On October 23, website Theatre newspaper.co.uk a piece about the future of the performing arts. A future that is black and bleak when you, as a creator, count on growth, or even survival at all. In short: so much money is going away from the Performing Arts Fund, that from next year only between 50 and 60 applications can be honoured, instead of the 112 now. Reason: cuts, fair practice and transfer to the Basic Infrastructure, which will ultimately leave 16 companies in the lifeboat there.
I don't want to be dickish, but the balderdash now announced comes four years too late. Not that I approve of the current disaster, on the contrary, but the Performing Arts Fund made it four years ago deliberately chosen 112 subsidising companies and creators with too little money. This created the human tragedy of burnouts and failures that made a Fair Practice Code necessary. That Fair Practice Code is now ensuring that Halbe Zijlstra's cuts are still coming in hard.
Less support
Harder, even, because so many creators continued to work with so many consequences for private lives and self-respect, while social support sank to the bottom along with their own. After all: to get subsidy, the number of performances sold counted more heavily than the number of productions made. This led to more productions with fewer performances per production, and inevitable loss of quality.
Now that it has finally dawned on us how badly the performing arts have been hit, the need for a structural solution is stronger than ever. Lobbying MPs this year is not going to achieve much, as long as you cannot put a tractor or cement mixer in front of their door. And let's face it: the consequences of the disastrous nitrogen policy of successive governments are also much more socially urgent than those of the at least equally shaky arts policy. So there will be no more than a few harmless millions, and even then it will be on the basis of a private interest of a few culturally anchored MPs.
Dot on the horizon
What next? So that question has been hanging over the market for a while. It does hang so high above the market that clubs like Kunsten 92 prefer not to think about it. The Performing Arts Fund is currently thinking mainly in terms of problem solving and the Council for Culture thought it would change politics by bringing everything and everyone back under direct responsibility of the ministry in the Basic Infrastructure. None of these approaches shows vision, or the familiar dot on the horizon that is always invoked in other cases.
Let me do it then: what is a possible Plan B? For that, it is most useful to start completely from scratch for once. So: all existing structures overboard for a while. Then you have a pot of money, a mountain of theatres and concert halls, education and a potential audience. The question then is: would you design a 'basic infrastructure' for that situation, supplemented by a 'flexible shell', i.e. a pot of money that can be spent according to the whim of the day or the zeitgeist? And all this centrally from The Hague?
Blank
Frankly, I don't think so. A structural planner who would now start out blank would first look at what the land looks like and where the potential audience is. I would not be surprised if such a person would start from cities and their surrounding areas. Of course, I have often advocated this here, but starting from such a blank situation, I can't imagine any other arrangement of a performing arts system than one in which there is a national vision in which there are a few fixed values, but then a dozen strategically located and demographically suitable cities get to distribute the budget.
So yes: I advocate some kind of German system. Because that's better than our system which is made of wood and string. There are some funny arguments to be made for that.
1 'There is much more subsidy in Germany than in the Netherlands'.
That is the most common comment about Germany in the arts sector and it is fake news. Germany subsidises the arts less than the Netherlands on all levels, but that subsidy money is spent almost entirely on city companies. You can say all sorts of things about the practical implementation of this, but the bond between city, theatre and music scene is a lot closer there than in the Netherlands with its national and regional 'facilities'. So the best argument for that situation is that people in the Netherlands think Germany subsidises a lot more because it rather often produces such rich theatre. Logical, of course, because: two different structures with dozens of small independent participants costs idiotic overhead, and you miss that when you organise it in one house.
2 What national politics does not regulate, the city solves.
There is quite a lot of merging going on, in recent years, and sometimes it works out well. Or rather: in 1 case it works out well. The Hague really does seem to be one big communal marriage of success, where city-wide praise can be heard and the city has gained a large and diverse offer, soon to be complemented by its own love nest opposite the Theater aan het Spui: Amare. In the other cities, the merger has gone differently. In Rotterdam, it is still a mess, and Amsterdam has gained an independent unit with merger club ITA, which is a draw internationally and nationally, but is a bit above the parties locally. Nothing wrong with that in itself, but it feels a bit like a multinational on the Zuidas: nice letterbox, but where do they go to bake? The Holland Festival, with which ITA obviously competes, is closer to the people.
So is it good to give cities more money and control over their performing arts? I think so, because then ultimately the city and its people get the performing arts that suit them best. Why should 'The Hague' decide what ITA does in Amsterdam? Surely Amsterdam can do that itself? Even better: it creates more uncertainty for all participants, but at the same time increases public involvement enormously. Who knows, art might become a local election item again.
3 Overhead on the guillotine
Either way, with just one more grants office and a big city theatre with a broad remit, the overhead is a lot smaller than all those funds and various official money streams that all those individual clubs now have to hire extra staff to make ends meet.
4 Take an example from Maastricht
With all the successes of regional location theatre, you would say that the penny had to drop in The Hague, but there is hardly any response. People seem to see those successful productions in Twente, Drenthe and Maastricht as a fluke. But what if they testify to the potential audience's deep need for theatre that is close to their world, and in this case literally? How many smaller shows can you make in those regions, for those 40,000 seats sold?
5 Hand over experiment and national development budgets to festivals
If there is one place where experimental art thrives, it is the festival. Plenty has been written about that too, so I won't repeat everything. The fact remains that festivals with their supra-local, regional and national appeal now have a clear place, also with an increasingly distinct identity of their own. Strengthen that. Put national budget into that, and do the same with the festivals that bring top international offerings.
6 Replace committee bureaucracy with engaging leadership
Pretty much my entire social network is, or has been, on a committee, myself included. Very cool, everyone important, a few people never look at each other again and all the art is approved by several people. The polder in optima forma.
How many times have I looked with furtive jealousy at Berlin, where last year a theatrical power struggle ignited for the leadership of one of the city's most illustrious theatres? Chris Dercon came from the Tate to the Volksbühne for unclear reasons and was about immediately fried, grilled and filleted for having different ideas about Brecht's old theatre. A year of front-page news in the local, and even the national press.
Not that I wish any Dutch art world such a riot, but the whole debate was not about jobs and pension plans and structures, but about art and what we all want to do with it. A city-wide debate because of an appointment of an artistic director is a lot better to me than a commission. With an arts subsidy system that puts the city at the centre, that is one step closer.
7 Focus national money on up to 10 cities
It is said that people don't want to travel for their night out. It could be, but the regional success shows, the location projects, the musicals in the Randstad, they all prove that people are happy to travel quite a few kilometres, provided they know a bit about what to expect. I would also like to mention them. Besides Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht, you then end up with Arnhem, Enschede, Groningen, Maastricht and two cities in Brabant.
As a city, those who do not belong to the happy few are not deprived of culture, but have to solve it in a different way. Commercial, privately funded, purely local, whatever. As long as those ten can swim in national money. Because then beautiful things will happen there that people won't want to lose.
And that, dear readers, should be our common goal.
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