The new theatre system is just about finished. Only seven 'dilemmas' remain.

[This post was already online under the title 'Save us from the Transition Office', but has been updated on a few details].

While you are preparing for a well-earned holiday, people in the arts sector are working on a new model. That new model is needed because the old model is no longer adequate. That old model, and we are of course talking about our multi-year cultural plans, started creaking after the Rutte 1 government drained half the lubricating oil from the engine.

That draining of the oil first led to some squeaking and crackling, then strange fumes and a bad drive. Now stands the heart, the cylinder head, get stuck, if not the timing belt is going to fail sooner. 2019 at the latest. So the industry itself comes up with a solution: maybe we should consider changing petrol soon. In 2020. This can be read in the article '7 dilemmas for the theatre sector' on the online platform for theatre reviewers Theaterkrant. Let me explain why I got even more spontaneous pimples.

No horizon

The main problem is that the article completely ignores the systemic crisis into which the entire arts sector has fallen. The seven so-called dilemmas are all descriptions of marginal choices. In practice, all existing structures remain intact. The article describes only a few issues that came into play with the current arts plan. The horizon is two years behind them.

For example, the choice ('Dilemma 1') between pluralism and being a good employer was indeed evoked by the Performing Arts Fund. That chose in the last allocation round of subsidies to give institutions too little money to pay their people normally. Reason for the explosive growth in the number of underpaid self-employed workers in the sector and the glut of trainees in vital positions in organisations. Not only the theatre sector thus maintains a form of silent slavery in public service. Subsidised visual arts organisations also exploit their main source of nourishment, the creators. The article does not argue that such actions violate any norm, but turns it into a fun dilemma.

Gorge

The second issue poses the choice of whether subsidies should be distributed by the ministry or by a large semi-governmental fund. In doing so, the piece totally ignores the biggest problem that threatens entire arts sector: the yawning gap between population and (subsidised) arts. Indeed, in both cases, the theatre sector appears to opt for a centrally managed system, at a safe distance from the public. No dilemma, then, but a safe choice between two juggernauts.

The so-called dilemma on cultural diversity (quotas or no quotas) is yet another open door with no prospect of improvement. Of course, the quota or no quota discussion is fun to have. Only nowhere in this piece does it address the issue that the current system fails to reach and sometimes even excludes entire populations. With a thoroughly 'white' system, you can quota all you want. You won't bridge the deep cultural divide in society with it.

No fundamental right

Even less relevant is the question of whether culture makers in the unsubsidised circuit are also allowed to apply for subsidies for a small project every now and then. Frankly, I am a bit surprised that applying for subsidies is apparently not a fundamental right of every Dutchman. By the looks of it, there is already a shuffling before the gate. Shocking.

Whether or not companies should be held to a minimum number of performances in the major theatres of the Netherlands for their grant money? Another non-issue. The core of the problem: the abundance of large theatres in every village in our country, remains unaddressed.

Zwolle

Question six addresses 'the region'. The 'dilemma' is even more tenuous that I already feared. In short, it comes down to a choice between being tied to an arbitrary region imposed by a central organisation (see point 2), or leaving creators free to decide for themselves where they work. Again, that huge distance from the population. The role of municipalities or neighbourhoods is absent. Theatres are presentation institutions and nothing else. In this system, 'The Hague' is still going to determine what happens in Zwolle. Or the art world itself determines that nothing at all happens in Zwolle, because nobody happens to feel like travelling past the A10 for a while.

That Youth Performing Arts should be seen as one block, or that they should also be divided there by genre or discipline? It is a non-issue that will have no substantial effect as long as the total youth budget is as minimal as it is now.

Transition Office

Once upon a time, I thought the arts sector was made up of creative freethinkers. So where did this soggy piece come from so close to the holidays? With formulations that have the dank smell of meeting rooms with closed shutters? How can such a pluralistic art world come up with seven half-hearted compromises? An average committee of uninspired city councillors would have shown more boldness and initiative.

Cause is 'The Transition Office'. This is an 'institute' conceived by a number of theatre makers that, according to its own website, does not want to be committed to anything. It has since acquired some status and works with the Lectorate Podiumkunsten in Transitie of the Amsterdam Theatre School. So the Transition Office has now been called in by the Council for Culture. This high advisory body to the minister of OCW has been venturing into 'the region' over the past year to talk to 'stakeholders'. Following the pattern of The Transition Bureau.

Fantastic, of course, but what they do is so undefined that futility glistens. In every conversation (have been there a few times), they seek consensus from the first minute. This is done by letting differences of opinion exist nicely and looking for what they do agree on. This means that dissenting voices are effectively hushed up. Anyone who raises their voice or treads a hobbyhorse, or has a solution but thinks too unconventionally, is ignored. And sometimes the conversation facilitator just gets sad. Because getting angry is not cosy ('constructive').

Status Quo

Now you will probably object that it must be down to me and my big mouth, and then I will agree. Then ask yourself whether the industry is not letting itself be sewn into a harmless suit in this way. This is way beyond the polder model. This makes extremes suspect and glorifies the will of the middle. In a society that needs to heal from a bloody civil war, this may be salutary. For the arts in the Netherlands, it is deadly.

The Transition Office was established with millennials in mind. This is the generation that was rightly not at all happy about that ridiculous Cry for Culture of 2010 or that embarrassing March of Civilisation a few months later. So the fact that the response has become a half-baked and soggy piece of official text is somewhat of their own doing, those screamers and civilisers of the time. Quite apart from the fact that they were those millennials have raised to the colourless, introspective generation of artists we see here.

The worst part is that the people who came up with this über-compromise as a lobbying piece totally ignore that which actually gives them the only right to make art: the public. Because for the public, they are apparently all terrified. At least, it played an even smaller role in the conversations than in the delivered text.

The Culture Council is already opting for a conservative course, but giving everyone the idea that there is something to choose from. That, in turn, scares me a lot.