A few weeks ago, the Kwaku Summer Festival wrapped up the season. It wasn’t just any end to a festival summer, because according to the organizers, this may be the last edition of Kwaku as we know it. For ISG Security, which has provided security for the festival for years, that news has mixed feelings.
Kwaku has been a staple of Amsterdam Zuidoost’s summer for decades. Four weekends a year, people gather in Nelson Mandela Park to eat, enjoy themselves, and celebrate. According to the organizers, stricter permit requirements, rising costs, and increasing organizational complexity are making it increasingly difficult to keep the festival affordable and accessible. It is not yet clear whether Kwaku will disappear entirely in its current form or return in a different form. Together with the Zuidoost district, they are exploring what the festival might look like in the future.
That uncertainty made last weekend especially meaningful—not only for visitors and the organizers, but also for the team that ensured the festival ran safely year after year. From project leaders to checkpoint staff to the colleagues on the floor, many of them looked forward to this event every year.
This latest edition of Kwaku went exactly as the organizers and visitors had expected. Every situation was defused, and the atmosphere remained exactly as it should be at Kwaku. That requires a team that knows the venue, the visitors, and each other inside and out—and that knows when to be present and when to exercise restraint.
What happens next is up to the organization and the municipality. ISG Security sincerely hopes there will be a follow-up, in whatever form. Until then, it’s not “goodbye,” but “see you later.”
You can find more information about ISG Security’s approach to large-scale events on the page about festival security.
