In 2025, a movement began to emerge around an often-forgotten underwater world, the Dogger Bank, a sandbank covering more than 25,000 km² in the middle of the North Sea, an area almost as large as Belgium. Its riches are to be found above and below the waves — sharks, rays, cod, herring, whales and birds — but its ecology has been severely degraded.
Dogger Bank Coalition Inaugural Meeting
On 24 September 2025, the Dogger Bank Coalition celebrated the launch of its European-wide collaboration. Over the coming years, the Embassy of the North Sea (NL), ARK Rewilding Netherlands (NL), Blue Marine Foundation (UK), BUND (Germany), Doggerland Foundation (NL), and WWF (DK) will work with many other partners to help reestablish a thriving, abundant and resilient Dogger Bank. We will do this through reef restoration, legal action, research, imagination and a broad public debate about the potential and desirable futures of the North Sea.
School of Dogger Bank
To feed this research and imagination, we have launched the School of Dogger Bank. In addition to legal procedures and the reef restoration programme, the School will offer an experimental space for learning and engagement. Despite the physical and political inaccessibility of the Dogger Bank, our lives are intertwined with this ecosystem in countless ways. The School of the Dogger Bank invites creative professionals to offer unconventional perspectives and design solutions at various levels that will represent the Dogger Bank as a political (legal) person and to strengthen its position at the cultural, political and legal negotiating table. The outcomes will be presented in publications, artworks, public programmes, campaigns and exhibitions.
In the coming years, the School of the Dogger Bank will collaborate with a wide range of social, cultural and academic institutions in the four Dogger Bank nations (the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Germany and Denmark) to invigorate the democratic dialogue about the North Sea and the Dogger Bank.
Thanks to the funds that place their trust in us and provide financial support: Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme, funded by Arcadia; Forrest Peace, VriendenLoterij Fonds and Cultuurfonds. Thanks to our partners such as Museum Panorama Mesdag and Institute for Advanced Study (University of Amsterdam).
