All about politics, policy, society and how those things relate to culture and art.
It was a remarkable report, this morning. According to newspaper Tubantia, the new cabinet was still willing to make extra money available for regional museums in Twente. The amount would be 1.5 million euros, earmarked to set up a joint presentation of Twente's history by De Museumfabriek in Enschede and Techniekmuseum Oyfo in Hengelo. According to...
Decisions Cultural Basic Infrastructure 2025-202817 September 2024 | 15:39 Bruins adopts the Council for Culture's advice to grant 117 applications, from a total of 115 institutions, for the Cultural Basic Infrastructure (bis). At 13 institutions, the council gave a conditionally positive advice. Those institutions must meet the required conditions by 1 November 2024. The national cultural funds jointly honour 306...
- 20-metre-long 'receipt for society' rolled out on Budget Day- many experts and experience experts present including Splinter Chabot and Marit Bouwmeester. A broad alliance of organisations from culture, sports, events, media, books and accommodation will campaign against the VAT increase on 17 September. Two venues affected by the VAT increase, on and near the Royal procession, will be...
Thirty-five euros an hour for a space that can barely hold a piano or a drum kit. That is the rent charged by the municipality of Utrecht to music teachers who wanted to continue their practice on Utrecht's Domplein after their cooperative went bankrupt. For many of the teachers who thus became victims of their board's mismanagement, that means a cost increase
Dear members of the House of Representatives,Dear cultural spokespersons, On 3 July this year, it was D-Day in the cultural sector. The Performing Arts Fund and the Cultural Council both issued their advice for the next four years. A celebratory moment, you might think. But it wasn't, after all. Of course: institutions whose applications are honoured are relieved. But happy?
Increase in VAT and gambling tax + reduction in municipal and government subsidies disastrous The cabinet's proposed cultural policy will result in a €350 million haircut and a negative domino effect in the arts and culture sector. This is shown today in an analysis of data from private funders, municipalities and the arts and culture sector. "Just before Budget Day, we as a consortium are sounding the alarm....
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 ruling NSC party, makes it clear how things stand. "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 linked to Theatre Festival Boulevard. With great...
"Regarding 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 advertisement against the plans to increase VAT on sports, culture, events and media from 9% to 21% appeared in all daily newspapers. So we take those here...
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