Let's just start with the good news: De Staat is a regular fixture in the Netherlands from now on. And so we are talking about the band De Staat. Who make fantastic music videos these days. They have been promoted from a four-year grant with the Performing Arts Fund to a four-year grant according to the Cultural Basic Infrastructure (BIS). With 55 other newcomers. All weighed by experts, whose expertise is undisputed. Subsidy for pop music, by the way, I think is top notch. Scandinavia became big with it.
The members of De Staat did have to sell their souls for their place in the BIS, because in the Basic Infrastructure you are no longer a band, but an institution. A place to which money is given to get something done in our culture, regardless of the puppets. If this had happened to The Rolling Stones, Mick and Keith could have retired long ago. The Council welcomes the fact that the band is now transforming itself into an artists' collective.
Hot Autumn
To their credit, of course, but the move by the Culture Council, which on Thursday 4 June fired the opening shot in what is going to be a long, hot, and at least a year-and-a-half-long autumn, shows well where things are going wrong in Dutch arts policy. Once upon a time, in a galaxy far away from here, after about 20 years of bickering, people had found the solution to the quadrennial bickering called Kunstenplan.
With a Cultural Basic Infrastructure, from 2009 everything the Netherlands makes would be cast in concrete, or copper. No more fighting out every four years which artists had done their best, but simply determining whether the 'functions' were still being properly filled. A 'large theatre' function, a 'museum' function, a 'small theatre' function, 'development institution' and so on, nicely distributed across the country. It doesn't look good, but it works. At least it was expected to, because the first year the system was up and running, a VVD man with good connections in Russian Dachas announced that 30 per cent of the money had to go out. So, compared to traffic infrastructure: nice all those highways and traffic squares, but we are going to arbitrarily give 30 per cent back to nature, so just see how you get from A to B. With your tractor.
Too many functions
We are now two arts plans since then, and it is now officially clear, that the basic infrastructure as it was once intended no longer exists. The Council has put so many 'functions' back into that BIS that very little remains outside it. Renewal, training and research, regional distribution and loose inventions: it's all in there, so it's a big question what the funds, meant to provide that flexibility alongside the concrete of the BIS, still mean. Worse, we're back to puppetry and individual ratings all over again. As with The State, but of course it is about more.
Whether that is bad? I leave that to the lobby. It is especially unfortunate that, with the current opinion, we are back to the 1980s, when the state decided every penny of subsidy through the Council, and politics had more influence that Thorbecke would have wished.
There is more to the story. Dance company Scapino is being kicked out, in favour of Groningen-based Club Guy and Rony, which is intimately linked to the Noord Nederlands Toneel. Reason is not that Scapino would not be good, because the Council is enthusiastic about it. The reason is that there also had to be something dance in Groningen and so Scapino fell out. Possibly with the consolation that youth company Maastd partly fills the gap there.
West
With presentation institutions something similar: because there was nothing in Zeeland, De Vleeshal in Middelburg cycled into the BIS with surely excellent plans, but because the number of BIS spots for presentation institutions is limited, West in The Hague therefore flies out. That's heading towards arbitrariness.
There is undoubtedly a strategy behind this 'positive assessment, but no place' action by the Council: reputable clubs with a good network are going to lobby all over the place and this could just lead to the Lower House releasing extra money for clubs like Scapino and West this autumn. Or for the non-granted Poetry International, because Rotterdam has been hit pretty hard in this opinion. After all: the Production House attached to the Theatre Rotterdam merger state, which is in chaos, will not receive any money either. With which Rotterdam becomes the Groningen of South Holland, because Groningen has become the Rotterdam of the North.
Musical
So much for this first attempt at interpretation. With a few more afterburners. I grant all newcomers their place wholeheartedly, and it will be exciting to see how they deliver on their promise in times of Corona. That is an exciting and also quite a nice prospect. what is also really cool: ORKATER HAS A FIXED PLACE. For decades, Orkater has been a recurring gimmick in the debates around arts plans: too big for the napkin, too small for the tablecloth, a middle company for which the Performing Arts Fund was almost specially invented. Now they are in the BIS as a development institution and the Van Warmerdams are to be credited with this before they die.
The Council has also occasionally ignored the advisers' advice, as in the case of Festivals. It doesn't say so very clearly, but the advisers wanted Oerol out of the BIS, presumably in favour of the unjustly not honoured festival Boulevard. Or more budget for festivals that are now really getting too little. The council decided otherwise. Oerol is too big to fail.
Gossip
Incidentally, the world music function has also died in the last decade. After RASA fell over, nothing has taken its place.
We also have another fun gossip. It was already clear that the musical would also get a feature in the BIS, and many suspected that would mean the return of the illustrious M-LAB, which was once a real innovation of the genre. They also did well in talent development. M-Lab didn't make it, but a new name, which I'm sure will also do well. On the bright side, Albert Verlindes Stage Entertainment, which once founded M-Lab and then wrung its neck again due to too much competition by withdrawing support, now has nothing to say about the new club for a while.
Although you know that with Joop never quite sure.
Read more about the opinion here:
The advice is here. What will happen in Dutch subsidised culture over the next four years?
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