“Versterken van het verdienvermogen is een noodzakelijke voorwaarde om de arbeidsmarktpositie van werkenden in de sector te verbeteren. Martin Verboom deelt graag wat op dit vlak uit de evaluatie van de Arbeidsmarktagenda Culturele en Creatieve Sector kwam. Platform ACCT smeedt met partners in de sector een coalitie om de prioriteiten voor de komende jaren op te pakken.” Dit was waarom…
On Thursday 7 November, a spin-off campaign from the cultural sector will be launched: Don't Tax My Audience. In this campaign, we ask creators, artists, performers, and anyone working in the cultural and creative sector to tell us why they do not want to burden their audiences with 21% VAT. In a promo video, Huub Stapel, Sanne Wallis de Vries, Jeangu Macrooy and Gijs Scholten van Aschat call on everyone to...
ICK Dans Amsterdam will end its production house function by 2025. This decision follows the advice of the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (AFK), which has decided not to grant this function and the corresponding funding. In addition to its own productions, ICK will focus in the coming years on research especially the confrontation between the body and artificial intelligence, interdisciplinary collaborations,...
Amsterdam, 8 October 2024 - The "Don't let the curtain fall" campaign has successfully collected more than 30,500 expressions of support from loyal audiences. The initiative was launched by 59 members of the NAPK (Dutch Association for Performing Arts), which are in danger of closing down due to the lack of multi-year subsidies. Campaign results The signatures were presented on 8 October to the culture spokespersons of...
It was with a certain scepticism, I must confess, that I began Winny Sorgdrager's book "Oxygen of Society. Why Culture is a Government Issue".1 I won't elaborate; let's just say that a book about Dutch cultural policy has been published before. More than once, in fact, and in those books...
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...
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...
On Wednesday 3 July, the Performing Arts Fund will present its decisions on applications for multiannual grants for the period 2025-2028; 52 festivals and 127 companies, makers (collectives) and ensembles will receive an award for multiannual support from the Fund. The annual total is €7.3 million and €40.2 million respectively. The Fund thus invests in making topical and distinctive...
"There is a fear among the artistic middle class of oversimplification, as if working-class people are not smart enough for art. I find that really insulting. My great-grandfather would be offended." I found this combative quote in The Mill, an extremely successful local news site for the Greater Manchester Area, a kind of northern English Randstad with a few million inhabitants. It...
In North Brabant, the annual provincial subsidy for professional art will go down by €629,000 a year from 2025. Whereas prestigious, and very vital, organisations such as Boulevard, Bosch parade and Matzer could count on an amount of 8.25 million until now, from the new culture plan period it will be only 7.6 million. The Brabant cultural institutions, united in The Art of...
"The unease of the voters who gave Wilders 37 seats is not solved by the position of power the PVV has now achieved." Roy Kemmers (43) is an associate professor at the sociology faculty of Erasmus University in Rotterdam. On Tuesday 28 November, he wrote an opinion piece in De Volkskrant, commenting on the rise of populism. He obtained his PhD...
On 6 December, the new House of Representatives will be sworn in. a week later, the deliberations on the budget tabled by the incumbent caretaker cabinet in September will begin. The then secretary of state for culture, Gunay Uslu, has since flown the coop and cannot be challenged on her budget. Someone else will now have to defend that budget. Those who wondered whether the peace...
The research is there, and the figures are not uplifting. In the arts sector, underpaying especially freelancers and not honouring overtime is standing policy. If this is to be made up from now on, with the existing budget, small institutions and festivals in particular will fall over immediately. The study on this was presented yesterday to outgoing Culture Secretary Uslu. Principal Arts...
"But in the next week, can't you still come up with a law that enshrines art education in primary education?" A striking moment in the 'Collective Creative Culture Debate' held in a packed Herz of TivoliVredenburg on Wednesday 15 November. The Creative Coalition and Kunsten '92 made one last attempt to put arts and culture on the agenda of the...
In the series In Perspective, Erik Akkermans looks back and ahead at developments in cultural policy and practice. Today: policies for jazz and improvised music. From the Oude Schans to Rijswijk May 1983, Monday morning, a quarter past eight. Location: the soulless office tower in Rijswijk housing the Ministry of Welfare, Public Health and Culture. Minister Brinkman addressed the members of the Working Group on...
A major musical theatre performance, an adapted classical play, an opera and a painting festival. The small municipality of Noordwijk - like that other coastal municipality of Bergen - offers an abundance of culture. All four events rely heavily on talent, subsidies and donations, volunteers, pragmatic thrift. And good weather. Noordwijk aan Zee has been a more than average municipality for centuries. Famous Dutchmen...
Above all, we must continue with the favourable arts policy initiated by the fourth Rutte cabinet. That is what the arts umbrella organisation Kunsten ´92 says in a letter in response to the fall of the last cabinet under that name. This is a remarkable turn of events after 13 years in which most of the art world wanted nothing more than to get rid of the...
If you want to do research out of curiosity, you should especially not apply to the government for money. Whether you are a scientist or an artist: in The Hague, they want you to know in advance what you are going to find and what it will yield. Anoek Nuyens, who caused a furore with her performance 'De Zaak Shell' (The Shell Case), could therefore produce her next...
"The easiest gain is then to produce less. Because high production implies a lot of energy and material use, travel movements and other forms of impact." Last week, the Council for Culture's long-awaited opinion on sustainability was released, and sooner than I could click 'open', all was set. Came all because of the above sentence, which, mentioned in...
Fair remuneration, trust in the cultural sector and less administrative burden are among the main principles for the cultural subsidy period 2025 - 2028. State Secretary Uslu (Culture and Media) thus wants to bring as much peace to the sector as possible in the coming years. She is also tackling a number of bottlenecks, for example in the youth performing arts. She is largely following the advice of the Council of...
In the series In Perspective, Erik Akkermans looks back and ahead at developments in cultural policy and practice. Today: walk of the orchestras. In the Hall of Mirrors January 1980, the Hall of Mirrors in the Concertgebouw. Culture minister Til Gardeniers accepts the report "Possession in service" 1 presented by the Federation of Artists' Associations. I found it exciting because the report, commissioned by...
Today sees the second meeting of the design teams providing input for the Council for Culture's advice on renewing the cultural system towards 2029. This time, the teams will meet at the Public Library on the Neude in Utrecht. The teams will work to define design questions more sharply and will draw inspiration from...
The Dutch government distrusts citizens. And that stands in the way of a healthy art sector. This emerged on 17 January during a well-attended symposium at Amsterdam's Veem House. The occasion was the essay published in book form by Renée Steenbergen, who also published articles on this site. At the event, co-organised by Veem and Platform Beeldende Kunst, many makers were...
This is a pre-publication from the book The Art of Different, which will be available from 17 January 2023 via the author's site The arts sector is vulnerable, as was unmistakably demonstrated during the pandemic years. It is also clear that these are not just temporary setbacks, but problems of a structural nature. These were already in play before Corona but were anticipated...
Since the budget cuts from 2011 onwards, policymakers have been setting the so-called 'creative industries' as a model for the arts. Industrial design, architecture, graphic design and the gaming industry: the creatives have been nuked as a 'top sector'. This, I believe, is the deeper cause of the unease expressed in this newspaper's Cultural Supplement: the increasing instrumentalisation of the arts by policymakers. The piece 'Why the...
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