By now, we are a little surrounded by voting guides and electoral compasses. There is one for every area of policy. What to vote for if you have a beating heart for art? The Correspondent recently gave a nice overview. This showed that art is indeed a hobby of mainly left-wing parties, at least when it comes to subsidised art. Art in general can count on much more support, to the point of being unsavoury. Fascist angehauchte Parties like FvD, PVV (including satellites) and Denk also consider 'art'n'culture' very important, for example. Problem is that they then want to do things with it that make one culture (their own) win out over another[ref]the Ukrainian, the gutmensch, the foreigner, the newcomer, the Gülen supporter[/ref].
[Tweet "On the left, what they want with our 'arts culture' is not all that convenient"]But even on the left, what the parties want with our 'arts culture' is not all that convenient. Of course: D66, GroenLinks, SP and PvdA all hand out millions and want different things in return. Very fine: as an artist, you can take that into account in your next subsidy application. As you have always done for the past 30 years. But does that really make the world a better place, and 'should we all really want that'?[ref]Read more about bubbles and their negative consequences in this item.[/ref]
Everything must change
No political party, for example, is calling for a shake-up of the system. This is strange because the entire arts sector is convinced of this by now. The only party that does want a system change is the VVD. Then again, they have no substantive story to go with that, according to the programme and on enquiry, but they do want art colleges to educate fewer students.
Enough reason for appropriate indignation among the people who had previously been screaming for culture. However, those same people were also shouting before Halbe was nicknamed 'The Sloper' that there were far too many art colleges. Two new Halina Reijns every year, our theatre sector cannot handle that, let alone audiences. Three new Edo de Waarts every year, we don't have enough orchestras for that, especially when the last provincial bastions are also forced to merge or dissolve.
Talking to the VVD?
Anyway: so the VVD is coming to the rescue to solve the problem that they have partly caused themselves. That problem itself is of course terrible, and Halbe Zijlstra may burn in hell forever for his demonisation of the art world. If the party manages to finally talk about art and artisans in a normal way, a constructive conversation might still be possible with the parties that now mainly want to scatter money.
On the left, by the way, we also have a little problem with it. There, the attack has been launched on the self-employed deduction. That is a deduction that has enabled many very small self-employed people in the art world (and in journalism) to keep their heads above water in recent years. For them, that deduction acts as a kind of welfare benefit. Despite the cuts, a lot of art could therefore be made thanks to cheap labour by people who, before Halbe's interventions, were still able to do so in paid employment. This is called displacement, and the PvdA and SP want to get rid of it.
Small independents become big
Green Left sees the squall hanging and so wants to protect those small self-employed artist and journalist scribblers by preserving the self-employed deduction. Their renewal comes through an increase in the profits tax for SMEs. And that, So reported ZZP guru Pierre Spaninks, so means punishment for small independents once they grow into successful, large independents. Not nice either.
I have never floated like this before. Personally, I also think the world is too important for my voting behaviour to be guided by just one item, however much it matters to me. My vote has not yet been decided.
What now, art lover?
What I dream of is a Lower House and a Cabinet with artsy people, or at least art lovers, in it. People who can sing, people who know about our rich traditions, who read a book, who visit a theatre or museum and who enjoy talking about it with colleagues over coffee. People who are attached to the art they inherited from home, here in the Netherlands, or their parents' country.
My dream is that once again, during a parliamentary debate, a correct quote from Shakespeare, Molière or Ronald Giphart flies through the room. Or a lyric from David Bowie. Or Beyoncé. So that MPs show that for all their obsession with the issues of the day, they also have an eye for the relativising power of books, films and paintings. I don't see such MPs now. But there must be. The whole country will benefit.
Can we arrange that?
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