'A structural show of love for the arts and culture from The Hague is needed in the Netherlands.'

Dear outgoing Prime Minister Rutte, Dear Mark,

As a self-employed person working in the performing arts, I am writing you this letter.

This is my first ever letter on the state of the cultural sector culminating in corona time.

First by way of introduction: we met when I played a Scarlatti sonata especially for you on the TV programme Podium Witteman, and I also played Handel and Debussy for you and Angela Merkel at the presentation of her honorary doctorate by Radboud University. I also invariably see my Mozart CD on screen during press conferences from the Torentje on the shelf behind your desk, so maybe you listen to that sometimes.

Like everyone else in the world, this year is working its way deep into my own life. The truncated daily life and losing all the work we were used to doing is starting to weigh on me and my family. Well, we are otherwise tidy by nature, so we will get through the immediate problems.

But I am much more unsettled by the uncertainty about our working future in music. The cultural state of the Netherlands makes me feel very gloomy.

For years, I have continued to play the piano, despite the decade-long downward spiral for the cultural sector in the Netherlands. The Hague makes me feel like I don't matter as a musician. For years, I have been ignoring that ominous feeling that the arts and culture in the Netherlands in general no longer matter much.

Like others, I chose the music profession because of my own love for music, and the intense need to communicate that music. Because music is the most beautiful and intelligent being I know. National trends and up-or-down spirals have nothing to do with that choice.

But the feeling of mattering is essential. That is the motivation to keep developing. Around me in recent years, I saw so many people in the cultural sector -both on the executive and organisational side- take an extra step at first full of good courage when the first cuts were made, only to have to stop in the end. Financial support was lacking.

There is almost no possibility of practising true free artistry structurally anymore: Halls and art training institutes have to have a much stricter business model or shortened curriculum, and this comes at the expense of crazy or original ideas, of depth in study. Larger commercial institutions like labels and streaming services set the standard.

On good education, I can write a separate letter, but that learning about groundbreaking art is good for a child's development I hope I don't need to explain. Due to the structural lack of good arts education in primary schools for decades, more and more business people have been ending up in organisational positions in culture. Positions where precisely culturally visionary and educated people are needed.

Many a cultural institution has had to scrape by on the basis of revenue models and sales arguments. Companies do not readily sponsor cultural initiatives: culture does not say much to many CEOs anymore, I notice around me. Those few that do are rare and to be cherished.

A blind spot has emerged in applying the business model principle to the arts: you don't unleash such a model on the creators and performers of culture but on its recipients, the community. The aim should be to create an infrastructure that makes the public love art so much that they want to hear everything, learn everything, always be surprised and also pass it on to the next generation.

The actual business model is that art generates so much additional economic activity: from tourism to hospitality, from advertisements to first side jobs as a doorman. But the basis and success of the cultural sector lies in the love of art, the willingness to let it emerge and to be able to discover something unseen and unheard of; that, by definition, cannot be captured in a model.

A structural token of love for arts and culture from The Hague is needed in the Netherlands. Implement that basis in education, articulate the power of arts and culture more strongly in policy for the coming years. And implement that. And do so for the long term, so that our children can also benefit and develop with it on their life path.

Only then can we as artists also do artistically exactly what we were trained to do and what we need deep down: make and perform music, dance and theatre for audiences. The audience can draw inspiration from this for its own specialisation or field. Audiences can then enjoy the city they live in, a city that lives and thrives. And then nobody needs to talk about the usefulness of culture anymore: it is as natural as nature.

Kind regards

Daria van den Bercken