I live with my husband Joep and my two daughters, Stella and Violet, in the east of the city in the Indische Buurt. It’s a working-class area, about 15 minutes by bike from the city centre, built at the turn of the 20th century for the dockers who worked in Amsterdam's east docklands.

Since I came to live in Holland 18 years ago, the start to the year has always been hectic. As a sideline to my work as a mother and an artist, I have got myself a regular freelance thing going, working for the annual contest run by the World Press Photo Foundation (based here in Amsterdam). During the hectic weeks leading up to their January deadline, I’ve gone from logging all the images entered manually to managing a team of students who register and administrate tens of thousands of press photographs, now sent digitally by the many hopefuls who’d love to win the trophy for ‘World Press Photo of the Year’.

Only this year, everything turned pear-shaped.....

Back in October I was working in my studio in preparation for my first art exhibition deadline in years. When I’m working I always have BBC Radio 4 crackling away in the background on my trustworthy old radio-cassette player. I’d been following Jenni Murray on Radio 4 with her woman’s hour specials for breast cancer awareness month. But this time, as if it were contagious. I found a lump in my left breast - was it possible that I’d caught breast cancer over Long Wave radio?

Five days later (hey! this is Holland!) I was admitted for a lumpectomy and two sentinel lymph nodes were removed in order to check for secondaries. The fantastically good news was that they were clean. The bad news was that doctors here still wanted to chuck every sort of therapy at me – no cost spared just to be sure!!

I spent two very bad weeks contemplating all this, especially the chemo. I’m still finding it difficult to grasp the gravity of the situation, because I feel physically so very well.

My youngest daughter celebrated her fourth birthday while I was waiting for biopsy results. Talk about timing. I’d planned to pick up the remnants of my career and concentrate on my work again. I’d been invited to participate in an exhibition in the east of Holland and this show was supposed to herald a career comeback.

As Stella starts primary school, I’ve now got other things on my mind than making art. As well as my new health situation, there’s our school to think about too.

The local primary school is right opposite our house. Since the dockers have long gone from the area, the Indische Buurt has become increasingly popular with immigrants - Turks and Moroccans in particular. Up until four and half years ago, 99% of the pupils at our school, the JP Coen School, came from immigrant families.

Unfortunately for our neighbourhood, families living here – from many different cultures, not just Dutch, Turkish or Moroccan - are apprehensive about the segregation developing in local primary schools. The Dutch and North European families are inclined to forsake the JP Coen School for what are perceived to be more prestigious schools in the east docklands area.

It pisses me off when I see families, who seem to like the multicultural climate here in the Indische Buurt, reluctant to support the local multicultural schools. Stimulating integration between children is of the utmost importance right now. And, moreover damn-it, it's a good school!

So we, together with three other families, decided to change that - to enrol our children into the local school and take the first step towards creating a truly multicultural school.

When my eldest daughter Violet started primary school I felt like it was also my first day all over again. All those new faces (and all those new headscarves!). It’s pretty daunting being a new parent too. So I decided to roll up my sleeves and became an active mum.

The school looks hopelessly unattractive from the outside, not at all encouraging for any new parents who are easily wooed by the shiny new school buildings of the east docklands, which is developing a real reputation for cutting edge architecture. So I set out on a mission to help titivate the place a bit on the inside by decorating the entrance hall, corridors and windows.

Between the hardy perennials like the seasons, Christmas and Ramadan, I’ve also helped to organise a sunflower project and a ‘tallest sunflower’ competition. It caught on so well we had blinking sunflowers growing out of every nook and cranny like an attack of the Triffids.

And oh my! How my mission has developed and transformed over and over again.
A touch of bling here and there was not enough to entice new potential parents inside, so about a year later a couple of us novice parents got together with the old hands and we set up a PTA. Out of frustration we began to organise campaigns and projects to promote our local school and for marketing purposes JP Coen School has become plain Coen - leading to (roughly translated!) Coen in the hood, Cool Coen, Coen Parents, and so on.

Together with the teachers, we’ve campaigned for nearly five years now to make Coen the local primary school, and a credible option for all parents in the neighbourhood to seriously consider. Our plans and projects have become increasingly more ambitious. And at last our efforts are beginning to pay off.

Last December the PTA received a big fat Christmas present – we were awarded a government subsidy to encourage our work in stimulating integration and to finance our new project; At home with Coen.

We’ve got ideas galore and some of the activities are already up and running;

For two years now we’ve been working on this brilliant project to encourage our own parents to get to know each other better and narrow the culture gap.

The Verhalenman (Story Teller), a popular phenomenon in Amsterdam schools, was already well known to us and, in particular, the children at school. He tours around the primary schools - with a story to tell, of course! However, this time we asked him if he would like to do the same for our parents. After many a brainstorming session together, he developed an Amsterdam ‘Eastenders’ sort of soap (cliff-hangers and all) in five parts over a three month period. For the sixth part parents are asked to participate and tell a story of their own. The Verhalenman personally coaches the parents in preparation for the finale. The soap is set in a street like ours, and the storylines revolve around a school like ours. However the issues that he threads into the story are ideas that come from school parents.

After every instalment the parents who are present are given the opportunity to discuss with the Verhalenman the different issues unfolding in the story and are asked for ideas for next week’s episode. Last week’s suggestion was ‘values and standards’.

So, in tonight’s exciting episode we’ll find out ‘whose son is responsible for vandalising the tram stop?’ and hear about ‘which one of the Dutch neighbours has appeared on the local telly complaining about the good for nothing Moroccan kids hanging around the streets late at night?!’

It has taken a while for the idea to catch on at school and to convince parents that there’s nothing childish about the project. And since we now lay on multicultural grub and childcare for the duration, attendance has gone through the roof.

And it’s this growing cohesion in my school community that has given me strength and provided a much needed distraction, since my breast cancer diagnosis.

But now it's time to take stock and work out what I really want to do with my - all too apparent - precious time. I’ve just handed in my notice as PTA chairwoman. It wasn’t easy, because I’ve worked hard to help to achieve the profile our school has now acquired. My ego wants to be where the action is and there’s plenty of that around what with all the excitement of our new-found wealth and fame.

However, I do intend to carry on helping out at school creatively and in a way that I can easily combine with my own artwork. Missing out on World Press Photo hasn’t been such a big deal. Instead of processing photos I’m now working on a school project which I hope we can link to the world of photography.

I’ve rescheduled my artistic comeback to coincide with an exhibition later this year.
And, in order to make the process of making things a little more comfortable, I’ve got the plumber in tomorrow in my precious studio space to install my very own water supply. Still more important, an internet company is coming next week to hook me up to the digital highway by means of a super-efficient fibre optic network. No more crackly Radio 4, it's Jenni Murray and Woman's Hour loud and clear from now on!

www.jpcoenschool.nl
www.kleurrijkescholen.nl
www.gemengdescholen.nl
www.breastcancerhaventrust.nl (one opening in Leeds fairly soon)
www.maggiescentre.org (a truly inspirational woman and I wish I lived closer by, so I could visit one of their centres)