A major musical theatre performance, an adapted classical play, an opera and a painting festival. The small municipality of Noordwijk - like that other coastal municipality of Bergen - offers an abundance of culture. All four events rely heavily on talent, subsidy and donations, volunteers, pragmatic thrift. And good weather.
Noordwijk aan Zee has been a more than average community for centuries. Famous Dutchmen and foreigners visited the seaside resort in summer at one of its many hotels, the most famous of which was the beautifully located Huis ter Duin. Barons had estates, some of which have been preserved, such as Calorama in Noordwijk, ideal venues for performances.
What mundane life must have been like in Noordwijk a century ago can be seen in the municipality through a route of paintings by renowned German painter Max Liebermann: from ladies and gentlemen fully dressed on the beach, helped by servants with parasols to delight in dunes and on the (Queen Astrid and Queen Wilhelmina) boulevards.
Political-administrative dunghill
The municipality has largely lost its grandeur. Politically, Noordwijk, like other coastal municipalities like Bloemendaal and Wassenaar, is a powder keg of constant squabbles and conflicts of interest of real estate bigwigs who are even the biggest in the Noordwijk municipal council with their own party.
But it is precisely on this political-administrative dunghill that culture flourishes in the municipality of only 25,000 inhabitants (after a redivision + 15,000): with two major performances on location in 2023, a painting and opera festival. These are unknown outside the region. Because the reach of the marketing, with mainly online expressions, is 'a thing'.
Especially since marketing is a cost that requires space in limited budgets. Like the municipality itself, for the big four cultural expressions, the rule is: too small for the tablecloth, too big for the napkin, with exceptions such as KunstKlank's large performances on location. This is reflected in the size of events and in funding for them but also in a local theatre
The municipality of Noordwijk is relatively rich given its high WOZ income from expensive real estate, and offers very different amounts of subsidy. For cultural events, it is as follows:
Project |
grant |
| Theatre De Muze | 450.000 |
| Sculpture exhibition Biennale Noordwijk | 240.000 |
| Live statues, Cirque des Dunes grant (and Ibiza festival) | 75.000 |
| Art sound/performance Vaar Wel | 25.000 |
| By the sea/performance Path of Mercury | 13.000 |
| Painting festival | 17.000 |
| Opera by the Sea | 14.000 |
| Total | 834.000 |
(This is the total of these amounts, not total cultural subsidies).
With 350 seats, theatre De Muze is much bigger than theatres in other villages of this size, but struggles with programming likewise with the tablecloth/serviet euphoria: the theatre cannot book the top of the Netherlands, but it can book well-known (solo) names like Pieter Derks, Stef Bos and Richard Groenendijk. Operations have become a lot healthier since films are shown in the summer months, also nice for the many tourists with this Dutch weather.
Given the year-round programme, the theatre's subsidy is not exorbitant. That is true of the Biennial Noordwijk to which the Mondriaan Fund also contributed €8,000. Such a twelve works by artists outside the municipality and only temporarily on show until the end of August, are paid for with it and require a trip to see them all. The local Culture Council was critical of it and the city council shot down the intended biennial repeat.
Living sculpture festivals, Cirque des Dunes and Ibiza Festivals take place on the Wilhelmina Boulevard and, apart from residents of Noordwijk, are mainly aimed at tourists who spend at the local catering industry; for which the Fein Foundation receives substantial subsidies. This year, the lively festivities were partly plagued by storm and rain. Compared to the subsidy for this for the Fein Foundation, the two theatre companies are too scantily endowed by the municipality.
Major musical theatre performance
Weather also plays for the big show Sail Well on location in the dunes of Noordwijk, the premiere of which is tomorrow - 30 August 2023. Nice weather is the starting point, if not, spectators of the nine performances will be given ponchos and stay warm from the contents.
After all, as with previous performances, KunstKlank Foundation is tackling it big. Artistic director Herma van Piekeren has made its mark with a good number of highly rated, invariably sold-out performances on the beach, in the dunes or bulb fields such as Carmen and Dido & Aeneas. She is the best example of a decisive factor for small towns that want to offer culture at level. For this play, she will be on duty day and night for a few months approximately.
