A licence for the professional actor - In Perspective 14

In the series In Perspective, Erik Akkermans looks back and ahead at developments in cultural policy and practice. Today: education as a learning process for a sector.

Driving licences and absenteeism policy

The youth theatre company was a collective of actors. They were responsible together and they kept as much control over everything as possible, including transport to their performances. So an actor with a driving licence was handy then. Hence the appeal to the Scholingsfonds voor Kunst en Cultuur for a contribution towards the cost of driving lessons for one of the actors. The board of the Scholingsfonds, of which I was a member, rejected the application. It did not fit the criteria.

Perhaps we were too strict, in retrospect. Most applications did receive a positive reception. Dance company Introdans, for instance, received funding for media training, also for the dancers. The European Ceramic Work Centre received financial support for expertise training to set up digital workshops. The Music Theatre, De Nederlandse Opera and the Dutch National Ballet saw their regular training budgets supplemented. They were given extra scope to develop knowledge and skills, in terms of content but also in the areas of leadership, absence management or project management.

Training fund

The cultural sector had no collective provision for training until the Scholingsfonds voor Kunst en Cultuur (1995 - 2010) came into being. Until then, art institutions sometimes appealed to their subsidiser, mainly the ministry, for larger expenses. Self-employed artists could occasionally turn to the Provident Fund for Artists.

But the Lubbers III cabinet (1989-1994), in line with the coalition agreement, earmarked a hefty sum for extra training for workers in the collective sector, including culture. The libraries thus set up their own training foundation (BASOB). For music schools and creativity centres, an Arts Training Social Fund was created. And employers and employees in the arts - especially the performing arts - concluded an agreement on a Training Fund to be set up.1 The Minister of OCW made a starting amount and an annual amount available for this purpose (about €300,000 in 2005).

The fund focused on employers: institutions could apply for their employees. Only a few years later, a separate budget (€180,000) became available for independent artists.

Starting up and running the fund was done by the parties involved in reasonable unanimity. Two representatives from the employers, two from the employees, an independent member and an independent chairman formed the board. Ex-dancer Dhian Siang Lie became a consultant to the fund. He provided information and guided applicants in preparing their grant applications.

Underlying the fund was a concept of solidarity, and to make this concrete, the fund granted basic entitlements: every applicant, small or large, was reimbursed 100 per cent of the first €1,500 if positively granted. There were no strict criteria. The application did have to demonstrably fit the vision from which the institution was dealing with social and technical change. This gave ample room for applicants for courses in theatre technology, basic computer skills or CPR. Or courses for business leaders, training in entrepreneurship, sponsorship or marketing.

A counter, a spider in the web.

The number of applications to the Training Fund soon ran up considerably. In the late 1990s, the board wanted the fund to be more than just a counter. It had to act as a spider in the web and be more of a director and stimulator. The fund went a layer deeper by encouraging institutions to make annual plans and by encouraging joint applications from umbrella organisations, such as those of the theatre companies. This gave more structure and continuity, and it dovetailed with the growing idea of 'lifelong learning'.

Although the employers were keen for the fund to touch a wider part of the sector, this did not materialise. Libraries and arts centres each retained their own social fund. The museums also operated on their own. Even the expansion with a separate budget for independent artists did not lead to a more unified approach in the sector.

On the contrary, disputes arose between representatives of the artists and those of the institutions. When the number of institutional applications - due to all the attention required by the preparations for the new arts plan 2005-2008 - temporarily decreased, underspending occurred and the fund reserve grew. Immediately, there was spirited discussion about whether or not to transfer reserves: from institutions to artists. Moreover, there was a political shift that would undermine the support base and ultimately the survival of the Scholingsfonds.

The government wanted to get rid of direct responsibility for social agreements in the subsidised sector as much as possible.

An opinion for two streams

Interesting, even today, in this context is a 2006 note by civil servant Ruud Ierschot2 of the Arts Directorate. He called for all agreements that could be laid down in collective agreements and approved by the ministry to be incorporated directly into the subsidies to institutions If any issues remained, such as training or an early retirement scheme, there should be a 'social secretariat' of employers and employees, which took responsibility for such arrangements.

