All about politics, policy, society and how those things relate to culture and art.
Amsterdam, 5 September 2024 - The Dutch Association for the Performing Arts (NAPK) launched a new award during the Dutch Theatre Festival 2024. This award is intended for a person, body or group that, according to the jury, has made a substantial contribution to making the Dutch performing arts (ecologically) sustainable. Purpose of the award With this award, NAPK wants to create a...
At 1 hour and 50 minutes, it happens. That's when Nicolien van Vroonhoven, culture spokesperson for the governing NSC party, makes it clear what the fuss is about. "The cultural sector should also take a look at itself, because there are whole groups in society that have nothing to do with culture." Venue: pop temple Paradiso in Amsterdam; the occasion: a church early...
The management of ITA (International Theatre Amsterdam) is terminating its collaboration with Ivo van Hove with immediate effect. The world-famous director of high-profile, often rather serious performances, had become discredited. An unsafe working climate had developed under his management. Not only the strict leadership by van Hove himself, but also the transgressive behaviour of his life partner and regular designer Jan Versweyveld was...
"How nice it would have been if, as a (male) viewer, I had really been taken out of my comfort zone by the fact that the anger was not so obviously played and commented on. How thought-provoking I would have been when they weren't making goofy faces at their Rudi Carell-German that - if implemented consistently - would have made me laugh....
It's cucumber time and many journalists are on holiday, so Culture Press has to turn up to interpret something that doesn't smell quite right. This time it is the press statement the directors of De Tocht have put on their website. In it, they explain how it was possible that this musical company, Friesland's pride, could suddenly go bankrupt. In a nutshell: it was not...
This summer, the fortieth edition of Theatre Festival Boulevard will be celebrated in 's-Hertogenbosch, with new names and old acquaintances. For director-director Tessa Smeulers, this special anniversary year is a moment to change her tack. After 15 years, she will bid farewell to Boulevard on 1 September. Head and heart "For years, my head and heart have been connected to Theatre Festival Boulevard. With great...
"As for the victims, it was mainly employees with managerial duties who experienced the cross-border behaviour. This seemingly contradictory result with the discussed hierarchy is explicable from the fact that the perpetrator of the transgressive behaviour in the majority of these cases is (a) board member(s) or other manager(s)." Ivo van Hove suddenly left as director last year
This week, Fonds Podiumkunsten and the Province of North Brabant announced that Theatre Festival Boulevard will also receive subsidies for the next four years. On Wednesday 3 July, the Performing Arts Fund issued its advice on national cultural subsidies for the period 2025-2028. Theatre Festival Boulevard is extremely proud of the Fund's positive advice. Thank you to the committee who gave us...
Theatre Group Alum welcomes the many newcomers in the new Arts Plan. That this is at the expense of Aluin, among others, we find surprising and of course very unfortunate. Of course, we can now report on our bewilderment at so much injustice but, after all, getting a subsidy is not a right. Although it sometimes feels that way when you have so many talented...
Maas receives positive advice for arts plan 2025-2028. On Wednesday 3 July, Maas theatre and dance received the redeeming word from the State: for the next four years, Maas will remain part of the Dutch Basic Infrastructure (BIS). More money was applied for and granted for this arts plan than the previous one. The week before, the positive advice had already come from the Municipality of Rotterdam,...
Today, completely unexpectedly, dance company de Stilte received a negative opinion from the Youth Performing Arts Committee of the Council for Culture. From January 2025, the company will no longer receive a subsidy from the Ministry of OC&W. Like a bolt from the blue, the assessment fell on the mat. In 2023, the company still had a positive monitor interview with the Youth Performing Arts Committee in which...
With the new far-right cabinet, a new reality has also arrived for the arts. As before in Brabant, where the provincial councils no longer placed arts and culture under science and education, Schoof-1, despite an NSC minister on Education, Culture and Science, puts culture under the heading 'Culture, Sports and Leisure'. This is evident from the new classification of the...
On 29 June, the curators and the consortium of The European Pavilion 2024: Liquid Becomings in Belgrade announced the participating artists and the boat routes. The artists were selected after an open call in March 2024 to join the curators on four boat trips on four European rivers: the Danube, Vistula, Rhine and Tagus. Each team ...
