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“Voor het bezoeken van cultuur blijkt ook een hoge mate van stedelijkheid een positieve invloed te hebben op de kans op deelname.” Zo’n zin, daar lees je onderzoeken voor. Deze vond ik in het onderzoek van Boekman naar de mate waarin mensen aan cultuur en sport doen, en of daar trends in te herkennen zijn. Dat die hoge mate van…
Blokjes jong belegen kaas, slagersleverworst, originele bitterballen en bier. Zaterdag 31 mei was het even of in de Zaanse Filmfabriek de tijd een jaar of veertig had stilgestaan. Dat had alles te maken met de aanleiding. Op die plek, ooit een roestige rafelrand, nu midden in het tot een toeristische attractie van Efteling-allure omgekatte Zaanse stadscentrum, werd Hollandia geboren. Hollandia…
Het is niet te geloven, maar het gebeurt toch. De NPO, ooit in het leven geroepen om ook het geluid van kleinere doelgroepen aan bod te laten komen, laat Kunststof vallen. Het programma dat we hier tijdens afwas, eten, reis naar voorstelling altijd luisteren om op de hoogte te blijven van de wereld van kunst, sneuvelt voor sport. Lees het…
The low-threshold theatre with which festivals like Amsterdam Fringe, Café Theatre Festival Utrecht and Delft Fringe reach new audiences is not something you put together quickly. The three young makers of Dystopia prove that. They make their performance alongside their paid work as theatre teachers, playwrights and production managers. According to their own words, Fleur Mennega, Mathijs Demper and Myrthe Ligtenberg make "performances that...
Hoe over(leef) je als schrijver? 16 mei organiseerde de Auteursbond een bijeenkomst in Pakhuis de Zwijger in Amsterdam rondom die vraag. Het antwoord: door succes te hebben! De middag is uitverkocht. Op de wachtlijst staan mensen te trappelen om nog binnen te komen. Niet alleen leden van de Auteursbond kunnen een ticket kopen voor de bijeenkomst Hoe (over)leef je als…
This edition of the Holland Festival contains at least 1 performance that will make you feel extremely uncomfortable as a man. Nevertheless, I challenge the male brethren reading this to go and see it. I did it too, went all the way to Brussels for it and got brain food for years to come in return. That's because the maker is a...
We have been sitting on the edge of our seats here at home for several days watching Thomas Vinterberg's latest television drama. In Families Like Ours, the maker of Festen and Jagten describes how Denmark is being dissolved due to climate change. To do so, he uses no spectacular special effects, no CGI of tidal waves, no huge mass scenes. The world that goes down in Families Like Ours...
De overheid moet zorgen dat iedereen voldoende kan verdienen – maar faalt daar in veel sectoren. Ondertussen wordt gesproken over verplichte opbouw van een pensioen en een verplichte verzekering voor arbeidsongeschiktheid (AOV) voor zzp’ers. Concurrentie drukt tarieven in bepaalde sectoren onder een leefbaar niveau en dat kan ten koste gaan van een pensioen en AOV. Wat voor mogelijkheden kunnen we…
Het lobbyseizoen is begonnen. Vandaag twee brieven aan onze zwijgzame cultuurminister, die zo zijn best doet het tijdens deze voortslepende kabinetsperiode vooral níet over kunst te hebben. Danssector Brief 1 is van de Nederlandse danssector die vraagt om meer rust in de tent, en meer aandacht voor de specifieke problemen van de danswereld. Mooi is de aandacht die ze vragen…
Wat zijn de valkuilen en kansen voor een bestuurder in de cultuursector? Erik Akkermans deelt 48 jaar ervaring. Luister op Substack Luister naar deze podcast over leiderschap. Erik Akkermans heeft er 48 jaar ervaring mee. ‘Mensen zonder empathie hebben het makkelijker’ by Cultureel Persbureau Wat zijn de valkuilen en kansen voor een bestuurder in de cultuursector? Erik Akkermans deelt 48…
A starting rate of €27 an hour without proper research into billable hours within the AV/Film sector is not Fair Pay. It leads to a net annual income below the minimum wage and is not sustainable, not fair and certainly not future-proof.
The creative sector has a right to a fee system based on the reality of freelance work: with varying assignments, unpaid time, and little economic security.
