Get to Know the Pirate Crew
Meet our crew
Ulysses Schuitemaker
Co-founder, Project Developer, IT, and Creative Vision
Ulysses runs the ship behind the scenes. He codes, designs, and organizes, keeping projects afloat while connecting artists, changemakers, and dreamers. From coding smart systems to building immersive experiences, he blends tech, creativity, and connection to make every journey a way to foster collaboration and discovery.
Gabriel Busato da Rocha
Finance, Administration, and Governance
Gabriel holds the ship's financial and organizational backbone. He works with alternative economies, fundraising, and regenerative financial strategies, while helping shape the organization's internal governance and decision-making structures. As a facilitator, he supports processes that allow people, projects, and resources to move with clarity, trust, and shared responsibility.
Prisca Braga
Educational Strategist, Grant Writer, Facilitator, Vision Keeper
Prisca shapes the learning adventures that bring our vision to life. She designs programs, runs workshops, and coordinates projects that turn ideas about degrowth, regenerative economies, and the pluriverse into hands-on experiences. Through her work, every gathering becomes a space to explore, connect, and co-create a world rooted in regeneration and belonging.
Ramiro Ramirez
Secretary (Board Member), IT & Systems
Ramiro keeps our digital systems running smoothly and securely. As both IT lead and board member, he bridges technical infrastructure with long-term vision, ensuring that our tools, platforms, and systems support the organization’s stability, growth, and mission.
Dan Gibbon-Walsh
President (Board Member)
Dan ensures that our ship sails with clarity, accountability, and direction. As President and board member, he helps with administration while serving as our legal representative.
Polysson
Secretary of Fluffiness
Polysson was born in the same year that the Valparaíso ship found its captain, Ulysses. She has been making sure that our ship remains kind, tender, and fluffy, inspiring the crew to do all of their work with love and dedication.
Together through transition
Hand in hand, we navigate a world in transition, connecting, co-creating, and experimenting with alternatives to the systems that no longer serve us.
Our History
Valparaíso is a city on the Chilean coast, between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean. It was named by the Spanish conquerors when their ships moored upon the shores over five hundred years ago. It was the closest port city along the path to a place these sailors considered paradise after a long, enduring journey.
Ulysses, a Dutch artist and traveler, arrived in the city by chance. With his motorcycle left broken on the roadside in Argentina, he hitchhiked to continue his journey and ended up in Valparaíso. As he travelled through the city's rough exterior, he began to look more closely at its interior. He fell in love with the bohemian and artistic atmosphere within the city and found a limitless source of inspiration. Like dirty nails and worn hands, the city had its own beauty beneath the surface.
Art and culture were very much alive and growing, creating a space for collaboration among creative minds and free thinkers. It was the people who were breathing life into the old streets and decaying walls.
Valparaíso was referred to as the road to paradise. Indeed, the city has its own sense of paradise - one that comes from the connections of its inhabitants. The sense of satisfaction from working together to achieve something beautiful is what gives the city its rich soul.
The inspiration was so great in Ulysses's life that when he returned to his home country, he found a hundred-year-old barge that he called "Valparaíso". That is when it all began: Adventures of the Valparaíso became a metaphor for the journey toward paradise.
Life on the Valparaíso ship began as an art studio above the hull of the barge, which has had more people helping on board than scratches in its paint. The fuel that kept the ship and its projects going is the inspiration of the old port city it is named after.
Around 2015, the project broadened its focus, recognizing regenerative transition as essential to a thriving world. That same year, it became an officially registered foundation under Dutch law, evolving into a hub for educators, activists, and community-builders exploring more just and regenerative ways of living.
From 2018 onwards, the foundation delivered trainings, gatherings, youth exchanges, and learning journeys across different communities in Europe and beyond, expanding its work beyond the ship itself.
In 2025, the organization’s base moved to a farm in the small town of Oostzaan. This marked a period of consolidation and alignment, during which the foundation clarified its vision, mission, and values, strengthening its commitment to wellbeing beyond growth, decolonial perspectives, and pluriversal approaches. Today, Adventures of the Valparaíso continues as a living network dedicated to regenerative education and collaboration.
While the ship itself no longer sails, the soul of the Valparaíso remains very much alive. It continues through storytelling, creativity, and the artistic spirit that have always shaped how we learn, imagine, and connect. Art remains a vital part of our work, as a way to sense, question, and open space for regenerative futures.
The ship is found and the adventure begins! The 100 year old canal vessel and its new captain, a nomadic Dutchman, make their first journey towards their new life, with little idea of how many faces, stories, experiences, and lessons they will encounter in their first exhilarating years together.
