Upcoming round of grants will be disastrous for artists, but there is a solution

By March 1, every artist who wants government support must have submitted their application. Funds, municipalities and the state will then deliberate in committees. The quadrennial tombola will turn out even more dramatic this year than four years ago, when huge cuts were made by CDA, PVV and VVD. With virtually no money being added now, and in fact often additional cuts, any newcomer to the system will have the end of another artist on its conscience. Even more so than four years ago.

The Performing Arts Fund, for example, which was hit hard at the time by the Rutte 1 cutback and has since been used as a reserve pot by culture minister Bussemaker, has recently given money to institutions that have performed perfectly well with it. All requirements have been met, no club has failed to keep its own promises. Some organisations even have better figures than four years ago, although we now know who for that the bill has paid.

The problem now is that such a fund cannot kick anyone out of the system because they have not met the requirements. Yet it has an obligation to ensure the rejuvenation and renewal of the arts on offer in the Netherlands. Fresh blood is needed. And so that can only be done by first draining healthy blood. In which the victims have every right to appeal to every conceivable body. Something that has been done successfully many times in the past period, and will only happen more often in the next four years.

The mutual solidarity in the art world is thus completely lost.

Reserves are depleted, there is no more money for nice things and worker poverty will only get worse. The minister in no way anticipated this development, busy as she was with the sector-wide good-news show that characterised her reign.

Before all hell breaks loose, a new secretary of state for culture from a new government will have been appointed. Bussemaker will not have to bear the consequences of her policies herself. Her successor will have no choice but to make rock-hard cuts in supply. The chances of a new government being in favour of increasing art subsidies are about as high as the chances of a PVV member handing out soup in an AZC.

So is there nothing possible to stop this race to the bottom?

The solution is there, but it is about as unlikely: with the introduction of a basic wage for every Dutch citizen, we can remove personnel costs from art subsidies. Those costs now make up eighty to ninety per cent of subsidy applications. Then, for the first time in years, we could talk about art again, all together. Instead of about money.