As long as we do not set a standard for realistic calculations in the Netherlands, Fair Pay in name can be unfair in practice. Serious steps are needed for a sustainable creative sector: independent research on billable hours, clear enforcement and real involvement of freelancers in policy making.
Today is a day of joy and relief. A burden increase of over €900 million on our sector is permanently off the table. Raising the VAT rate would not only make culture, art and reading more inaccessible; it would also hit the earning capacity of thousands of creators. This result really did not happen by itself. Over the past year, an awful lot of hard work has gone into the...
In Belgium, unpaid work without a contract is prohibited and there is a social safety net for artists. This approach provides more security and prevents market distortion. The Netherlands could learn from this to better protect self-employed workers.
There is nothing wrong with just being really good at what you do. Nothing more beautiful than a single artist on an empty floor with nothing but their music, body and voice. The top three of my legendary art moments: All old-school stuff, I admit, but that's it with top moments: once established, it's...
When your evening starts with a stripping festival director and ends with pole dancing, you know you are not in a regular theatre. True, I was at the opening of the Queering Puppets Festival at Amsterdam's Plein Theater and it was a party. The Plein Theatre largely owes that to that stripping director Berith Danse, who was in...
That the Dutch performing arts, especially in relation to our neighbouring countries, are in a spread, may seem like a lame pun, but it is true nonetheless. Yesterday we presented a rather alarming calculation example on the consequences of the emphasis on spreading in the assessment of grant applications by the Performing Arts Fund. Today, a follow-up response from the same fund reveals that...
There has been quite a fuss about subsidies in recent months, especially for the performing arts. A few beloved middle groups with a fine track record were no longer getting subsidies, in favour of newcomers. The reasons for the shift were many. The anger over it was mainly about the emphasis on Diversity and Inclusion and regional distribution in the assessment by Fonds Podiumkunsten ...
Fonds Podiumkunsten awards a total of €26.8 million in grants to 136 venues for the period 2025-2029. With the podium scheme, the Fund supports the presentation of professional performing arts offerings across the country. The production grant enables 51 stages to (co)produce and invest in talent development. Stages in the Netherlands and the Caribbean part of the Kingdom The stages that from 1...
From 21 to 30 March, the Kaboom Animation Festival takes place in Utrecht, Amsterdam and online. Provocation is the main theme this year, with films about rebellious women and work in free-spirited animation styles. There are competitions for long and short films, Japanese animator Masaaki Yuasa is artist in focus, and there is a special focus on Belgian animation.
It is delightful when big newspapers clumsily overwrite small media, and that they do it for free? Oh well, they struggle too. For instance, the small niche weblog Jazzenzo has been rehabilitated after more than a year thanks to an article the Volkskrant's art chief had copied from this site last year. What was it about? The reviewer and columnist of the...
The picture was a bit Da Vinci. At a long table they sat in beautiful light and it was about melancholy and menace. This was the scene of Last Supper at Amsterdam's De Balie debate centre on 1 February 2025. To crucify: some theatre groups I grew up with. 't Barre Land fraternally next to De Warme Winkel, Orkater next to...
The female body has been the subject of scrutiny and imaging for centuries. From art to Hollywood, from myths to modern feminist statements-how is the female body seen, and how does that influence our ideas about sexuality and self-determination? This essay explores how lust, imagination and social expectations come together in films, books and the real world. How much freedom does a woman really have over her own body-and her own story?
In the series In Perspective, Erik Akkermans looks back and ahead at developments in cultural policy and practice. Today: what is really needed for cultural dissemination? In the Glass City In one of the large rooms of the Naaldwijk auction complex, the Westlands Mannenkoor rehearsed under the direction of conductor Piet Struijk. The choir, consisting of more than a hundred market gardeners, drivers, middlemen and...
The book industry, or should we say the book field, will have shrunk at least 2 per cent by 2024. You just don't read that in the press releases about the industry's annual figures, which the CPNB director ance now tells us to call 'field'. Something about flowers. The ability to present all the news, including the bad, as something beautiful, good and cheerful....
VMBO schoolchildren in Flevopolder gained confidence from their teachers. They were allowed to figure out for themselves how to make a guided tour of world heritage site Schokland more fun and educational. So the third-year students set to work on a project to offer the second-year students something more fun than the pre-chewed programme they had been following. They did so through the rules
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