Interesting news (from August) from the HBO Monitor was released into the world today by lobbying club Arts 92. Never before has unemployment among newly graduated artists been as low as in 2016. At just 3.1 per cent, it is even below the average for all HBO students. The average hourly wage of fresh artists, however, is more than 30 per cent below that of their colleagues
This week it was announced that the VSB Fund is discontinuing the VSB Poetry Prize. That announcement came rather hard throughout the art world. After all, the fund stated that it was going to focus much less on culture and more on social causes. It appears to fit a trend. More funds are shifting their focus from culture to society. At least, that ...
'I would love to have a human resources manager on staff, but yes, quite a shame.' Dixit the director of a medium-sized arts institution. As in the rest of the Dutch SME sector, in the arts sector personnel policy, or HR policy, is something that is at most done on the side. Anyone who has ever got it wrong can tell great stories about...
One of the highlights of the year is always the presentation of 'the figures' by the Association of Theatre and Concert Hall Directors (VSCD). As it happens, these are unabatedly positive. For years. And so for years it has been a challenge to find out why those positive figures are so difficult to reconcile with the picture of reality. That not at all...
The wind blows harder there than elsewhere. The light is greyer there than further afield. London's south bank, for years 'the other side' of the English capital's posh city centre, has been the subject of several waves of renewal in the last century. It began in 1951 with the construction of concert hall 'Southbank Centre', followed in 1976, after years of wrangling, by the building in the same...
Something is changing considerably in the world of literature. Libraries are closing or turning into flex spaces for poor freelancers. The sold circulation of an average successful novel remains in four figures. Young people no longer watch TV or listen to the radio, but make their own well-watched and generously paid films on YouTube. Or they sit the...
Leisure is the mother of philosophy. -motto of British philosopher Thomas Hobbes, seen in Klokgebouw during STRP17 An app called "Die with me" that, as soon as your smartphone is at five per cent remaining power, automatically connects with other Die with me users. An app game called "Airb'n'bhost", where you have to choose who offers the airb'n'b interior from three portrait photos each time. The most fun:...
The positive effects of culture are demonstrated again and again. It is high time the sector used these facts in improving its image. Our western and southern neighbours have boosted the image of culture with a number of successful initiatives. The sports sector is another example of image building that the cultural sector can learn from. There...
Museums should be places where everyone feels welcome, argues art editor and curator-in-training Roxy Jongewaard. An argument for public and free museums: "A museum for everyone who can pay 17.50 in entrance fees is not a museum for everyone." In the coming year, I get to live out a personal dream: I will work as a curator in a major Dutch museum....
In art, you work because of your passion, not because of the money. That is so, that was always so. In art, it is even suspect if you care about money. And if you do worry about money once, it immediately comes out rotten. Are you going to shout about culture, march der your...
That 10 million is officially in. The art world is doing its best to sound grateful. The employers in the performing arts, gathered in the NAPK, have sent Bussemaker a thank you. Because she is not cutting 300 million from culture, but only 290 million. The extra money raked together last year by various lobbyists and parties is now anchored in the...
At the Magazine Media Café at the Amsterdam debating centre De Balie, journalists, publishers and freelancers discussed the phenomenon of distributed content. What is it and what can you do with it? Distributed content: a new online phenomenon Distributed content is actually reverse publishing. You offer content (stories, photos, video) where the reader is, instead of the reader...
Nederlands Dans Theater's summer course gives a glimpse of the future. At the top dancers of tomorrow, but also the choreographers: many of the company's dance makers created a first piece for this summer course. This year, the course also gives a look at the old stage of the half-demolished Lucent Danstheater in The Hague. You can catch a...
After it was announced in January this year that Jan Willem de Vriend was leaving at the end of the 2016/2017 season, the Orchestra of the East announced that it was in no hurry to find a successor. One would start working with "renowned guest conductors". Just over six months later, a few months before the departure of interim director Bart van Meijl, a successor was still presented. That this successor, Ed Spanjaard, is given the title of 'permanent conductor' seems mainly a semantic issue.