With the efforts, KunstKlank also trains talent as part of Podium for the Future, such as the Paddenburg family (Ilke, Eefje and Joep) who are creating a national furore with International Theatre Amsterdam, among others, . Van Piekeren is a paid employee of KunstKlank, as is a business and production manager.
Professionals
They are able to hire professionals for performances such as, for Vaar Wel, 8 young actors, 10-piece orchestra, conductor and choreographer; and for this performance even award-winning composer/arranger Bob Zimmerman, lyricist Jan Boerstoel, Uri Rapaport (lighting) and Peter Velthuizen (sound). Normally working for national major productions, these men now find their contributions for this special performance on location a fine challenge.
KunstKlank's professional spending must harmoniously coexist with the efforts of hundreds of volunteers who provide help for nothing, sometimes for days at a time, as does a background choir whose members pay a contribution for expenses and learning. Vaar Wel's budget had to be revised downwards considerably due to the unexpected lack of contributions from national funds.
This is partly a result of demands for diversity. KunstKlank is very diverse in terms of age (singers from 11 to 80 years old) and with the actors in the lhbtiq+ range, but in terms of colour, all the main actors, orchestra members and leadership are white. Even residents of the coastal community are at most coloured by the sunbathing white population. With institutions, that quickly means 0 to recruit, even though most of the diverse population is represented. However, local entrepreneurs do sponsor culture with money and in kind, from the butcher and big hotel to the contractor and waste company, some nice funds such as Baalbergen Fund.
Greek-Ukrainian
The same goes for the other theatre production on location in Noordwijk, The Path of Mercury by producer Aan Zee Theatre Productions. This smaller project relies largely on one person, creator Martine Zeeman, who previously split from KunstKlank. The advantage is that the production, on a text Zeeman obtained from Ellen McLaughlin in New York, is uniform in its creation and content.
In her performance, Zeeman linked Greek tragedy to the war in Ukraine and had an international company in terms of diversity with a Greek lead actress and Ukrainian singers. Like KunstKlank, it has to rely on local subsidy, sponsorship and ticket revenue from a mainly older culture-loving regional audience. This is relatively large, although it is no match for the thousands of Formula 1 fans who enthusiastically cycled through the dunes to Zandvoort last weekend.
Opera and painters
A loyal crowd with picnic baskets and white wine frequent the annual Opera by the Sea which used to be held for a fortnight in the gardens of Noordwijk villas, but now covers a weekend in May and September with the performance of famous operas by Mozart, Puccini etc. on a country estate. The first weekend is for young talent, in that quarter of a century many many students from conservatoires and colleges of art who often later became well-known singers. In September, arrived singers and breakthrough young talents from the Concertgebouw or at the National Opera come to sing in the open sea air.
Subsidies, contributions from funds and patrons, appropriate frugality with expenses and, above all, the boundless commitment of married couple Lenny Vulperhorst and Kuni Blom have kept this festival going for a quarter of a century.
They are also the bearers of the Painting festival Noordwijk which had its 25th edition in June with a large tent on the Noordwijk beach. From there, the dozens of professional painters, a quarter of them from abroad, swarmed out over the area of beach, dunes, villa districts and village centre to paint for a week and then attempt to sell their work on the spot and at home, all the while connecting with each other. Few municipalities probably have as many paintings hanging on their walls as Noordwijk.
Talent and ambition prevail
Then, in Noordwijk, joggers and cyclists to Formula 1 suddenly turn up to unexpected singing in a forest of rehearsals for performances and curious beach walkers let patient painters explain to them what will appear on the canvas.
Indomitable creative ambition, commitment and talent of exceptional residents, local sponsors and subsidy, many volunteers and optimism and positivism of residents are the conditions under which local culture can flourish in smaller municipalities of the Netherlands; often against the odds.
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