Respect yourself. 5 unique opportunities for art's image.

It will be the big task for companies and interest clubs in culture for 2016: how do we improve the image of 'the sector'? Next year - I predict - no expense will be spared to improve the culture sector's image. I am sure there will also be a study on how to improve that image. On the transition between 2015 and 2016, this leads to a few preliminary thoughts on my part.

1. What image?

To make a very long and expensive story short: there is no problem at all with the image of the arts and culture sector. In any case, the image is not much worse or better than, say, 25 years ago. The only difference is that now there is a political elite in power that hates subsidies, distrusts intellect and finds social criticism suspect. Politicians who think that way had a bad image for a very long time. That image has not improved either, but the fact is that for a few years now they have been helped to gain majorities by voters who have also lost their minds.

But has this given the cultural sector a worse image? Certainly not.

2. Give the whiners a break

Suppose the people are right who say that the arts sector is subsidy-addicted, wants to rise above the rabble and thus looks down on the problems of ordinary people? Even if only slightly? What do they base their views on, then? Not just on populist propaganda. Just as refugee hatred thrives on our inbuilt fear of everything new, strange and unfamiliar: the seeds of propaganda germinate best when they fall into fertile soil.

Education, real estate, healthcare, military, arts. Wherever subsidies are provided, abuses occur. Anyone can think of an example of self-enrichment around a subsidy provided by political opponents. What goes wrong with real estate subsidies also goes wrong with art subsidies, although with art there are a few less numbers before the comma.

So a little introspection is needed. A few rotten apples have surfaced in the management and supervision field, partly due to the sudden change in attitude of the government, that no one can be proud of: the Orchestra of the East and The Grand Theatre are the most striking examples of this. Even though they involve peanuts, especially in relation to public money wasted on real estate or agricultural subsidies: in times of scarcity, anyone who "gets" anything is under a huge magnifying glass. One report on such an affair then makes any plea for the usefulness and necessity of art subsidies suspect. And quite rightly so.

3. Stop all the pleading

Maybe it's because of my timeline on Facebook and Twitter, but still at least every week someone shares with approval a plea for the necessity of art subsidies. And as much as I often agree, those pleas are counterproductive. At best, they achieve nothing. I have yet to see a politician whose views have changed thanks to a plea for cultural subsidies. The pleas only widen the gap. The more pleas, the more people will say to themselves: what a bored mess, those artists.

4. Respect yourself.

Cultural subsidies are not a right. Unfortunately, but nothing will change in the coming years. If, unexpectedly, a real populist ever comes to power, he or she might increase art subsidies, but following the party line, this will be subject to heavy content requirements. Should you be happy then?

Rather, prepare for a chilly and bleak future. Large cast plays will only be possible once or twice a year. Only the Concertgebouw Orchestra will still be able to muster enough quality musicians to play Mahler, visual artists will have to turn to the Tefaf audience for their income, writers will just keep doing what they have always done: working on a book in their spare time in the hope that one day they will sell enough to be able to take a few hours a day off, or be successful and still young enough to be allowed to join DasMag.

Art will survive, but not everyone who calls themselves an art professional now will survive. We just can't change that at all for a while. The changing political climate is as much of a certainty as sea level rise.

The world will never be the same again, but I hope the artists, the people in the cultural sector I love so much, knock the dirt off their shoulders and go back to work. No matter how underpaid. Even if by doing so they prove the most extreme liberals right.

Soît.

5. Fuck the system.

Imagination is more important than subsidy or politics.