Holidays are just around the corner, so it's time to pack your bags. Travel writers Carolijn Visser and Iris Hannema prefer to be on the road all year round. 'The Netherlands is lovely, but after a few months at home it already starts itching again: travelling turns everything upside down; your ideas about the world, the ideas you have about yourself.'
A week ago, the theatres affiliated to the VSCD presented beautiful figures. Although the number of performances fell, average attendance had risen again. Many in the industry frowned, and after some arithmetic, Wijbrand Schaap, after initially good news to the conclusion that it was entirely not is going so well with the performing arts. And again, that message can be criticised; the VSCD does not include all theatres, some have merged etc. Another day later, Jeffrey Meulman explained in his blog the finger on the sore spot:
It must have been down to my indestructible mood, and the deep need to finally deliver some good news about the cultural sector, but I was so wrong. Tuesday I reported that the performing arts were recovering after Halbe Zijlstra's draconian cuts, but that is so not the case. As much as the sector itself would like it to do well, the figures contradict it time and again.
Surely the Association of Theatre and Concert Hall Directors has taken us all for a ride again. With a real infographic still do. But, as it goes with infographics: you can put in all the bright colours and shouts, and even shout 'Bravo!' and 'Applause!'at the bottom, the numbers themselves don't lie, even if you present them slightly differently than last year.
On Monday 23 and Tuesday 24 May, the VSCD met, and the Congres Podiumkunsten (@congresPK) was going on at the Nijmegen Concert Hall De Vereeniging. I went to check it out and discovered some new things.
Things have changed in Dutch theatre since the beginning of this century. Somewhere around the year 2000, I was a guest at a meeting of the Association of Theatre and Concert Hall Directors, and it was a bizarre experience. I found myself among a gathering that could best be described as a gentlemen's club, where the number of upstanding municipal officials exceeded the number of artistically inspired theatre lovers.
Now, 16 years later,
An exhibition that puts our view of migration and migrants at the centre, critical of our migration policy but does not fall into easy pamphleteering, that is "Voices outside the echo chamber". On Friday 29 April, the exhibition "Voices outside the echo chamber"-an exhibition by Framer Framed, the Amsterdam-based organisation that has been questioning and commenting on the visual language in our arts for years-opened at the Tolhuistuin. After all,...
She came, saw and conquered. Until recently, Nell Zink was almost the embodiment of the cliché image of the poor writer, alone in an attic room. But when American writer Jonathan Frantzen touted her work, she grew into literary hype in no time. Her publisher gave her a six-figure advance. From nobody to 'Her Nellness' -...
Things have been rumbling in the film world for some time: Why is the silver screen so, er, white? And where are all the women anyway? #OscarsSoWhite but also #OscarIsADude! Many people in the industry have already expressed their displeasure at this. At the previous Oscar ceremony, actresses aimed their arrows at equal pay, or rather, the lack of it. This year, many an African-American actor and...
International literary festival Winternachten wants to involve the public more in its programmes next year. 'Audiences increasingly want to have a say,' says director Ton van de Langkruis. 'That can be done in all kinds of ways, we are now brooding on that.' Winternachten attracted some 7300 visitors this year, equalling last year's attendance. Last edition's theme was 'Hello Darkness', and...
The cinema industry in the Netherlands is aiming for new construction and is convinced there is still a lot of growth potential. But it won't happen without foreign capital. That is why the new multiplex in Alkmaar is now called Vue.
A female Johnny Cash, powerful, deeply personal and with a political commitment you don't often hear. Flemish poet Stefan Hertmans was full of praise for Carmien Michels' performance at the final of the 2016 NK Poetry Slam. The writer with two novels and a couple of collections to her name was indeed in a class of her own: her poems made the...
By March 1, every artist who wants government support must have submitted their application. Funds, municipalities and the state will then deliberate in committees. The quadrennial tombola will be even more dramatic this year than it was four years ago, when the massive cuts were made by CDA, PVV and VVD. Because virtually no money is being added now, and in fact, often more...
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