Today, the Culture Council comes out with one of the weaker opinions in its existence. The Netherlands' highest cultural advisory body showed vision, leadership and boldness earlier this season with the 'Exploration' and the 'Music sector advice'. The exploration called for a reversal of subsidy flows, with urban regions taking the initiative. In its advice for the music sector, the council advocated the removal of boundaries between popular and elite expressions.
The 'Theatre sector advice', published today (16 February), is less focused. The council now mainly calls for shifts in emphasis and customisation. Thus, it paves the way for at least another four years with this advice arbitrariness by national, local and regional politics. Something the theatre sector has already largely fallen victim to in the years since 'Halbe Zijlstra'.
'Review the system'
The main recommendation still seems firm. It reads: 'Review the grant system to make it more inclusive and accommodate institutions and creators from culturally diverse backgrounds, or creators and institutions working from new disciplines.' In doing so, the college calls for the Cultural Diversity Code to be enforced for once. It even wants to go so far as to introduce a quota for a culturally diverse personnel policy. This justified call for a culturally diverse quota will cause a stir. It will distract attention from other issues.
Irreparable
Otherwise, the sector opinion devotes mainly a lot of space to describing the current situation in the theatre sector. This is disastrous, although the Council does its best to see bright spots here and there.
It becomes clear that the fact-free austerity politics by the Rutte I cabinet, followed by the cashless patchwork by Labour minister Bussemaker under Rutte II, supplemented by the picking crown jewels by various parties in the run-up to Rutte III, has caused damage. The extent of that damage is now becoming clear: irreparable. At least, everything has to change.
The Basic Cultural Infrastructure (BIS), which was launched just before Halbe Zijlstra took office, is no longer working. The Council therefore now recommends 'work more with tailor-made subsidies for distinctive ambitions of companies, such as developing new repertoire, touring, playing in the large auditorium, mentoring talent or playing abroad.‘
The youth theatre companies, which initially did not but later joined the basic infrastructure due to political intervention, show where it went wrong. They may now have structural security, but the BIS rules confront them with tasks they cannot perform with the existing budget.
Make compulsion
The Performing arts fund was given the thankless task of absorbing the dropout from the BIS and also making its own policies. With 45% less money. Political distrust forced a forest of regulations. This created a system in which the release of performances, regardless of their quality, became more important than the artistic content of performances. Something that irrevocably leads to quality inflation (The Council says nothing about this, but does report that in cabaret, where without subsidy something similar is going on, this has led to a drop in quality).
Moreover, the Fund chose to maintain many small initiatives with just too little money to survive. This soured the labour market. Wage employment gave way to voluntary work and an abundance of severely underpaid self-employed workers. In terms of health and safety, this also led to an unprecedented number of burn-outs and worse in the theatre world. People turn out to continue working even when there is no money, and no other remuneration, because empty halls outside the pitch.
Everyone was waiting for now, On the moment when Council for Culture would come up with a system review. The moment when everything would be straightened out again. Unfortunately, that is not happening. The Council is only doing the recommendation To stop relying on compulsion when making performances, but on need. This would be the need of the creator, not the audience. The maker is still sacred and should be given the chance to worry about nothing except the quality of his or her work. It is up to the rest of the sector to find an audience for that. That uniquely Dutch division between supply and demand remains.
Regional Cultural Infrastucture
The primacy of urban regions, still widely advocated in the earlier opinions, turns out to be butter soft. Now it merely states: 'The council makes a case for a theatre system that relies more on local roots. By having strong ties between venues and companies in their own region, they can better respond to the composition of the audience and the social environment. Such firm roots are the basis for an (inter)national profile.' The term Regional Cultural Infrastructure still appears in only 1 place, where it is mentioned twice in the same paragraph.
