I love the passion and love with which everyone in the cultural sector works. There is a conviction and perseverance behind it that can be compared to a faith. The belief that art is essential to society. Driven by a primal feeling, we bite into it and won't let go. But weren't we all blinded by the beauty of the arts? Because if we are honest, cracks have been showing for years. In our willingness to give everything for our faith, we have together maintained a system that has only just held up each time. But now... now that the corona crisis has set in, these cracks are turning into cracks and this shaky balance in the cultural sector is painfully exposed.
For you many others.
There is a structural sense of replaceability in the cultural sector, created by a huge oversupply and too little demand. In other sectors, people get retrained when there is no work to be found. But we don't. A primal feeling cannot be ignored. As a result, we are willing to do anything to stay in our beloved sector. We work part-time elsewhere and agree to low rates, 'but you still get exposure' and sometimes even our own financial sacrifice. In the cultural sector, more than in other sectors, it is true: the blood runs where it cannot go. So we go along with it and price each other out of the market. Because for you ten, if not a hundred, others.
Permanent contracts have not been issued for years. Clients prefer not to take risks anymore and are often unwilling to commit to an employee. And so, of necessity, we take on the risk and enter into the uncertain existence of the self-employed. Instead of seeing this as a sign of things to come, the government has encouraged and even encouraged it, resulting in 1.2 million ZZP'ers in the Netherlands.
Shame on cheeks
So I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I read reports about measures such as setting a minimum hourly wage of €16. I won't be surprised if many of us are currently willing to work for less, and perhaps a minimum of €16 feels like a huge improvement to them. But let's be honest: the amount is still far too low.
As soon as I have to mention an hourly rate, I feel the red of shame on my cheeks. I already know in advance what is going to be said: 'Oh that's a lot of money' with a long silence following. You start defending yourself, explaining all the things you have to do with the money. That you have to pay taxes, take out insurance, actually build up a pension and pay bills. That if they pass it all on, you will be cheaper than an employed worker. And while you're saying that, you can beat yourself up. What on earth are you doing... And yet you agree to an hourly rate that is lower than you had agreed with yourself beforehand. It's a great assignment that you wouldn't have wanted to pass up anyway.
Risks
In most cases, I charge rates that are too low and as a result, I have to make sacrifices. This is how I applied the ostrich tactic when it comes to disability insurance and I know many with me. I got a Spanish scare when I heard about the government's plans to make this insurance compulsory for self-employed people. After all, with my hourly wage, I cannot spare tens to hundreds of euros per month. That won't change with the setting of a minimum hourly wage of €16. And then the government is surprised at the bad situation many of us now find ourselves in. Would the government really not realise that this has come about because of the lack of a policy to protect the self-employed?
And now the harm is done. Our assignments have been cancelled and we self-employed people have no safety net in a situation like this. And when we can start working again, we don't know. With measures like the Tozo and TOGS, we all hope that we will be able to resume our work in two months at the latest. We have already had to use our piggy bank in part to supplement the minimum amount of €1050. After all, business bills are still coming in and the amount is not nearly enough to pay for the roof over our heads alone. We will get a glimmer of hope when it is announced on Wednesday 15 April that a support package of €300 million will be allocated to the cultural sector, but whether that will also be the salvation for the self-employed that remains to be seen....
In our hempie
Despite the uncertainty hanging over our heads, I am proud. Proud of all of us when I see what is happening in the cultural sector in times of crisis. We are creators and doers. And so we put our shoulders to the wheel and want to give others a helping hand. Because we know that's the effect art has. Workshops by artists are immediately offered online, on social media we see mini-performances by theatre companies passing by and bands doing their gigs for empty venues. It is met with great enthusiasm and for many people at home, it is a welcome distraction. So how is it possible that the government leaves the self-employed in the cultural sector, who once again prove to be oh so important to our society, in their lurch?
My name is Willemien Geenen. I am an art historian and after graduating in 2010, I first did an internship in a museum for six months for peanuts, hoping to stay there. I was lucky and was offered a job. After three years, I was promised a permanent contract, which was withdrawn a week before I was due to start. It was decided from above that no more permanent contracts would be issued. In my search for a new job, I became curious about the commercial side of art and started working at a gallery as a gallery manager. Long days, being available 24/7, working every weekend on Saturday ánd Sunday, high workload and low pay. In 2016, I started working as a self-employed person so that I could continue doing the work I love so intensely on commission. On Wednesday morning, 18 March, within an hour of each other, I received a call from my three clients that my assignment was cancelled with immediate effect.
