In Perspective - A good council for Rotterdam?

The Turfsteker rejected

The mayor was angry. The alderman was angry. Everyone was angry because the A municipality wanted to put up a work of art by a locally highly regarded sculptor as a tribute to the peat cutter, but did not get a grant from the province. The Cultural Council had advised negatively. The relevant advisory committee denounced the artist's figurative work; it left nothing to the imagination. And he had already erected numerous sculptures in the region.

The South Holland Cultural Council, of which I was director, had shortly before issued an opinion that caused much more controversy: end the structural subsidy to the South Holland Regional Orchestra. The province also adopted this advice. The subsidy placed a very large burden on the relatively modest culture budget. The orchestra did not rank high in the firmament of the national orchestra system, which was going to have to downsize anyway. There was a need for more diversity in music. There could be room for a new music education policy in the province. Sufficient substantiation all in all.

I felt responsible for both opinions. The one about the orchestra weighed heavily: it involved paid, nice jobs for many people. And it meant the loss of choral accompaniments that many choirs were very happy about. Still, I thought it was the right advice and I had no regrets. The advice on The Turfsteker was at least as right in substance. But having failed to convey that to the municipality, the gap between 'the ordinary people in the province' and the 'artistic elite in The Hague' widened rather than narrowed. It still gnawed at me a bit.

Two real-life examples that also show the vulnerable position of an advisory council. Applicants never complain about the substantiation of the advice if the requested grant is awarded. They do if the advice is negative. Then they will not look at the quality of their own application first. Understandable. (I also speak from experience on the side the rejected) Governments expect critical and independent policy advice, but if their policy is critically assessed or if the advice goes in a different direction than the politicians had expected, things sometimes get a bit complicated. There are also regular competence struggles between officials and advisers. Sometimes this produces healthy tension; not always.

The vulnerability of the advisory council and the built-in tensions do not necessarily make it infallible or exempt in advance from critical scrutiny. It is not the Vatican. But judging the assessor does require care and self-reflection. This brings us immediately to the current events in Rotterdam, where the alderman unexpectedly and at short notice wants to abolish his advisory council.

What do we want?

Also at the Arts Council Groningen (advisor to the province and municipality of Groningen), the advice on the arts plan 2017-2020 led to disturbed relations. When I took office as chairman, I was allowed to help sweep the shards together. Talks with the authorities crackled for a while and the process was extremely slow. But the directors did handle it in an exemplary manner. They had an evaluation prepared by an external agency. They took the Arts Council's comments on parts of the report into account. At least the cumbersome process prevented impulsive decisions. There were new working agreements. There was a serious, constructive joint start and conclusion of the advisory process for the period 2021-2024. The field was largely positive about it. Just to open the open door for a moment: good and easy communication, mutual, is key in all respects. Unfortunately, even after the evaluation, the Arts Council Groningen was kept small, literally and figuratively: meagre budget, meagre staffing, often left out of information flows and policy development.

In the case of the "No-words-but-deeds" city, you cannot speak of stroppiness. The college just went straight ahead and decided to stop funding the Rotterdam Advisory Council from 1 January 2023. See also what Wijbrand Schaap wrote about this in the Culture Press of 2 June 2022¹.

Rotterdam deserves better. It is the second largest city in our country. A city with great cultural ambition and potential. Major events like Poetry International, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Architecture Festival came from the kitty of the then solidly functioning - and perhaps supreme - Rotterdam Art Foundation RKS.

What is, need not always stay. An advisory board or cultural foundation is not a sanctuary. In general, the more tasks you put in the hands of an institution, the greater the risk of excessive power, in reality or in perception. But there is a law. First we want synergy and cohesion, a solid infrastructure, not a multiplicity of counters, in short: we want a solid institution. After a few years, we get annoyed by the institute's position of power and decide to split up tasks and assign them to different actors. We think this is much healthier. Until we feel the need for synergy and coherence. We want one solid institute that gives body to the sector. And so on.

