The Rutte III Cabinet is finally in place after long negotiations. It is a cabinet that will govern in financial prosperity, but that prosperity applies to a very limited extent to the Arts & Culture sector. Step by step, the cabinet will work towards an extra 80 million euros for the Culture sector from 2020, it says. But if this were enough, which it is not, there are also a few snags. The worst thing about this is that the cabinet underpins this limited investment with an outright lie in the content paragraph on Arts & Culture in the coalition agreement.
The paragraph reads as follows:
Culture enriches the individual and connects society. Besides its intrinsic value and its value for our identity and history, culture contributes to our country's economy, for example by contributing to tourism and a good business climate. Interest in art and culture, for instance through cultural education, cannot start early enough. After a period of considerable reform, the cultural sector has succeeded in finding new money flows, new audiences and surprising forms of cooperation. However, specialised knowledge and the reserves of institutions are under pressure. In the coming years, we therefore want to make targeted additional investments in quality.
Core issue
This passage from the coalition agreement lists exactly why so little extra money is being allocated to Arts & Culture. Without substantiation, this cabinet confirms in this brief introduction the success of its own policy line of recent years. Cultural institutions should show more cultural entrepreneurship and be less dependent on the government, and then build policy on that. But she undermines this in the same paragraph by raising the core problem of recent years, the pressure on institutions' reserves. How will that come about? Let's go back to 2011 for a moment.
This was the year that the Rutte I Cabinet, with Halbe Zijlstra as State Secretary for Culture, made swingeing cuts to the Culture sector. Not only did it cut over 200 million euros from the Culture Fund, the Cabinet also spared part of the sector, causing the other part to be hit even harder. Heritage and museum functions, in particular, were spared. However, extra harsh measures were taken in the big cities and the Randstad region. Not for nothing were the riots loudest there. The sector was also put on the zero line for several years, which effectively meant no inflation compensation. The Rutte II cabinet largely continued the policy.
Knock
Although the tone changed with the arrival of Minister Bussemaker, there was virtually no mention of any austerity correction. The minister screened existing agreements in the coalition agreement and scrapped small bits of money for festivals, cultural participation and cultural education over a five-year period. There was also some extra money for international presentation of Dutch companies.
Meanwhile, the sector just grumbled on. Above all, organisations became smaller, which in practice meant that the same work had to be done with fewer people. This made a nice difference to the fixed costs. Many theatres intervened, for instance by reducing the number of days they were open to the public, so that they could rent out more commercially or simply cut costs. And above all, they compensated, offset with reserves built up in the past. And precisely those reserves have now just about dried up.
New standard
Back to the coalition agreement. So, where in difficult financial times more than 200 million was cut from the state budget alone on Arts & Culture, in good times well less than half is compensated. Not to mention repairing the 0-line that was used for years. And thus Halbe Zijlstra's policy has become the new standard to be built on.
But the terrible thing is that this is done on the basis of a lie, again in this coalition agreement. The lie that the Culture Sector has succeeded in finding new money streams. That this has succeeded applies only to a very small part of the sector, namely the part that is attractive to those other money flows, the so-called 'excellent' part of the sector. And even for these institutions, this is true only to a very limited extent. But the Rijksmuseum then you are going to say and Toneelgroep Amsterdam with Ivo van Hove and Jude Law!
Of course, they do keep their heads above water, although it is questionable whether it is such a fat lot at TGA. But for all those parties that are not in that position, what the coalition agreement states is not true at all. In that respect, fact-checking this coalition agreement would not be a luxury.
And then a word about that 80 million, which will therefore only be available from 2020. That is available for again the top institutions, for talent development (new talent and top talent) aimed especially at the region, again cultural participation and for the cultural-historical awareness of us and our children, something that previously would not fall under the Culture portfolio at all, but under that of Education. And that warning about drying up reserves for most of the sector. Nothing at all happens with that. Incoming minister Van Engelshoven is going to have a tough time with this.
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