Things we do for members and partners.
A strong cultural sector has an important economic and social driving function. Culture not only contributes positively to mental health and well-being, but is also an important building block in the recovery from the current corona crisis. To maximise this booster function, almost 500 million extra per year is needed. This is the conclusion of the Council for Culture in a letter to informateur Tjeenk...
'The task force is critical of the costs and the course of events surrounding the assignment to the Open Netherlands Foundation. Parliamentary questions have now been asked about this; we await the minister's answers to these.' So it is somewhere at the bottom of Kunsten'92's weekly update, but it is clear. That whole pilot with quick tests evokes rather mixed feelings. The interest group...
Last Friday, we reported on the rather mysterious and lacking in transparency surrounding the pilots to reopen theatres and museums. The questions we asked in that article have now been partly answered thanks to the efforts of 3 contributors to Follow The Money (FTM), and the answers they found are not reassuring. Just a recap:...
When Jeffrey Meulman (52) took office as director of the Theatre Festival in 2005, it needed to become more audience-friendly. Instead of a presentation of 'the most important theatre', the board that appointed him wanted to make a celebration of the most beautiful theatre. Meulman went to work, successfully, but the most important thing he did was to establish a 'fringe': an alternative...
Rather unexpectedly, it was announced this week that cultural and entertainment venues will be test sites for reopening society next month. It came rather out of the blue, as everyone was still working on petitions and other pleas to reopen cultural buildings. After all, they have their corona protocols in place there better than the Albert Heijn on my corner....
From 19 to 24 April, Utrecht venues will finally - temporarily - open their doors to the public. Pilot events, 'pilots', are taking place all over the Netherlands this month. TivoliVredenburg, De Helling, EKKO, Stadsschouwburg Utrecht and Podium Hoge Woerd are also trying out how testing for access at coronaproof programmes works. Pilots will take place in the cultural sector in April
What we feared at the beginning of the coronasteun appears to have become reality. The generous support money for culture should also reach the small self-employed in the arts via the institutions, but that is now happening too little. Of course, there are fine examples, such as the large subsidised arts institutions in Groningen and festivals like Boulevard and Holland Festival that support self-employed...
Theatre Concordia is looking for young makers who are inspired and feel like turning a plan or idea into a theatrical product. The theme of this second open call is Living on the Border. The chosen submissions will receive guidance and a Masterclass, a starting budget of 750 euros and a place in our summer programming. During the first Open Call Never...
Dear outgoing Prime Minister Rutte, dear Mark, This is the first time I have turned to you, the first time at all for me to write such a letter. I have to get something off my chest, because I can no longer follow or understand it all. Before I point out what is bothering me, I will write to myself...
All happy families look alike... But the family we get to know in "Dutch Comedy" is anything but happy. On Thursday 1 April at 20:30, De Gemeenschap's show "Nederlandse Comedie" (try-out) can be seen at Concordia via a live stream. The try-out is an upbeat play that deals with intense topics. An emotional group portrait of people who...
Dear outgoing Prime Minister Rutte, Dear Mark, In my capacity as a self-employed person working in the performing arts, I am writing you this letter. This is my first letter ever about the situation of the cultural sector, culminating in corona time. First by way of introduction: we met when I played a Scarlatti sonata especially for you at the TV programme Podium Witteman, and also...
The party may be the biggest loser in the parliamentary elections, but Melody Deldjou Fard is not sitting back. Now that is a bit the standard response of politicians when they face defeat, but Melody's enthusiasm is convincing. We invited her to the podcast, as she was a contributor to Culture Press before she turned...
Male ballet dancers have heroes. Ever since ballet training. A few of them are timeless, like Vaslav Nijinsky, Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov. After that, tastes vary, depending on which period you danced in and which style particularly suits you: Anthony Dowell, Peter Martins, Carlos Acosta, or more recently Sergei Polunin and Daniil Simkin. Last week, one of my dance heroes passed away: Patrick...
The Dutch cultural sector is in distress. Halbe Zijlstra's spending cuts ten years ago started a free fall that has still not stopped. The Social and Economic Council (SER) calculated that these cuts of 200 million not only caused impoverishment in cultural supply, but also wreaked havoc on the labour market. 20 thousand permanent jobs disappeared
After more than six years as director, Viktorien van Hulst is leaving Stichting Theaterfestival Boulevard 's-Hertogenbosch and Stichting Bosse Nova. She will start on 1 July as director-director at the Fonds Podiumkunsten, where she will succeed Henriëtte Post. The Performing Arts Fund supports all forms of professional performing arts on behalf of the central government and has an annual budget of 62 million euros available for this purpose. Peggy Olislaegers...
Marion Koopmans, Cécile van Els, Maarten Keulemans et al on everything we now know about covid-19 What do we now know about the coronavirus? Are vaccines resistant to the prevailing mutations? What has the corona crisis done to Dutch trust in government and institutions? And what is the damage to the Dutch economy? In an interactive talk show on Monday 15...
Everyone balks. Let's put that first. And a lot of people are badly affected. Hospitality, retail, schoolchildren and especially students: everything that is not necessary for survival balks. So does the arts. Not all art, of course, especially larger institutions are coming through the corona crisis reasonably well so far. Quiet and closed, but not bankrupt. We can't take that from...
The exhibition The Golden Coach opens at the Amsterdam Museum on Friday 18 June. After a restoration of more than five years, the Golden Coach is back on public display for the first time. The carriage will be on loan to the Amsterdam Museum until February 2022. With this, the carriage temporarily returns to the city that used it in...
At Concordia and the Vestzaktheatre, many performances continue as a live stream. On Saturday 13 March, for instance, Ryan van den Akker (known in musical leading roles such as Cyrano, My Fair Lady, Elisabeth, De Jantjes) will drop by with her performance 'Hiroshima in a child's soul'. A unique, personal narration of a poignant and terrifying story from her childhood. Theatre programmer Ellen Peters: "I find...
Saturday, March 6, the annual Inkspotbattle took place at Concordia. The theme was "Elections (in Corona time)". 10 Dutch cartoonists participated. The only female participant, Renée van den Kerkhof, walked away with the prize. Online visitors could watch the participating cartoonists translate a topical subject into cartoons. An expert jury chose at the end of the...
Marijn (NRC/Theaterkrant) and Wijbrand (Culture Press) disagree quite often, prompting another solid podcast about how to look at theatre professionally. This time, Wijbrand had got excited about the fact that stand-up philosopher Laura van Dolron performed a play for two invited guests each time, professionals mostly, and that they then wrote entire newspaper pages full of...
Big Mouth Billy Bass is a largemouth trout made of plastic attached to a board. When someone approaches - or presses a button - the fish erupts into a gritty rendition of a pre-programmed song, usually Al Green's 'Take me to the river'. At the chorus line, the head detaches from the...
Every Sunday morning is like a lockdown. The city streets are deserted. I encounter only characters from my stories. Two men and a woman with phone numbers on their chests walk around lost. They no longer know who they are or where to go. A retired writer searches desperately for the pages of a lost story....
After Guido Weijers' Fieldlab turned out not to be a superspreading event, and nobody laughed hard enough at Dolf Jansen to infect others, now also good news from our relations in Poland: over the past month, since the reopening of theatres in Poland on 12 February, 55,000 people have already been to the theatre. Plenty of reason for enthusiasm, as it apparently...
The annual Inktspot Battle will take place on Saturday 6 March from 2.45pm. The battle, which can normally be followed at Concordia in the Inktspot exhibition, will, like last year, take place from the participating political cartoonists' own drawing tables and be broadcast live via Concordia's website. As an online visitor, you can watch as the participating draughtsmen...
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