The hipsters of Tilburg are the social layer of civilization that sees itself as a rebellious avant-garde part of society. In Tilburg. What do we expect to find? First of all, a lot of beards. Beards and glasses. With the SamSam just around the corner they dress in vintage clothes, but manage to stay hip and trendy by combining their second hand denim jacket with some new pair of yeezys. Both boys and  girls occasionally wear their hair in a casual messy bun or they rock the pretty half-bun. Not only your appearance is important, but your way of living. Being a hipster is not only a style, it is a lifestyle.

Coffee, a lot of coffee is what we expect too, like a double white fudge latte, a caramel almond macchiato or a creamy hot chocolate, all kinds of coffee, trendy coffee, fair-trade coffee, black coffee. Served in a new school coffee shop, where you can sit on sustainable furniture and eat trendy healthy-ish food. For example sandwiches with humus and quinoa, powerpancakes or just a fresh Greek yogurt with some fresh fruits. Most menus in these places have exotic English names for their dishes and drinks it is easy to presume that most of them speak fluent English. As for their nationalities, we think the hipsters of Tilburg are probably all Dutch, but internationally orientated. 

Now, their music is something that is very varying, when relaxing they like to listen to some singer-songwriter with guitar playing that touches their inner creative soul or they lay back and enjoy some indie-rock band in a dreamy basement. Occasionally they find themselves trapped in a jazzy bar or they enjoy some old school reggae while sparking a green grass filled joint. When the hipsters party, they really party, they enjoy the sounds of the electronically produced sound waves of different djs at a techno or deephouse festival while being on some mind expanding sedatives.

But what we expect the most are hipsters who do not like to be called hipsters. The term hipster has become negative, basically the hipsters are polluted. Their name has become a product for mass production and commercial use, wannabe’s are taking over their habitat and it has even become mainstream to be a hipster. That is why we would like to introduce a new term throughout this project: Fresh Urban Entrepreneurs.

Why entrepreneurs? Because from the insignificant amount of knowledge we do have about hipsters in Tilburg, we know that there is a number of hipsters that are entrepreneurs. Or they are in training to be an entrepreneur. We can find hipsters in different areas of creative expertise, but mind you these areas can be overlapping and combinable. We will take a look at different educations, like Fontys Art Academy, International Event, Music & Entertainment Studies and Lifestyle, to find some hipsters. Some of them might even be hiding in the Online Culture department of the University. They use their training to create a job for themselves out their hobbies and likes. Some of them have already accomplished to create an entire enterprise, organizing events like Draaimolen Festival and other events for the youngsters of Tilburg. Yes, they care about Tilburg, they want to make Tilburg a finer and amusing place to live in. That could possibly be what makes the hipsters of Tilburg different from the hipsters of the Randstad. From Tilburg, for Tilburg. We also think that this work alone is not enough to pay the bills.  So they manage to pay their rent and groceries by combining their passion-job with an additional side job, like waiting tables or bartending.  

Nowadays, the online image is very important, we expect that the hipsters mostly use The Gram a.k.a. Intsagram to post photos of their trendy food, their attended events and of course to promote their creative enterprises. Facebook is an important social media too, in order to be a successful entrepreneur, they have to network. Facebook is the best medium for the hipsters to promote themselves and create a massive network for their entrepreneurship.

To sum it up, we expect different kinds of hipsters in the same and overlapping cultural sector. We expect the hipsters of Tilburg to like their special coffees, wear sustainable clothing and have combinable passions and ambitions. The hipster is a real phenomenon in Tilburg and we will try to examine all different sorts of hipsters and their environments. Our expected image of the hipster will probably be just a generalization of what we see in the mass media and a prejudiced illustration of our own imagination, but we hope to discover the real world of the hipsters in Tilburg as it is, not as we see it.