Buttplug and Hare

Rotterdam deserves better. That does mean, first of all, a careful reflection on what you want to be as a city in cultural terms, how you are going to organise that, how you define the role of political administrators in this and what you can and cannot expect from civil servants. Then you look at how the advisory structure can best fit into that. An evaluation report alone won't get you there. That makes Rijnconsult's advisory report² also very clear, about which more in a moment.

For me, a few things are not up for debate. The government itself does not judge the quality of art or science to be subsidised.³

And for their policy development, governments ask independent and expert advisers to advise and, where necessary, critically monitor them. In all cases - policy or concrete grants - these are opinions from which the government may deviate.

I find that both the government and the field are best served by a reasonably continuous and well-established instrument. Ad hoc committees give upheaval, loss of energy and knowledge, and a little too much opportunity to play around with them administratively or politically. But an arts council need not be the only player.

Sanne Scholten and I wrote about it in the booklet "Thorbecke and/or the hare of Utrecht."⁴ It was during the time of much ado about visual art in public spaces, such as Gnome Buttplug in Rotterdam⁵ and 'De Haas' in Utrecht⁶. We argued for a clear but defined role for advisory bodies and also for a lot of leeway within that role. We also recommended periodic audits to assess the work of the advisory body. That is better than taking action only when things have gone off track. And there are other tools to arrive at politically independent and quality-supporting choices. Besides, and preferably in conjunction with, the advisory board, Such as: appointing an intendant, organising audits or working with review committees.

I also don't think it's crazy to separate policy advice from grant awards. This is at the expense of synergy and efficiency, but it reduces the risk of an 'art pause' (in behaviour or image) and avoids fuss about the monopoly character of the institution. This is one of those trade-offs that, as a municipality, you should not make on a back afternoon: concentrate tasks or split tasks.

Head of jut requested

B en W's college letter on the Rotterdam Arts and Culture Council contains passages for further reflection. One of the stated arguments for quitting the council refers to 'the field' that has combined and developed strongly in Rotterdam in recent years. The directors' consultations, for example, showed themselves not only from an advocacy point of view, but also as critical thinkers. That is, of course, very positive. But I think that soon there will again be an urgent need for a neutral and expert buffer - if necessary as head of juts - between this active field and the college. Especially in an active arts field.

Second, Rotterdam argues that there are hardly any more structural advisory boards elsewhere in the country for cultural plans. For the headstrong city that Rotterdam is, this reference to elsewhere sounds rather conformist. But the fact is that a recognisable and general pattern of advice in provinces and cities has disappeared. There is a lot of ad hoc advice, both for allocations and for policy development. We see structural institutions mainly for supporting and advising the field, such as Keunstwurk Fryslan, Kunstgebouw Zuid-Holland, Huis van de Kunsten Limburg and the Eindhoven Culture Foundation. Amsterdam has established a division of tasks between a permanent advisory council, Kunstraad Amsterdam, and a municipal fund for the distribution of subsidies, Amsterdam Fund for the Arts. Groningen has the unique situation of a joint advisory council for the municipality and province.

Again: the way you organise your advice should not depend on political or official impulses and certainly not on (series of) incidents. It is about long-term vision of what you want with cultural policy and what the role of the various players is. Taking cultural policy seriously certainly also means taking consultancy seriously. And then two remarks in Rijnconsult's (relationship therapeutic) analysis certainly make sense. The perfect system does not exist. Ultimately, people determine reality, not the system.

The councillor was angry. Why exactly he was angry is not so relevant. Perhaps Gnome Buttplug and 'Thinker on the Rock' are nice, monumental references to the inevitability of friction that makes cultural policy shine. Everywhere, good advice has its price.

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ERIK AKKERMANS is a director, consultant and publicist. Until recently, he was chairman of the cultural and creative sector labour market platform Platform ACCT and, in the past, of several other organisations. He was director of the South Holland Cultural Council, chairman of several advisory committees, of the visitation committee for Museums in Drenthe and of the Arts Council Groningen.

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