Opinions differ on size of the pot of money waiting for them, but mainly 'urban' creators do not yet know the way to our art subsidy system. That is why the three cultural funds that deal mainly with performing arts have appointed ambassadors in a number of Dutch cities. These 'Matchmakers' should narrow the gap between The Hague and 'the region'. The Performing Arts Fund, The Cultural Participation Fund and the VSB Fund work together in this initiative. Each year, it will be assessed whether the initiative produces the desired results.
According to Dennis Stam of the Performing Arts Fund, these are eight young people who have already built up quite a network in their city's urban culture. ''They are recognisable individuals, who are not just going to passively wait for applications, but who will actively seek out creators with good ideas who have not yet found their way to the three funds.''
Nothing in Overijssel
The eight cities in which a matchmaker will now start work are not evenly spread across the country. For instance, the whole of Overijssel is missing and the Northern Netherlands is covered from Groningen. Brabant has two cities with a matchmaker, which are also close to each other: Tilburg and Eindhoven. Of the big cities, The Hague and Utrecht are assigned an ambassador. Almere sees the Fund as the most exciting participant in the project. The whole list can be found at MatchmakersCulture.co.uk
'We mainly looked for cities where a bedding is already present,' Stam explains the distribution: 'Tilburg and Eindhoven have a hefty urban culture, but we see that creators there cannot yet find it enough as a Fund. The same goes for Utrecht and The Hague.' Should the plan be successful, other cities will also get a matchmaker. After this year, the participating funds will see if and where these people are needed.
Regional infrastructure
With the scheme, the funds anticipate On the Culture Council's cultural exploration. In November, that advisory panel came out with a paper critically examining the current subsidy structures. The current state subsidy system is based on a division into a Basic Infrastructure (BIS) whose subsidies are more or less fixed, and a number of funds that take care of everything else. Then, of course, there are the municipalities and provinces, each of which has its own budgets and policies.
The Council wants to change this. Besides the BIS, there should be a regional basic infrastructure (RIS), in which a dozen urban regions would have a say. In the Hague apartment building that houses the Performing Arts Fund, some alarm bells must have been ringing at the time. Not even so much from the staff themselves as from the 83 institutions that now receive money from that fund. Do they now suddenly have to commit to one of the 12 regions in the RIS? And then what?
Panic
The appointment of the urban matchmakers should, of course, be considered separately from this panic, justified or otherwise. After all, the application process began long before the Council came up with its reconnaissance. Still, it is obvious that these Matchmakers will give the Fund a firmer foothold in the many developments that will follow in the coming year and beyond.
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