In North Brabant, the annual provincial subsidy for professional art will go down by €629,000 a year from 2025. Whereas prestigious, and very vital, organisations like Boulevard, Bosch parade and Matzer could count on an amount of 8.25 million until now, from the new culture plan period it will be only 7.6 million.
The Brabant cultural institutions, united in The Arts of Brabant, expressed their dismay at this cut in a press release. According to them, more money is actually needed, and not even to grow, but to survive with increased prices and energy costs, plus demands for fair payment. It is calculated that for this very purpose the budget needs to be increased to 9.6 million a year.
First for the far right
A few years ago, Brabant was the first province where a far-right party entered the provincial government. Back then, a hellacious coalition of CDA, VVD and FvD produced a cut of 25%, with art was also categorised as 'leisure'. When that administration folded and a slightly less spiteful wind blew through the province, a combination of family ties and poor presidency for even more problems, as then wrongly positively assessed institutions still had to receive money. In 2021, the province sold a cut of grant already as support in Corona time. And so now this discount.
"Moreover, with the amount available now, the province is undermining its own ambitions." Arts institutions declare: "Indeed, the administrative agreement states that the province, together with the four big cities and the sector itself, wants to raise more money from "The Hague". But to achieve that, the very thing we need is a widening of the budget to match it with national subsidies.“
Ravine year
The current political climate, which can be euphemistically described as 'bleak', does not inspire optimism. With negotiations in The Hague still to start on whether the rule of law will be respected there, they will not want to deviate too much from existing agreements. But there is also little chance that budgets will be increased afterwards.
And then the 'ravine year' 2026 is yet to come, the year when municipalities will face significant budget cuts, something that will no doubt be passed on to the arts sector.
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