"It would be nice, but it doesn't have to", sounds a bit different from flipping the system anyway
Panic in the field
That there is so little strength in the current sector opinion is probably due to the panic that broke out in the field after the 'Exploration' and the 'Music Sector Opinion'. Accustomed as theatre institutions are to blow with the new political wind every four years, they now feared a mandatory relocation to a random rural village, to dance to the tune of local aldermen. By now deleting the term Regional Infrastructure from the sector opinion in all but one place, the council hopes to allay those fears.
But there is more. The Council endorses the earlier by the so-called Ter Horst Committee observed surplus to large theatres in the Netherlands. But the council does not advocate a system where the subsidised offer is still only offered in a dozen or so large centres (RIS). However logical and useful that would be. Instead, the council now merely suggests a seat reduction at the next renovation. With such a diplomatic proposal, no councillor is discouraged from putting his next load of real estate euros back into a big theatre.
But let's not be too negative. The clever brickbats who now come up with a plan to convert 1,000-seat theatres into entertainment paradises with 400 lounge areas and a cocktail bar will be bacon.
Talent development
The buzzword talent development also plays a tricky role in the advice. In fact, the Council argues that it should no longer be an exclusive task of the BIS companies. They were given that role after Halbe Zijlstra killed the newly established chain of production houses for unclear reasons. The council now wants some of those production houses to return. But the council also says others can take on that role.
So no choice is made here and only 'customisation' is advised. Companies that want to can get extra money if they do something great with talent development. Assessing this, of course, becomes tricky. How do you determine the level of compensation? Is it fair? That will be war. We can already hear the lawyers sharpening their pens.
Labour market agenda support
An even more thorny issue, which the Council flies around with a graceful bow, is the labour market. The text does contain a passage accusing the Performing Arts Fund in particular of having facilitated the disastrous staff situation, with underpayment, free work and self-exploitation, with its awards for this grant period.
The final recommendation is a lot more cautious: 'Support the labour market agenda of Kunsten '92, which includes the Fair Practice Code belongs. Enable companies to pay their staff according to the collective agreement by adjusting subsidy levels accordingly.' The suggestion, that with the same level of subsidy, the number of initiatives to be subsidised will therefore have to be significantly reduced, has been relegated to the background. It is still in the text, but did not make the list of recommendations.
Ball in the sector
Finally, another striking thing: the Council wants the Theatre Institute of the Netherlands (TIN) back. Rightly so in itself: that memory of theatre, already never very much cherished, was bluntly abolished in 2012. Millions in human and artistic capital were thrown away. The collection is now housed at the University of Amsterdam, but its funding stops. Furthermore, not everything appears to be properly preserved. So new funding will have to come for this.
Nor does the council answer the question of where that should come from. Here again, the ball is put in the court of the sector and especially politicians(. That the council then mentions in this chapter of criticism and reflection only the media (Theaterkrant, Nieuwe Grond and Transitiebureau) in which members of the council committee itself are closely involved, and the rest are not, we will just see as a hastily made mistake).
At least eight years
In summary, the opinion makes it clear how damaged the theatre sector is. Recovery will take a long time. Indeed, it is to be feared that the council's suggestions will not lead to a new system within four years. They are too softly put for that. There has been plenty of time recently to come up with a stronger answer. It appears that none of the parties involved could see beyond their own interests. That does happen more often with traumatised patients. That cooperation between employers (NAPK), presentation institutions(VSCD) and distributors and producers (VVTP) in the performing arts stalled this autumn is a symptom of that.
The theatre sector's inaction, and the lack of decisive action by the Culture Council, means there is a good chance that the status quo, with all its disastrous consequences for staff and audiences, will continue for at least another eight years. In the meantime, the ball is in politics' court, which is sailing on day rates. With the municipal elections just around the corner, that is not very reassuring.
So you run the risk that in eight years, there will be very little left to revise, in terms of the system.
The opinion:
https://www.cultuur.nl/actueel/nieuws/raad-voor-cultuur-pleit-voor-herziening-theaterbestel/item3830
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