While transforming the boat into a stained glass art studio, the Captain welcomes volunteers from a global community of artists, travellers and tradesmen. The adventurous souls sharing their skills and creativity onboard quickly become an essential part of the Valparaíso story.
It is time to broaden the Valparaíso horizons and she sets sail for Amsterdam! Here the Captain finds significantly more opportunities for creative collaborations, access to resources and an ever-widening circle of volunteers and kindred projects. An exciting new chapter begins!
The boat becomes a hub where artists meet to combine resources, abilities and ideas toward a vital creative life source, ART! The now-established onboard culture endorses the belief that creativity is essential to our happiness and survival, both as individuals and as a global family.
Over time, the art-focused community around the boat developed a growing commitment to regenerative ways of living, recognizing that creativity, systems change, and regeneration are deeply interconnected. From this shift, the seeds of what would later become Adventures of the Valparaíso foundation were planted.
Officially becoming a foundation provided the organizational structure needed to expand and develop non-formal education initiatives with a broader reach and lasting impact. The boat became the headquarters of the foundation, becoming a meeting place for brainstorming sessions and the meeting of different minds who all wished to co-create a more regenerative world.
The first seeds of what would later become the New Pirate Economy began to sprout. Early experiments explored alternative forms of value and exchange, including a “trade tent” where people exchanged goods for stories. That same spirit led to playful, community-based actions, from helping people who had lost their keys to supporting those who had lost their friends - always offered freely, as acts of care rather than transactions.
For 7 years, the Adventures of the Valparaíso delivered numerous youth-focused projects across Europe, including trainings, youth exchanges, and workshops centered on the ecological, social, cultural, and economic dimensions of regeneration. This period marked a phase of growth, visibility, strong partnerships, and deepened impact, allowing the foundation to mature and strengthen its role as a platform for non-formal regenerative education.
The foundation’s base moved from the ship on the water to a farm in Oostzaan, marking a moment of grounding and consolidation. During this period, our focus deepened, our mission and values were clarified, and our commitment to regenerative alternatives became more explicit. This phase strengthened the New Pirate Economy as a guiding framework and expanded our ways of working, combining research, theory, and practice.
The ship is found and the adventure begins! The 100 year old canal vessel and its new captain, a nomadic Dutchman, make their first journey towards their new life, with little idea of how many faces, stories, experiences, and lessons they will encounter in their first exhilarating years together.
While transforming the boat into a stained glass art studio, the Captain welcomes volunteers from a global community of artists, travellers and tradesmen. The adventurous souls sharing their skills and creativity onboard quickly become an essential part of the Valparaíso story.
It is time to broaden the Valparaíso horizons and she sets sail for Amsterdam! Here the Captain finds significantly more opportunities for creative collaborations, access to resources and an ever-widening circle of volunteers and kindred projects. An exciting new chapter begins!
The boat becomes a hub where artists meet to combine resources, abilities and ideas toward a vital creative life source, ART! The now-established onboard culture endorses the belief that creativity is essential to our happiness and survival, both as individuals and as a global family.
Over time, the art-focused community around the boat developed a growing commitment to regenerative ways of living, recognizing that creativity, systems change, and regeneration are deeply interconnected. From this shift, the seeds of what would later become Adventures of the Valparaíso foundation were planted.
Officially becoming a foundation provided the organizational structure needed to expand and develop non-formal education initiatives with a broader reach and lasting impact. The boat became the headquarters of the foundation, becoming a meeting place for brainstorming sessions and the meeting of different minds who all wished to co-create a more regenerative world.
The first seeds of what would later become the New Pirate Economy began to sprout. Early experiments explored alternative forms of value and exchange, including a “trade tent” where people exchanged goods for stories. That same spirit led to playful, community-based actions, from helping people who had lost their keys to supporting those who had lost their friends - always offered freely, as acts of care rather than transactions.
For 7 years, the Adventures of the Valparaíso delivered numerous youth-focused projects across Europe, including trainings, youth exchanges, and workshops centered on the ecological, social, cultural, and economic dimensions of regeneration. This period marked a phase of growth, visibility, strong partnerships, and deepened impact, allowing the foundation to mature and strengthen its role as a platform for non-formal regenerative education.
The foundation’s base moved from the ship on the water to a farm in Oostzaan, marking a moment of grounding and consolidation. During this period, our focus deepened, our mission and values were clarified, and our commitment to regenerative alternatives became more explicit. This phase strengthened the New Pirate Economy as a guiding framework and expanded our ways of working, combining research, theory, and practice.