The Culture Council will soon be commissioned to produce a plan for the cultural sector to survive the one-and-a-half-meter society. The commitment of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science is, to solve this within the existing financial frameworks. This is what sources at the top of that ministry have reported.
We take a post from the site 'Cultuurmarketing.nl', adding that the main purpose of the scheme is also to compensate the creators, the performing artists. So don't think: "my theatre gets subsidy, right?", because that subsidy is usually just enough to pay the rent. Performances are almost always paid for directly from ticket sales: Comin' To...
We always try to look for a bright spot anyway, but sometimes you just have to let it go. On Monday 6 April 2020, we brought you a post on how the corona crisis is having long after-effects, which have been casting their shadow for at least a year. Today, we talk to Victorine Plante and Erik Snel of Alum, the bringer of that first post. In the...
Earlier this week, Minister Van Engelshoven appealed to the public to start donating en masse "to your favourite (cultural) institution". She also hinted at her willingness to explore within the cabinet the extent to which donations to cultural institutions can be made extra attractive as an income tax deduction at this very moment. Meanwhile, however, within...
Just a breather from the stress. Today I am talking to Yolande Melsert. She is cultural attachée of the Dutch embassy in the Indonesian capital Jakarta. Because of the corona-lockdown, she is temporarily back in the Netherlands. Reason enough to look back on an eventful year in relations between the Netherlands and its former colony. Indonesia is still a young country. You notice...
Slowly but surely, the absurdity of the rescue measures for the cultural sector is sinking in. The national museums will not have to pay rent for three months for a while, but will have to pay it back retroactively once the crisis is over. Entrepreneurs can get extra support worth 4,000 euros, provided they have business premises outside their homes. Actors, directors (also freelance journalists, by the way) and artists...
It's not 50 billion, like in Germany, but it's more than nothing: the support measures Minister Ingrid van Engelshoven announced today for the hard-hit cultural sector. And, who knows, this may offer openings to do a few things completely differently after this crisis. For instance, it is great that the national museums do not have to pay rent for a while,...
In a fire letter to Minister van Engelshoven, more than a thousand actors and directors ask to financially support the free theatre producers in the Corona crisis. Together, the free theatre producers annually provide 60% of the supply in Dutch theatres and theatres. They do so with their own investments and without subsidies. Through the measures taken in the fight against Corona
On 2 March, Platform Aanvang! launched the petition Nederland maakt kunst / art makes the Netherlands at the Solidarity evening in ITA. An evening that opened the conversation for a solidarity sector, but most of all sounded the alarm for the planned downsizing of the arts sector. The petition was signed by more than 11,000 people in a week. When we saw the...
I have often resisted thinking of the Netherlands as a business. After all, a country cannot lay off people, or divest unprofitable sectors to make more profit. So anyone who speaks of the BV Nederland has not understood it. There are no competitors that you can fight out of the market while being entrepreneurial on those few square kilometres of polder land,...
After all, we did spend just under three hours on something completely nonsensical. Stupid, of course, as we had already written ourselves on 27 November 2019 that today's little debate in the Troelstra Room of the House of Representatives would be totally pointless. Everyone already knew that too, not least the movers of the motion, including Lodewijk Asscher ...
When a Dutchman thinks about art, he thinks of buildings that cannot support themselves, played by, or hung with work by, people who cannot sustain themselves. So money must be added, and we call this subsidy. In this way, art subsidies become a suspicious form of welfare, more suspicious than the billions in income support that wealthy...
While I was walking around Manchester with some cultural sector leaders, minister Ingrid van Engelshoven sent a letter to the House, telling it how much it would cost to enable state-subsidised arts organisations to get fair pay at the current offer. So that letter contained quite a few omissions: the minister was silent on the role played by regional and...
That government distrust of citizens in the Netherlands has reached bizarre proportions is proven by the hassle with benefits at the tax office and the state of affairs at the UWV. Or your average housing landlord where you want to report a leaky tap. Thanks to a politics influenced by false entrepreneurialism and rabid populism that treats citizens as fraudsters...
In April 2020, the Persgroep, now DPG Media because it smells better internationally, will stop regional art supplements in its newspapers. No more art reports and interviews, hardly any reviews. Local bookshops will lose their stage in all Dutch regions, as the publisher of Volkskrant, Trouw and AD has a regional monopoly. The message, brought by a reporter from the Eindhovens Dagblad, struck...
I am sitting at the dinner table at my parents' house. We are celebrating my mother's birthday with the whole family. I am there, but I am not quite there. In fact, I am so incredibly tired at the moment. As I jokingly tell my friends, "I can't say boo or boo anymore and am running on my gums". Suddenly, the conversation turns to...
We got some confusing messages last weekend. The reason was the festive announcement of the organisation of the Eurovision Song Contest that a special symphonic happening would take place at the finals in Rotterdam. Third year and master students of the Rotterdam Conservatoire, part of Codarts, as well as young professional musicians were invited. A 'fee' would be available for...
[update: they get even less, see post below] We received confusing news last weekend. The occasion was the festive announcement by the organisers of the Eurovision Song Contest that a special symphonic happening would take place at the final in Rotterdam. Invited were third-year and master students from Rotterdam Conservatoire, part of Codarts, as well as young professional musicians. For the performances...
In the first version of this post, we assumed 100 euros for 8 days. We turned out to be misinformed. The application of the remplaçants' collective agreement, mentioned in the explanation by the Song Festival, gives a bit more leeway, although its hourly and daily rates are still controversial. But 1,000 euros for eight days is now apparently the going rate....
A week before the end of 2019, Culture Press' membership stands at nearly 150, up from 40 exactly a year ago. A growth of more than 300 per cent is quite extraordinary. So we have demonstrated that we matter to a rapidly growing group of decision-makers in the cultural sector. So good that they are happy to contribute to...
With red cheeks, I hang up the phone a little bewildered. Just now I had a telephone appointment that took a completely different turn. I had a brief conversation with a theatre programmer who is still unknown to me. She unfortunately told me not to programme anything with our impresario, because there was really no need for artistic performances in her city. This lady stated that her...
Modest cheers in the performing arts world. A motion tabled on 18 November by Corinne Ellemeet (GroenLinks), together with PvdA, CDA and D66, forces minister Van Engelshoven to investigate the consequences of the cuts to the Performing Arts Fund before the subsidy is distributed. The House approved this on 26 November. Wonderful, you might say, because if clear...
For De Stadsbron, I interviewed Patrick Nederkoorn, comedian but in a previous life also politician, about his city, Amersfoort: You had a decisive role in politics here for eight years. In your programme, you reckon with that a bit. You argue that you were very much on form, and sometimes sold content where later you didn't... at all.
The culture sector will have to be patient for a while yet. Minister Ingrid van Engelshoven had no intention of changing any of her policies on Monday 18 November, during the discussion of the culture budget in the Standing Parliamentary Committee on Culture. Despite a fairly widely supported desire, especially from the opposition, to do something about the 8.6 million cut in the...
From 42 to 18 pages. Actually, that says it all about the new Diversity and Inclusion Code that saw the light of day on Friday 1 November. After all the wooliness and ifs and buts of the original Cultural Diversity Code, the new thing is a miracle of clarity. Is perhaps also necessary, in these times of identity wars, where on the left and...
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