Why we should never talk about the 'earning power' of culture again.  

"Strengthening earning capacity is a prerequisite for improving the labour market position of workers in the sector. Martin Verboom is happy to share what came out of the Cultural and Creative Sector Labour Market Agenda review in this area. Platform ACCT is forging a coalition with partners in the sector to take up the priorities for the coming years."

This was why I went to the meeting of Platform ACCT came. Solutions were on the horizon for the tenuous labour market position of culture workers. Solutions that we could fish out of the sea. 

Pride in seafaring

The new - trumpist - Schoof cabinet gave fisheries its own ministry again. Perhaps the arts sector has something to learn from shipping, shipbuilding, the power of innovation and, in general, the appealing qualities of the maritime sector. A sector, Martin Verboom spoke glowingly in the Apeldoorn theatre Orpheus, that can fill the Netherlands with pride. That sector has been made a priority of government policy, and so should the cultural sector. But how do you do that?

The maritime sector has all sorts of things to make ambitious politicians salivate. Not only is the Netherlands the world's largest superyacht builder, but transhipment and distribution are huge. Knowledge of shipbuilding is great, we have tremendously good training and engineers. So, with the whole world shutting up behind tariff walls again, investing in that industry is a must.

Wishful thinking

Can we extend that to the cultural and creative sector? So the temptation is to answer that with a big 'yes'. Problem is that such a 'yes' is mostly a wishful 'yes'. After all, whereas the maritime sector deals with very tangible things, such as ships, innovative technology and physical trade convertible into sound currency, the cultural sector really only has 'feeling' to offer. And feeling, you can't link earning power to that.

And that 'earning power' was what it was all about, there in Apledoorn. But what actually is that? A lawyer from the Kunstenbond rightly asked that question, and no one could answer it in a heartbeat. At home, we had a little time to figure it out. Earning power, according to the definition, is the ability to earn income from what you do. Put more Trumpistically: the ability to keep one's own trousers on without government support.

'Earning power' is also what can keep a ship's worker with a worn-out back out of the WIA: you can grow bonsai even with a broken spine.

It is what Dutch politicians have been complaining about for decades: in the cultural and creative sector, for the time being, no one has the talent to get all their income from the market, and so the sector actually has as much right to exist as a welfare recipient.

Labour-intensive

So is it smart to go out of your way to demonstrate that with a bit of rethinking, you can cash in on all your value in the market? Of course, you can simplify the business side of the sector. The creative sector consists overwhelmingly of small independent businesses, each with its own director, its own administration, its own sales department, its own technicians, its own space. You can cut costs there by clustering. But that's pretty much where it ends.

Creativity is labour-intensive and there is no concrete, monetisable result, even in the long term. Visual art usually increases in value only after the death of its creator. Economies of scale also go only so far. A dancer might be able to share an office with an actor, but in terms of health and safety alone, the requirements again diverge enormously. Whereas shipyards can steam up together, because everything they make must at a minimum be able to float, competing architects can awkwardly get their espresso at the same coffee machine, because their creativity is also their unique selling point. 

Smiling sofa

So banks usually laugh when a creative or cultural company comes asking for investment support. Partly because the government looks down on them. Even apart from specialist clubs like Cultuur+Ondernemen, no bank is eager to put a million into a theatre group with a wayward leader. Maybe after decades of hard work, the person in question will be able to add a million per opera production to his or her own account, but whereas every new ship that slides off the slipway is an improvement on the previous one, there is no such guarantee with art. 

Art, and cultural and creative innovation, are not about increasing tangible merit. They are about increasing the intangible value that makes a society richer in imagination, in reflection, in perspective, in self-esteem. In happiness, in short.

Bulky waste

So maybe it is time to throw that whole concept of 'earning power' in the rubbish. After all, it suggests that there comes a point where there is no need to add public money to maintain things at their current level. All over the world, government spending on the arts is currently declining. Nowhere has this led to a more vital, free and happy society. Indeed, a vital creative sector is seen as a competitor by autocracies. Because creativity makes people think of alternatives. 

By using the term 'earning power', you go along with the framing that Trumpism employs, that creative and artistic people are unworldly, and do not think economically about their income. Let's rather talk about the right that the people of a country have to a beautifully maintained heritage, to ever-renewing insights and images, to imagination in other words, to laughter from time to time.

To put it in today's language, artists and creatives are the frontline soldiers and the engineer troops in the fight against the ossification, dumbing down and darkening of society. That army does not talk about 'earning power' any more than that other one. Let's rather talk about willpower. Or buoyancy.