Breaking: How motherly love is undermining Brabant's subsidy system.

Today, the board of the province of Brabant announced that the assessment of all cultural grant applications for the coming grant period must be repeated. Reasons abound it seems: sloppiness in the assessment and, now it gets spicy, conflicts of interest. In the press release we read: 'The HAC found, among other things, that meeting minutes were missing and that a member of the advisory committee had a conflict of interest. The HAC therefore finds that the decisions previously taken by the province were made negligently, that the objections submitted are well-founded and that a new decision must be taken on the applications of the eight objectors to the provincial subsidy scheme.'

Now conflict of interest is something we here at Culture Press are rather allergic to, especially with cultural subsidies. They have it so hard reputation-wise anyway. Last year, something like this played out around Musicalmakers and the Culture Council, especially esteemed member Erwin van Lambaert. Of him, the Council claimed loud and clear that the once-dead successor to Joop van den Ende, and deathbed director of musical incubator M-Lab had no relationship with M-Lab. We brought extensive news about that. And so now Brabant is in trouble.

Conflict of interest

What is this conflict of interest about? The press release reads: ''The situation that has arisen has taken us by unpleasant surprise. That there was a conflict of interest by a committee member is unacceptable," said Deputy Van Pinxteren. "As we take the advice of the HAC very seriously, we have decided to have all 68 grant applications properly and carefully assessed again by a new committee. I emphasise that we have great respect for the work of the BrabantStad Culture Advisory Committee. The issue of conflict of interest can be attributed to the member in question, who failed to disclose a specific relationship.'

So now it becomes interesting to know what specific relationship. Could it be family? Then you start looking for names. And google. Sometimes that yields things. Takes a while, but that's what you do when you're in lockdown. And then It turns out it really is about family relationships. In fact, we have bingo pretty quickly from here at this name. (You may try yourself). Piquant, in other words. So in this case, the mother had gone through the rather elaborate application process before the committee and, without mentioning it, had approved the application.

Cinecitta

So the application was approved, but when you read the assessment, you actually think: why? Take a look: The committee finds the artistic vision limited, as the basic principles underlying these choices are not described. The connection Cinecitta wants to make with other disciplines is interesting, but the committee lacks a clear explanation or examples. It is convinced of the quality of the offering, but lacks a clearly distinctive image and positioning of the arthouse cinema.‘

Cinecitta gets 280,000 euri a year from the province of Brabant, or rather, the applicant's mother. Despite there being quite a lot wrong with the application. So here we are talking about applicant Jasper Naaijkens and committee member Hetty Naaijkens - Retel Helmich. Not that the mother was hiding her name. But still a bit strange that nobody in that entire committee thought: gosh, Naaijkens, you don't come across that name much.

Zoom

Is it because of Zoom? Because of corona, did all committee members loaf at home with the cat on their laps during the meeting and did the sound falter when everyone introduced themselves? We are curious. I happen to know myself that in an appointment procedure for such a committee, you are explicitly asked whether there might be conflicts of interest, and whether you are related to one or more of the applicants. That you have to explicitly answer 'no' there. Could of course also be that Ms Naaijkens had forgotten that she had a son who ran a subsidised film house in Tilburg.

Anything is possible.