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Dear Willemien Geenen,
Indeed, these are the kind of figures that I am always bombarded to death with in sectoral notes that seek to demonstrate the importance of art, notes that are then cited again mainly by other policymakers in the sector. While it is easy to question them (what is meant by the 'offer' from advertising?), they are mainly meant to make the elephant in the room invisible. The problem for Politicians is not that it is sad for us that we are in our shirtsleeves, the problem for politicians is that since the smear campaign against the arts from the 2005s onwards, we have been seen as a leftist hobby in the eyes of populist movements and as proof that 'the government' is throwing money away.
Politicians who would take it into their heads to openly stand up for the arts are losing net seats, and they know this all too well, so, cynically, it helps them when the general public hears lamentations from our sector.
Dear Ms Geenen,
I am talking about the pink elephant in the room, and these are exactly the kind of figures that 'the industry' keeps using to look around the elephant. Yes, this is how we can kid ourselves, within the sector: Oh! how important we are (if we attribute the advertising-boys' figures to us). But since the 2008 crisis, the reality is that we, culture, have become a taboo area for politicians, and especially that part of culture that needs money: the Left's hobby.
As long as we as an industry do not rehabilitate ourselves 'in the eyes of the general, voting, public', it is still lucrative for politicians to cast their cultural tastes in terms of the top 3s, and occasionally smear the canalside in order to show they are behind the common man.
For politicians at the moment (even if they are putting a few million in our pockets behind the scenes), it is a matter of self-preservation to keep at least the appearance of leaving us in our shirtsleeves. If we don't understand that, and solve the problem for politicians ourselves, I don't think there will be any change in the situation for the time being.
It is precisely that insight that is being kept out of the sector's policy papers with all its might, and that also makes this interview with the minister, safely on her lap, in her own ministry so embarrassing to my mind.
If I may translate your words, do you think it is because of the voters and not the politicians? If what you say is true, then in my view it is even more important that the stories of people in the cultural field and also the figures are brought out. I think a lot of people have no idea what the cultural sector is all about. Unfortunately, in the scenario I am about to sketch, it is already too late, but don't you think that if, for example, new films no longer play in cinemas, concerts are no longer available and new seasons of favourite TV series are no longer broadcast, people will return to them? Then my only conclusion can be that we should start shouting from the rooftops even more about the consequences of the disappearance of the cultural sector with a message not only for politicians but for the whole people.
By the way, I would not know why we should not include advertising in the cultural sector. Commercials are made by the same people who make our cinema films, and graphic designers come from the same art schools as artists.
Dear Willemien Geenen,
In your article, you pass by a number of important memes that have been dropped about our industry over the previous 20-plus years, which, as we ponder our foundations, we might want to take a look at before thinking any further.
You start asking how it is possible that government is now leaving the cultural sector in its lurch.
It is an essential question that, if you really think about it, reveals the pink elephant in the room: It is because the sector, culture, has been made suspect in the eyes of the voting majority (which is vital for politicians): it is a leftist hobby.
Politicians who speak out too clearly in favour of the cultural sector lose votes, because too many people do not realise 'how important culture is in our society'.
It is proving very difficult to demonstrate that importance without falling into philosophical terms. Instead, many advocates now reduce the sector to its economic returns, but those arguments do not impress policymakers, who weigh those returns against those of aviation or the car industry.
As a result, we keep seeing policymakers presenting the importance of culture as a given in the first lines of their notes, as you are doing here now.
Culture has been expertly put in its heath from the late 1990s when Rick van der Ploeg, as economist and state secretary for culture, for example, published his 'Culture as Confrontation' https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/ploe014cult01_01/ploe014cult01_01_0002.php wrote. An essay in which he dismissed existing culture as elitist versus mass culture. After that time, the institutions that proclaimed themselves as 'representing the sector', such as employers' federations, trade unions, advisory institutions went along in that vein, adopting an increasingly negative attitude towards what was soon called 'the proliferation' in the sector.