Marieke Hopman will be appointed November Music's new artistic director from 1 August 2024. She succeeds Bert Palinckx, who has been associated with the festival since 1999. Together with business director Theo van Dooremalen, Hopman will form November Music's board of directors. 'We are very happy with Marieke's arrival,' says board chairman Karen Neervoort. 'She has a lot of...
This is what charisma looks like. Arthur Verocai, now 79, tall and lean, stylish jacket around bony shoulders, only has to look into the hall once to overwhelm the audience. In the Concertgebouw's main hall on Tuesday night, the Brazilian legend stood in front of the Metropole Orchestra to belt out work from his scarce albums. He hardly needed to...
Probably the most famous murder of a woman for what she is is that of the fictional Carmen, a free-spirited young Spanish woman with a fear of commitment. Opera composer Georges Bizet immortalised this character from a French story by Prosper de Merimée, making the crime of passionel a common term for what is none other than femicide. That habit of men killing women...
It was busy at Amsterdam's Westergas area, this Thursday, 6 June. Fantastic, of course, that not only do you have a couple of excellent running restaurants and clubs there, and the evening four-day march passes by while there is a big salsa party at the club near the world-famous Gashouder, but then it still feels a bit weird that the royal opening of the...
Utrecht was the first of the big cities to announce the opinions issued on cultural institutions' grant applications for the next four years. Large and well-known players like the Dutch Film Festival, visual arts institutions like BAK and IMPAKT and youth opera company Holland Opera saw their applications rejected, as did Het Huis Utrecht. At the same time, the advisory committee does recommend...
The far-right coalition Schoof 1 has - even before there is a cabinet - created a first. Never before has there been such a wide protest against a proposed tax measure. An ad appeared in all daily newspapers against plans to increase VAT on sports, culture, events and media from 9% to 21%. So we take those here...
The new far-right cabinet is not going to cut cultural subsidies, even though ending subsidies for art altogether was one of Wilders party's sacred points. That those subsidies are virtually untouched should really be the big news after the presentation of the agreement between PVV, VVD, BBB and NSC, on Thursday, 16 May. That was the news only...
“Jazzenzo niet meer welkom bij podia en festivals”, stelt het online Jazz-magazine Jazzenzo. Aanleiding is een brief die het medium op 24 april ontving van het BIM-huis. In die brief, mede ondertekend door een indrukwekkend aantal prestigieuze podia en festivals als TivoliVredenburg en North Sea Jazz, laat het BIM-huis weten geen vrijkaarten meer te verlenen aan de onbetaalde verslaggevers van…
The Utrecht School of Music, also known as DUMS, has decided not to apply for a subsidy from the municipality. In a letter the school sent at the beginning of April to consultation partners in the Utrecht amateur arts field, the management states: "Our teachers indicated at its foundation that they did not want to be subsidised in order to guarantee independence from the municipality. However, Cultural Affairs gave...
Met zorg zien we dat er in onze huizen en op onze podia in toenemende mate sprake is van incidenten die door polarisatie zijn ingegeven. Iedereen, van makers tot medewerkers en publiek, moet veilig zijn binnen onze huizen en op onze podia. Er is daarbij ook in deze door tegenstellingen gekenmerkte tijd geen plek voor acties of intimidaties ingegeven door…
What happens behind the scenes at organisations when they face allegations of (serious) cross-border behaviour? Trainee Emilia accuses a theatre technician at a well-known theatre company of rape. This piece is based on her story and her own research, anonymised for privacy reasons. June 2022, beer, vodka, joints and a share scooter It's party time in a city park; students...
’s-Hertogenbosch, 6 maart 2024 – Per 1 januari 2025 stopt Madeleine Matzer als artistiek leider en als directeur- bestuurder van MATZER Theaterproducties. Ze richtte het gezelschap in 2007 op en maakte sindsdien tientallen voorstellingen die speelden op uiteenlopende locaties: van Theater Carré tot zorginstellingen. In de afgelopen jaren regisseerde ze niet alleen, ze schreef ook de succesvolle voorstellingen Je kunt…
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