So this idea went nicely in the direction of proposals from the Labour Market Agenda some 10 years later. Employers, employees and the representatives of the self-employed presented this two-stream idea (on the one hand, as much structurally earmarked social budget as possible in the institutional subsidies; on the other hand, a social secretariat) to minister Plasterk as if it came from his own pocket . He adopted the plan for the first stream. Not for the second, because he would have to pay for the social secretariat and he did not feel much like that.

The Schooling Fund fell between two stools. Its continued existence was passionately advocated by the board, especially for the period when there was no alternative. The new shoes had yet to be designed, so why throw away the old ones now? Were the accumulated expertise and cooperation worth nothing? Employers supported the plea. Employees and the self-employed did not; each had a different agenda. The minister did not go along with it either. Plasterk had to economise; he had a very hefty target, as he informed the Lower House. So he withdrew the subsidy. In 2009, the fund operated from its last reserves; in 2010 it was liquidated.

UWV service point

With the demise of the Training Fund, there was no longer a sector-wide approach to lifelong learning. Institutions had to go it alone and pay for it entirely from their own resources. However, initiatives continued to come from their umbrella organisations. However, the budget cuts of 2012 took away all space. Yet a temporary new offer came into being, ironically precisely thanks to those severe cuts.

Aware that the intervention on culture also meant a heavy attack on employment, OCW opted for a project subsidy to alleviate the direct consequences of staff dismissal through counselling and retraining. To this end, the Federation of Culture (umbrella organisation of employers, FC for short) started a special project together with the trade union and with implementing body UWV.

The Arts and Culture Service Point became the temporary impetus for upskilling and especially retraining jobseekers. Many artists and other workers in culture took advantage of it. They actually retrained for jobs elsewhere in the sector or beyond. The business manager became a yoga teacher, the actor became a presentation coach. The theatre technician retrained as a boatman, the artistic director as a funeral director (with a now esteemed funeral home in Amsterdam). The dancer became an income consultant, a colleague a physiotherapist. And so on.

Many people found more livelihood security and sometimes more job satisfaction in very different professions. In doing so, the arts sector also lost valuable employees, just as it did later in the (post) corona era. Sometimes there was a win-win situation when workers in the cultural sector learnt to master a second profession. They could thereby combine work in the arts with earnings elsewhere. At the Service Point, over 700 workers ended up receiving financial support and practical guidance, such as job training, from 2013 to 2015.3

Asscher's sector plans

A new episode followed. Once again, the sector was able to gain experience with training plans, this time thanks to the labour market strengthening of Minister Asscher of Social Security and Employment (2012-2017). He asked for sector plans per industry, aimed at increasing mobility and employability of employees. Hesitantly, the cultural and creative industries sector joined in. There was hardly enough experience, nor a set of instruments to respond well to the scheme; the sector was small and at a disadvantage compared to sectors such as Hospitality, Logistics or Technology.

The Federation of Culture and the Cultuur-Ondernemen foundation (where there was expertise through applications to the European ESF fund) signed up for initiative and implementation. A small Direction Group from the organisations involved supervised the process. Various parties united in the Sector Plan, intended to 'tackle bottlenecks and challenges on the labour market in the cultural sector'. It involved nine measures totalling some 4.5 million euros; half would come from the central government. Training provision was one of those nine measures, in particular: entrepreneurship training, career advice to employed and jobseekers and - from the experience of the Omscholingsfonds Dansers - training of performing artists for a second career. With all measures combined, between two and three thousand people were eventually reached.4

The Sector Plan itself was a great learning process for the sector and ended catastrophically with hassles over money. A robust evaluation therefore yielded quite a few learning points in retrospect, although the failures were partly attributable to SoZaWe, which had drawn up far too complicated, cumbersome and bureaucratic rules. But there were certainly also plus points, especially for the training component, such as cooperation around the labour market, openness to new training offers, lessons learned. The current Permanent Professional Development Tool (PPO) had the advantage at the start that it did not have to start from a completely blank base.

