t the only one.” She hopes these choices help to create ripples that inspire others, locally and beyond.

When asked what it took to make such a change, she didn’t hesitate. “It took grief. It took unlearning. It took allowing myself to want something else.” 

She paused, then added, quietly but firmly: “And I think that’s allowed.”