Another example is the publication of the volume 'Second Opinion, over beeldende kunstsubsidie in Nederland', published in 2007 by the Mondriaanstichting and the Fonds voor Beeldende kunsten. Policy staff of advisory institutions complaining bitterly about the number of artists applying for subsidies, all of which require advice. So much work.... it would be useful if there were a few less of them.
They were put at their beck and call by the 2008 crisis, state secretary Halbe Zijlstra and the sham scientist Pim van Klink, who underpinned Zijlstra's hackneyed argument through the term "subsidy addiction" in a postmodern argument, as it should be with a question mark.
Thus, the frame of an 'on the verge of collapse, shaky, system' has been built in which the terms 'overproduction' and 'low fees' are used again and again to blame artists, and the representative institutions make themselves more and more important, as well as touting themselves in ever louder terms as the ones who should represent culture with one mouth.
In doing so, they then point to the salaries of makers in our sector, compare them to other HBO sectors (but not to their own salaries). In doing so, they name the fact that we makers, in our sector, do our work with love and thus often settle for less, as the ultimate weakness - after which they conclude that the sector is served by outflow. They do all this in the same post-modern language as Professor Klink's, so that no one in particular gets it into his or her head to read their texts carefully (see the memo 'Passion appreciated'.) If you do, you end up in a quagmire of fake language, bogus arguments, prefabricated conclusions, and compliments that are bestowed on themselves: "it's so good that the sector is now taking the lead". https://mtrapman.home.xs4all.nl/Kunstvallei/Commentaar%20op%20Passie%20Gewaardeerd%202.pdf
Questions like, "Is it actually true, that there is overproduction in our sector?" "What exactly does one mean by 'overproduction'? How does one measure that? Ìs that even measured? Is overproduction always a disaster? For whom? So what about overproduction in other sectors like the garment industry?
Such questions are easily ignored.
Similarly, the idea that it might be quite right for us to settle for lower rewards because we are also intrinsically rewarded from our work, while the collective bargaining scales are based on delivering work to workaholics, is completely alien to policymakers in our sector.
Yes, we are in the middle of a disaster right now, and not just in our sector, and not just in our country. If we want to think about that, we cannot leave it to the policymakers in our sector who organise themselves in increasingly shadowy bodies like the 'creative coalition', 'the platform makers', 'platform ACCT', unreachable foundations built by representatives of also shadowy institutions like Federatie Cultuur, Kunsten 92, Boekmanstichting, Kunstconnectie, the Ministry of OCW, and so on.
Zij waren verantwoordelijk voor het gênante gesprek met de minister
dat moest dienen om ons te laten denken dat we 300 miljoen méér zouden gaan krijgen. Ook dat gesprek weer stond bol van de complimenten over de zelfredzaamheid, inventiviteit, creativiteit en mooie ideeën in onze sector, en onze sector werd vertegenwoordigd door een inhuurmoderator die door niemand was gekozen, behalve misschien door bureau &MAES, die aan het eind, ‘ook namens haarzelf’, tegen Jan Brands van ACCT zei “Hou vol, jullie zijn belangrijk”.
If we really don't want to stay in our shirt any longer, we will really have to start knitting ourselves a thick jumper and putting it on, and then, as a sector, rebuild ourselves from scratch.
We now maintain a skeleton that includes more than 80 sector representative institutions, employing more than 1,000 professional staff(FTEs) who, barely controlled by boards, do whatever they want with our sector, at above-average salaries, unthreatened by the current crisis.
That skeleton is not shaky, it is built shock-free and what happens there is completely beyond the reach of us makers. That is where the minister likes to be seen and feted.
Dear M.J. Trapman,
Thank you very much for your response! You might also find the figures presented by CBS on 19 July 2019 regarding the cultural sector's contribution to the economy in 2015 interesting. These figures were requested from CBS by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.
The contribution of culture and media to the Dutch economy in 2015 was 3.7 per cent (58.1 billion euros)! The figures compare our sector to, for example, construction industry with a 4.1 per cent share. In terms of employment, our sector had a 4.5 per cent share of total employment in the same year.
https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/nieuws/2019/29/bijdrage-cultuur-en-media-aan-economie-3-7-procent
These figures refer to 2015, which is now 5 years ago. I would not be surprised if the 2019 figures are higher. Surely it is inconceivable that with this knowledge we are still being ignored.
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