All about politics, policy, society and how those things relate to culture and art.
Well, we're not big on hypes and traditions here, but still. The dark days around Christmas are very dark this year, so why not something with lists. This year, no list of toppers from the editors, but random entries from random readers, in random, if slightly alphabetical order. Motto of the readers' question was: which things...
An ancient melody floats, crackles and drones through the town hall of Aarhus, Denmark. The city is close to being European Capital of Culture. That is why we hear the same song at the handover ceremony as when it was launched on 21 January. Then Aarhus celebrated the start of Aarhus, European Capital of Culture and 'Jeg drømte mig en drøm i nat' thundered through the Aarhus streets....
When I write job postings in the cultural sector, I receive wonderful letters. Candidates are usually graduates in an arts-related subject from a college or university and have internships or work experience at cultural institutions of repute. They are usually female, white and have completed their studies with fine grades. Yet I struggle with a problem: I live and...
One of the great things about France is that it is not raked. On any bike ride, or walk along that overgrown path that started out so beautifully, you might just bump into a ruin. Such a ruin that we here in the Netherlands would soon turn into an attraction, if we hadn't long since demolished the piece of unattended real estate to make way for...
A Saudi prince is paying $450 million for a mediocre painting by Leonardo da Vinci; a Dutch politician is pledging a crate of beer for a new composition. In a nutshell, these two extremes capture our current dealings with culture. Total contempt on the one hand and unimaginable overvaluation on the other are two sides of the same coin. We do not judge art for its...
Who is the best Dutch film critic? Has everything about #MeToo been said now? Is more money for fewer films a good thing? These and other issues were discussed at the film industry's annual Autumn Consultation.
On 6 December 2017, the Taalunie Toneelschrijfprijs was awarded to poet, writer and playwright Ilja Leonard Pfeiffer. With his play about Bram Moszkowitcz, titled 'The lawyer', he was the preferred original work among 47 submissions. According to the Taalunie, Pfeiffer's play 'balances magisterially on the fine line between tragedy and comedy, realistic drama and meta-thought, slapstick and emotion....
Currently, the amount a performing arts company receives in subsidy depends on the number of times it plays. The Performing Arts Fund, which is responsible for that subsidy, has now investigated the effect of this. That research shows that companies are increasingly struggling to sell performances of a single production. This causes companies to...
Beethoven and Bach brought the true music. Karl-Heinz Stockhausen the future. The rest, from Beatles to hoempa, was 'jazz', commercially capitalist and therefore pernicious. Very briefly, this is what we should know Theodor Adorno from. Paul R. Kooij now plays this art-philosophical sharper in a performance by Mirjam Koen. Just when the division based partly on Adorno's thinking between...
Musicians are no longer allowed to perform for a pittance. At least, not if the club they work for, or perform in, receives a subsidy. In a sector opinion released today, the Culture Council argues that the structural underpayment of workers in the creative sector is no longer sustainable. 'If that means fewer programmes can be made (or that there...
'Successive interventions have stripped, juridified and amended the BIS and the state funds. But more importantly than that, trends and developments in and around cultural life are making new demands on the cultural system. It is out of date in several respects.' So says the Council for Culture in its 'reconnaissance' published today. In it, the contours of the future...
'What do you desire from Ingrid van Engelshoven, the Minister of Culture?" asked Culture Press in a newsletter to subscribers. Good question! Especially after that first nod she made by generously pledging an extra 10 million to the Performing Arts Fund for the well-performing but not yet receiving anything, 'because the money had run out'. Very nice that band-aid, but...
The debate on the 2017 culture budget on Monday 13 November was a breath of fresh air. Not because there was suddenly a lot more money coming out of any top hat, but because there was a minister with vision. And with room to express that vision. After seven years full of pushing and pulling and rejected motions, cash shift operations and bicycle bell trading, there was finally...
Of course, this is really actually better news than what was already in the coalition agreement. The extra 10 million fought for last year for performing arts institutions that were good enough but fell below the saw line because of running out of money will get structural money added. Good news for a few clubs that would really be out of business otherwise, like Orkater. The good news...
A new generation of leaders in culture rose in the Utrecht Academy Building on Thursday 9 November. The 39 leaders come from the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam to Schunck in Heerlen and from the VPRO in Hilversum to the Utrecht festival Le Guess Who. In a year and a half, they discovered new working methods and formulated new vistas for the arts. That could ...
Afterwards, it actually dawned on me what had gone wrong at No Man's Land. The event, a sort of combination of networking drinks, symposium and mega workshop was set up from the best of intentions. Initiated by The Cooperative, the club not to be confused with The Cooperative. The latter De Coöperatie is based in Amsterdam and is an alliance of freelance...
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...
In a lost hour, I read the Cultural Vision Amersfoort 2030. Not reading material to sit on the edge of your seat, but perfectly suitable for a train journey. I am not used to reading policy documents. It struck me that the tone of the Amersfoort Cultural Vision was confident, focused and determined. Firm language. No room for doubt. I asked myself...
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...
Jetse Batelaan has spent pretty much this entire century making the most extraordinary theatre in the world. At least, of my world. Often with very few words, always with a great sense of bare aesthetics and usually sympathetic with a weird twist halfway through. His latest masterpiece is an adaptation of Thea Beckman's Crusade in Jeans. Though we need at least three quarters of...
It succeeded. And that's even though we really didn't have a cent's worth of confidence left here. But still. It is there, in the financial section of the 'Confidence in the Future' coalition agreement: 'Intensification of 0.1 bln euros for the benefit of the cultural sector and historical democratic awareness. (RA_631)' That's 100 million euros, which is exactly what one of...
Museums in the Netherlands are doing well. Today, the Museum Association released a kind of annual report in which this was made abundantly clear in tables and graphs. Visits are increasing. Between 2015 and 2016, the sector counted 2.5 million more visits. Mainly by foreign tourists. At the same time, more and more museums are running at a loss. According to the Museum Association, that negative balance now hits for...
Art subsidy cuts have been passed on to the weakest shoulders. Minister Jet Bussemaker made no bones about it in one of her latest public appearances. 'I have often praised the resilience of the sector, and we should celebrate that,' she declared yesterday at the presentation of the Fair Practice Code, 'but I also saw that subsidised institutions...
Our public broadcasting system is unique in the world. Unfortunately, it is not something to be particularly proud of. The system and the thinking behind it are virtually incomprehensible. Or, as NTR director Paul Römer put it less diplomatically in August: we have 'a backward system that cannot be explained to anyone (anymore)'. It was a sideline in his interview with...
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