From rabid enthusiasm to deadly tired: consultancy Blueyard seeks solution to grant chaos

“A grant system that looks only at individual applications runs the risk of growing skewed. Regions, genres, functions or target groups may be left out of the picture without this being a conscious choice.” 

Consultancy firm Blueyard wants more overview and a more integrated view of grant distribution. In a article on its own site, director Jurriaan Rammeloo, former theatre director Henk Scholten and former minister Ingrid van Engelshoven analyse the existing system, which has been shaking on its foundations since the tumultuous 2024 awards. 

A few things went wrong, of course, that summer. This is how the Culture Participation Fund (FCP) found out that it had bailed out an entire sector (classical music), and discovered the Performing Arts Fund (FPK) that it had sent a rather significant number of mid-career makers into early retirement. Apart from fuss, that situation also resulted in complicated reparations and a few court cases that have so far not been very favourable to the Performing Arts Fund in particular. 

Little risk

Blueyard's tough team observes that the system has been over-juridised, and that the sheer number of criteria and rules creates an industry that no longer dares to take many risks. Add to this the fact that with all those applicants and all those sub-disciplines, it is almost impossible to allow for a measured peer review, and the groundwork for a disaster such as the one now unfolding has been done. 

Fortunately, Blueyard goes beyond calling for fewer rules. You can safely leave that to politicians. 

The most striking recommendations they make is that the integral consideration made by grantmakers should be much more decisive. In essence, they state that this integral consideration may sometimes overrule peer review. The advice thus culminates in a kind of mini-Cultural Council, but then per fund. After all: the Culture Council is there nationally to issue an integral judgement that outweighs the advice from the committees in which peers have assessed the applications. In 2020, incidentally, this led to unsavoury situations, but no one in the industry has much need to look back. 

Dolenthousiast

At first, I became rabidly enthusiastic about Blueyard's piece, because it says it succinctly and that creates clarity. That there could be different classes in the application system, with beginners and advanced applicants having to meet different requirements: clear. That much of the assessment work can also be done by professionals employed by the funds: totally agree. And those different periods (2, 4, 6 and 8 years)? Do it!

But then fatigue struck, because apart from whether it is desirable to create power blocks within the funds in addition to the power block ‘Council for Culture’, there is the spectre of regional distribution, and especially the role played in it by the various governments. 

Wilderness

Halfway through the article, we are deep in an overgrown quagmire, because even though Blueyard proposes to tackle that whole patch of wilderness with one and the same application: which government gets to say what about what? The advisers want this to be decided on a category-by-category basis, with a modest role for the ‘off-take side’, or the programmers of local arts institutions. 

But how and when? This is where things get dizzy. Blueyard deliberately does not burn its fingers on the advice the Council for Culture issued earlier on a new system. Central to that was the replacement of the separate discipline funds (performing arts, literature, participation, visual arts, architecture, etc) with one big fund, which would also deal with regional distribution. Quite a controversial plan in itself, as large organisations tend to have less regard for the small scribblers on the margins, who do form the humus for the entire art system. 

Two Councils for Culture

If we now add Blueyard's advice to the idea of the Council for Culture, you thus get a Council for Culture that deals with the Basic Infrastructure, and a Council for ‘also’ Culture that deals with distribution, regional, renewal and whatever in Zaltbommel. Or Anjum. And about visual arts and music. And fair practice and inclusion. And anyway, how do you judge whether something is ‘professional’, and according to what criteria do you determine that?

It seems to me, as a relative outsider, that it is not easy to turn that into something more manageable than the rather soggy system we have now. That's where that fatigue became a bit deadly. 

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