Jeffrey Meulman, born in 1968, has been a festival producer, theatre director, creative concept thinker, innovator and cultural entrepreneur since 1986.
At the age of 21 Jeffrey became the director of the renowned Doe Maar Dicht Maar youth poetry festival, broadcasted semi live on national television. After this he became managing director of the Winterschrift literature festival, a programmer with the municipal theatre, the Kruithuis theatre and the Noorderzon Performing Arts festival in the Dutch city of Groningen.
For more than eight years he worked as a comedian with Raoul Heertje’s Comedytrain.
From January 1999 to September 2003, he was the general and artistic manager of, and thus responsible for, the Huis a/d Werf theatre and the Festival a/d Werf theatre festival in Utrecht. During the 2002 – 2003 season the Huis a/d Werf underwent a large-scale renovation with the support of the European Community.
In 2003 Jeffrey chaired Het Vierde Kwartaal, an association that looks after the interests of the Dutch summer festivals. Together with Wim Claessen he was one of the initiators of the Fontys Academy for Circus & Performance Art in Tilburg.
He was also the creator of Nieuwe Grond, a small scale international festival for political theatre and socially engaged arts under the wings of the Vrede van Utrecht.
November 2005 Jeffrey became the Director of the National Dutch Theatre Festival presenting The Best Of Dutch and Flemish Theatre in Amsterdam, also including the Acting Award Ceremony and the international Amsterdam Fringe Festival that was founded by Jeffrey in 2006.
In August 2014 Jeffrey was awarded with the Amsterdam Award for the Arts for best achievement.
In 2016 Jeffrey and his team hosted the IETM Spring Plenary Meeting in Amsterdam, where Live Art in Digital Times was the main topic.
Next to this he was working as a part-time consultant and as a Performing Arts Curator, inter alia for the Leeuwarden European Capital of Culture 2018.
Jeffrey has also given and still gives lectures and guest lectures in the Netherlands and abroad and has written articles, teaching methods, interviews and columns.
Since June 2021, he has been Director of the Verkadefabriek, a multidisciplinary arts center in the Dutch city of Den Bosch.
September 2021 he received the ACT Award, by the Dutch Actors Guild: “In recent years, Jeffrey Meulman, as director/director of the Dutch Theatre Festival and Amsterdam Fringe Festival, has worked tirelessly to make the position of actors and the acting profession more visible”.
November 2022 he became President of the Board of Directors of IETM until the end of his term in Mai 2025.
Jeffrey Meulman 