29 June is an important day for culture: the Lower House will then debate emergency support for the sector. Our message to politicians: "300 million euros of emergency support that OCW has available for the cultural sector is nowhere near enough to keep the sector afloat. Adopt the motion of PvDA, GroenLinks and SP!"
Ahead of the 29 June debate, the Platform for Freelance Musicians together with the Creative Coalition committed to empowering creators with a trio of actions: Survey on Stage, Ode to Culture and the Red Carpet of Cancelled Performances. All actions focus just on a different component. The survey ensures that there is enough data to have a good debate, The Ode shows how important audiences consider culture and the red carpet makes it clear how much performing art has been lost.
Survey on Stage - An investigation into the hidden pain of self-employed people in the performing arts.
Under the name 'Survey on Stage', representatives from the industry held a survey drawn up to make the impact of the corona crisis on self-employed people within the performing arts more transparent. The stories among creators and performers are alarming, but hard figures are lacking.
'The Dutch performing arts are largely at a standstill and nobody knows for how long,' write initiators Marjolein Niels and Mattijs van de Woerd (both professional musicians and members of the Platform for Freelance Musicians). The impact on dancers, actors, musicians, makers, technicians and products, many of them self-employed, is expected to be significant. 'From classical music and jazz to urban and dance, from theatre and cabaret to ballet and musical, the concerns are the same: financial shortages, inadequate support measures and lack of prospects.'
With questions such as "What is my drop in income since March?", "Until when have orders been cancelled?" and "To what extent am I helped by the support measures for the self-employed?", the survey should shed more light on the work and income situation of self-employed people. The results may give politicians and policymakers input for the culture debate in the Lower House on 29 June.
The survey was drawn up together with the Platform for Freelance Musicians and has the support of advocacy organisations Kunsten '92, the Creative Coalition and the Kunstenbond/Ntb and GroenLinks, among others. The survey can be completed until 22 June.
Ode to Culture challenge - #Reddeculture
The ode 'challenge' focuses on visible solidarity in the sector and public engagement with arts and culture. The action aims to publicise the arts sector ahead of the debate on 29 June.
On Tuesday 19 May, Ali B, Gijs Scholten van Aschat, Ann Demeester, Eric van Eerdenburg and Tinkebell spoke to Lodewijk Asscher about the impact of measures against the coronavirus on art and culture in the Netherlands. The idea was born for a major national art and culture challenge in which artists, musicians, makers and the public give odes to each other.
Sunday 21 June marked the kick-off of this challenge. Actors, dancers, tour guides, musicians, artists etc put their ode online under the hashtags #reddeculture and #odeaandeculture and nominate five friends to also make an ode to a creator, institution, actor etc. The Platform for Freelance Musicians and the Creative Coalition expect this challenge to spread like an ink blot and make it clear how much culture is valued. This action is a collaboration with the PvDA.
The Red Carpet of Cancelled Performances
Due to the Corona Crisis, hundreds of performances have been cancelled. To sum up in one image how much culture we are missing out on with this, the Red Carpet of Cancelled Performances was created.Watch here To a video by the initiators. On 29 June, all 42 members of the Creative Coalition delegate someone to the Plein in The Hague to roll out the red carpet for all politicians participating in the debate. The Platform for Freelance Musicians is of course also present with a delegation.
The carpet is getting longer and longer. We hope the MPs realise that they have to adopt the motion by the PvDA, GroenLinks and the SP, to spend an extra 700 million on culture ánd that this money should not only go to the institutions, but be made available directly to the hard-hit creators in culture. Because the people on the floor and on stage notice nothing or little at all of the current measures.
With these three actions, the Platform for Freelance Musicians in various ways to generate attention for the arts sector and is calling on self-employed people to fill in the survey by Monday evening and anyone working in the sector or culture lover to pay tribute.
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