has been active in various places in the cultural sector since 2000. Trained as an International Lawyer at the University of Amsterdam, he started his career at the European Cultural Foundation. Via the Office of the University of Amsterdam and the Art & Culture Department of the City of Rotterdam, he joined the Amsterdam City Council in 2002. As spokesman for Urban Development, Finance & Economy and Art & Culture, he was partly responsible for the development of a new independent Arts Plan policy and the 'whitening' of ID jobs in the Culture & Welfare sector. In addition to his Council membership, Maarten worked as an independent cultural consultant for governments and institutions in the period from 2003. In that role, he wrote Arts Plan applications, helped with reorganisations and advised various governments on Culture Policy development. In 2011, Maarten became Business Leader of Theater Bellevue (one of the finest theatres in the Netherlands!), before spending a period in 2014-2015 as City Intendant of Deventer building new initiatives and projects. Besides being a partner of Silver Lining Advies & Ontwikkeling, Maarten is an advisor to the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (multi-year committee Theatre) and a member of the Board of the Leeuwensteinstichting. He is an avid long-distance runner (marathons-half marathons), hockey player and father of 11-year-old son. Born and raised in Amsterdam, Maarten focuses primarily but not explicitly on this city and its cultural and urban development.
Well in advance of the March 2018 municipal elections, the Amsterdam Arts Council has come out with an Advisory Cultural Investment Account. The advice actually comes just too late to serve as input for the various election programmes of Amsterdam's main political parties. It is, however, well in time to possibly play a role in the coalition negotiations that will follow the...
The Rutte III Cabinet is finally in place after long negotiations. It is a cabinet that will govern in financial prosperity, but that prosperity applies to a very limited extent to the Arts & Culture sector. Step by step, the cabinet will work towards an extra 80 million euros for the Culture sector from 2020, it says. But if this were to be enough...
The commotion about Beatrix Ruf's side job, or rather just second job, touches on a number of important core values for the proper functioning of society in general and the cultural sector in particular. Firstly, that cooperation is based on trust. The Supervisory Board was justified in assuming that Ruf would not run a consultancy company alongside her...
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