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ACTUAL

All about politics, policy, society and how those things relate to culture and art.

Volkskrant fails: not 'region' but Randstad suffers

I would like to take a moment to put this one to you. Quote from this morning's volkskrant, where editor Harmen Bockma makes a valiant attempt to list all the figures of culture carnage, but fails a little in doing so. It also remains difficult to identify the fallout in the basic infrastructure add to the dropout at the fund, but it is proving altogether difficult to discern what

Baldwin Live

On Wednesday 1 August 2012, the Performing Arts Fund will announce the results of the lottery that granting arts subsidies has now become. Huge cuts are looming: companies and makers that by now seemed to be a permanent part of the Dutch arts landscape will disappear. Exactly what it will look like, we know

Nobody likes a critic

Al YouTubesurfend stuitte ik op deze messcherpe sketches van Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. Afkomstig uit de hoogtijdagen van hun geniale programma A Bit Of Fry & Laurie. Bij het zien van deze prachtig gepersifleerde windbuilerij, overviel me het akelige gevoel dat er sinds de uitzending van  deze sketch verdomd weinig is veranderd in de mentaliteit van de kunstcritici. De zelfgenoegzaamheid ligt altijd op de loer.

Paradiso full of dance energy at I Like To Watch Too

I Like To Watch Too: abundance of performances shows that dance and performance are powerfully connected to modern society. The dance steps rain down on you even before you have entered Paradiso. Tim Boerlijst tap-dances on the pavement. This infectious welcome immediately draws visitors into the atmosphere of 'I Like To Watch Too'. This festival showcases dance and performance from... 

Halbe Zijlstra should fund Culture Card after all.

It was the issue on which he lied the hardest, as we demonstrated a year ago, but the country's most hated secretary of state did not care. Despite its great success, the culture card for schoolchildren had to be killed off, and on spurious grounds. Now the card has been saved by the chamber. A majority voted in favour of a motion by CDA and PvdA,... 

Tate London has 100,000 members. Fortunately not all of them are active

Martin Barden realises that an old model works, where everyone is always clamouring for new forms. As marketing boss of the Tate museums in London, he created a large network of friends. So that museum has more than 100,000 members. people who feel part of the club, and whom you need to pamper.

Awards for experimental docu and absurdist fiction

EYE is pulling out all the stops. This year, the final exam papers of the students of the Netherlands Film and Television Academy will get an ideal presentation in the largest auditorium of this new film centre. What is also new is that yesterday, immediately following the screening for press and relations, awards were handed out for best commercial (The End, Soon), best documentary (A Twist in... 

Nancy Wiltink: 'a good story has to smell like blood'

People asking for clarity often clamour for "names and (back) numbers", but in classical music, that fuss with names and numbers is precisely why nobody understands anything anymore. So, according to ex-marketer and now storyteller Nancy Wiltink, it's not only about your story, but also whether that story is

Theatre Museum collection to be lost for good

[July update: the 2nd chamber passed a motion instructing the cabinet to save the collection from destruction. Where this is to be paid for, however, is still unclear]

It is now becoming clear where the laissez faire-laissez mourir (let it be done, let it die) policy of Halbe Zijlstra, Martin Bosma and Mark Rutte will lead. Of the dozens of institutions that will close, downsize or die off in the coming months due to vacancy of quality staff, the demise of the Theatre Institute of the Netherlands (TIN) is starting to take on very tragic proportions.

"Janine Dijkmeijer to National Ballet"

The message below has since been confirmed. But we like to cherish our firsts. Hence. Of course, the merger event in and around Amsterdam's Muziektheater, where ballet, opera and theatre will work in unison, also produced a game of musical chairs. Stijn Schoonderwoerd, for instance, announced a month or so ago that he was going to do something else, and so the Dutch National Ballet was looking... 

Classical musicians: stop thinking in money, think in ideas

Classical music audiences have been declining by 1% a year for 20 years. Structurally. That means that since 1992, 1/5 of the audience has already disappeared, without anything else taking its place. According to Johan Idema, strategist and author of a useful book on new methods for early music, the sector is entirely self-inflicted.

Iván Fischer sets new Wagner standard

That Pierre Audi does not shy away from religious symbolism is well known, but the true miracle with Parsifal by the Netherlands Opera is in the pit. There, in the hands of master conductor Iván Fischer, the Concertgebouw Orchestra sets a new Wagner standard. Despite a gigantic orchestral strength, almost chamber music-like lightness, extraordinarily transparent and, thanks to careful tempo choices, with wonderful dramatic tension. Five hours long.

'I have all of Shakespeare's records in my cupboard'

The press presentation of the open-air opera Orfeo ed Eurydice at Soestdijk at the time attracted just under a hundred people press and sponsors. At the presentation of the performance 'Much ado about nothing', The Utrecht Games attracted only a handful: someone from weblog cultuurpodium.nl, two people from the Stadsblad Utrecht and an indeterminate camera crew who had come exclusively for Suzan Visser.... 

Dodo Holland Festival journal becomes Dodo Holland Festival Hangout #HF12

 We've already had one episode on it, and it was obviously a huge success, but right at the climax you have to start something new. That's why tonight at 22:30 we have a new thing: The Dodo Holland Festival Hangout. Live, interactive and online. Innovative, in other words, as you know it from us. You know them: those reporter trucks with metres of spaghetti... 

Actors' award for Theatre Institute threatened with dissolution

Mail from Actors' Interests, the actors' 'union'. Whether we want to abide by the embargo. Of course we do. We do. Butreh: so the Theatre Institute Netherlands, to be dissolved by Halbe Zijlstra together with the Netherlands Music Centre, is getting an award. And that seems to be a sculpture, which in turn makes us wonder where the thing should be after 1 January 2013.... 

The Dodo goes out of its way to tell you all about the Holland Festival 2012 #hf12

 Top theatre from all corners of the world, big names we had never dared hope for, and a newsreel that we will broadcast at unexpected times. Festival day newspaper The Dodo, now a household name in festival land, is going all out at this year's Holland Festival. Of course. It is the dream of every blogger, professional or amateur, to be at the performances of the... 

Cultural Press Agency reinvents itself

What Rabobank can do, we can do too, thought the journalists of the Cultural Press Agency: working together in a cooperative association. In June, the new form for the news agency will become a reality. This will increase our clout and boost our innovative capacity. The Cultural Press Agency Foundation received time and money from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science in 2010 and 2011 to... 

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