A new tool

With the tool PPO, after the liquidation of the Scholingsfonds in 2005, the Arts and Culture sector again has, for the first time, a facility envisaged as structural that can help enable 'lifelong learning'. The PPO programme stems from the Labour Market Agenda Cultural and Creative Sector5. Minister Ingrid van Engelshoven put €19 million into the programme in 2020 to give it a solid foundation, later supplemented by budgets for specific targets.

In terms of criteria and access, the instrument is designed to be as accessible as possible.

Through Werktuig PPO, workers can get a financial contribution of one-third of the costs for their training plans for a maximum of €2,000 per year. These include individual learning paths, but also collective approaches such as learning networks. In addition, PPO stimulates initiatives by branch and professional organisations. A Digital Transformation programme has been set up for individual organisations.

There is sector-wide provision for the first time after the Training Fund, this time including the creative industries. Moreover, other authorities have also sought and found cooperation with Werktuig PBO. Self-employed creatives in the province and municipality of Groningen, for example, and in the Amsterdam region, have concrete benefits.

Since its launch in 2021, Werktuig PPO has now processed more than 17 thousand applications, more than 60% of them with a quick positive decision. More than €9,000,000 worth of funding has been committed. So these are different amounts than were involved in the Training Fund. 6

The latest quarterly report (third quarter 2022) shows that a vast majority of applicants have been working in the sector for a long time. Applications were mainly for training (75%), training (34%) and coaching (14%). Some 10 per cent involved retraining, either within or outside the sector. Much more often, it was about deepening or broadening the profession. Of the applicants, 35 per cent were from the creative business services sector.

Sustainable approach

Werktuig PPO is part of 'the family' of Platform ACCT that implements the sector's labour market agenda.7 Now, PPO is a programme for several years. Big challenge for the platform is to make the facility sustainable.

Employers' and employees' own responsibility will have to be demonstrated. How substantially does that translate in financial terms and in agreements? The central government and perhaps other governments must also be addressed for sustainable funding, not so much as a subsidiser, but from their role as indirect employers.

It seems obvious to link agreements to what is agreed on 'fair pay' and 'fair practice'. The 'two-stream' scenario from the 2006 Ierschot Opinion also comes into the picture again. If you put training in the first stream, it would be part of the annual agreements between the government and organisations of employers, employees and the self-employed. Then there are mandatory percentages of contributions from those parties.

However, if fragmentation is to be avoided, some form of 'social secretariat' that ensures or at least oversees its distribution is also needed. This can also help find and maintain a connection with the government's STAP project.8 Preferably, collective expertise will also be secured. The already existing social funds in the sector should then relate to it. Such an approach would fit well with a sector that is growing in professionalisation and cooperation.

Driving to the performance; and after the performance

Above, I have tried to paint a picture of developments as objectively as possible. I kept my own role on the stage of education, mobility and the labour market out of it as much as possible. But now that I look back at the performance like this, I see more common threads and coherence in retrospect. The sector learned by doing: it was all 'course on the spot'. They were small but sure steps towards greater cooperation, know-how and professionalism.

The low mass of the sector, especially if it is not collaborative, has often proved a handicap to firmly establishing training. When it came to social aspects of the sector, the government moved back and forth between high involvement and distance. Administrators Bussemaker, Van Engelshoven and Uslu have pushed the pendulum firmly back towards involvement. And the central government cannot stay at a distance either, especially from education. Not just because of the money. Also because there is so much interconnection with other aspects of the labour market. Think of recurring themes such as the size of the sector, training, professional qualifications, fair practice, false self-employment, social security. It's all not really settled yet.

Actors, above all, need to be able to play well, sometimes to drive. If a theatre collective were to apply for subsidies for driving lessons today, I don't think this would be ruled out in advance. But besides the necessary courses in driving skills, entrepreneurship, not-for-profit accounting, marketing and digitalisation, I hope for many pathways for artistic and content development.

In the end, it's all about the performance.