How do you remove the negative sound around 'amateur art'?

A tricky question, but Festival Havenwerk director Erik-Jan Post has an idea and likes to bad some sacred cows. About arts education. About the concept of 'amateur'. About how big you should want to be as a festival.

'We are much less a festival in the classical sense. Port work is more of a meeting place, with the participants taking centre stage. This year, therefore, entry prices have been reduced. For 3 (Saturday) and 2 (Sunday) euros, you can enter the festival grounds and watch a large number of performances. A few more euros will have to be paid for some performances. We want to make the festival even more accessible and therefore apply the 'Parade principle' with many high-level performances and demonstrations in addition to performances. In 2008, we started very small, with all disciplines together. From the start, the focus was on young people and talent development, but the emphasis is now more on theatre, dance and music.'

Will that draw an audience?

'Definitely. Last year, we had over a thousand visitors a day and over six hundred participants. Bigger is not necessary for us, we look for more depth. Then you are looked at oddly by the province and municipality, especially in Deventer, where all festivals attract more and more visitors year in, year out. If you don't attract 100,000 visitors, you have very different conversations, you are soon a voice in the desert. But we have an excellent relationship with the province. We got extra money from the experiment and innovation pot and are busy developing an app - Art Beacon - which acts as a kind of digital open stage for talents. That can be voted on and, together with a professional jury, the winners will be featured on the next edition of Havenwerk.'

And this year?

'Havenwerk primarily hosts the top segment of Dutch youth theatre schools but also looks beyond borders. We are part of a European network of youth theatre festivals. Theatre by young people has enormous diversity, but unfortunately often takes place on the periphery. I have not yet come across a festival like Havenwerk with an emphasis on youth theatre schools in Europe. And the differences between countries are huge. In the Netherlands, what we show is all too easily dismissed with the term 'amateurs'. This plays much less in Flanders and especially England. The youth and adult legs are much more mixed there. I recently saw at the Lyric Hammersmith the production Bugsy Malone. A fantastic show that sells out venues night after night and features young people and adults playing together.'

So getting to Havenwerk?

'I would like to, but that is unaffordable. But we do strive for that level. With every performance, we ask ourselves the question 'Can the performance do without young people or without professionals?' If so, that performance is not for us. Our grand challenge lies in turning the word amateur. How to get the negative sound around amateur art away? Every performance we present has a 100% professional team around it. As near-graduates make themselves new creators call it, I prefer to speak of young creators. Central to this is talent development.'

Could it be better?

'Compare it to top-class sport, which theatre obviously is. For athletes, the development is much more gradual and there are no locks in the river, there is no moment when you are told to stop and train first. But we think too much in pigeonholes. There are not too many top athletes in the Netherlands, but there is a surplus of graduated actors. Maybe we should do away with the whole art education system and place top-level training at BIS institutions. In addition, we could make much more use of the knowledge of theatre schools to allow young talent to grow without all kinds of obstacles.'

That's not going to happen...

'No, but we need to get rid of all the locks and cubicles. Like the one between extracurricular and intracurricular cultural education, between welfare and culture. We need much more decluttering, there are opportunities there.'