Marketing strategist Halbe Zijlstra has failed. His valiant attempt to use a 'Giving Act' boosting donations from small individuals to arts institutions has backfired. Since 2011, contributions made by ordinary households to cultural institutions fell from 32 euros, to 28 euros on average in 2014. This is according to the survey 'Cultural institutions in the Netherlands: Changes in giving behaviour, donations, fundraising and income between 2011 and 2014', which was presented in a small gathering on Friday 10 June.
It is not only households that are keeping a tight hand on the purse strings. The wealthy are also giving less and less, with a few exceptions. In addition, contributions from funds and lotteries are at an all-time low, with no prospect of improvement.
Marketing strategist Halbe Zijlstra naturally had some idea that he would fail in his campaign for the Giving Act. After all, at the same time, he was obliged by his own party and the then coalition-dog PVV to report to the population that the art world consisted entirely of subsidy addicts, who knew nothing of business and made incomprehensible leftist things with taxpayers' money. Reason enough to multiply with a 250,000,000 euro cut in the state budget a total cut of more than half a billion in cultural spending.
Not another piece of bad news!
And why do we have to face this bad news again? Doesn't this increase the population's willingness to give? Indeed, but the frenetic manner on which some in the sector are trying to reverse the flow of bad news about the art world will not help either. Surely we need to keep pointing out here the main reason why so many people continue to work at starvation wages, why more and more paid jobs are being taken over by volunteers, and why venues in the province are barely real culture programming: as long as the government continues to suggest in almost all its manifestations that art is unnecessary and money-consuming, citizens will follow that image.
So herewith an appeal to Mark Rutte to show up not only at Gordon, but also at the Holland Festival. Or at Boulevard in den Bosch, or Poetry in Rotterdam. In a pink jumper, if necessary.
The art sector has shown that it is not addicted to subsidies: everyone now works their asses off for half money or does it for free, galleries are kept open by old grannies, the nephews of star actors stand at the entrance selling tickets. Trainees do the work of professionals.
Still we have quality, and stand at the top of the world, but for how long, Mark?
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