On stories, message and social media Storytelling is the latest buzzword. Every organisation these days has to have a story to tell. Is it a fashionable marketing phrase? Not really. Storytelling is not new. We were always telling each other stories. It's just that we sometimes forget. Thinking that passing dry facts to each other is an effective way to get people moving....
Learning is less about what you learn than from whom you learn it. Not that what you learn doesn't matter, but you simply learn more from an inspired person than from a teacher who completes his list. Fortunately, I have had many good teachers. Some of them are now demented or dead, with almost all of them...
A person working at a publishing house thus generates for himself an income of 42,379.79 euros. That is slightly more than the average income of people in the book trade, who only make do with an average of 31,000 euros per person. This income is largely generated by authors and translators. These earn - on average - 1540.55 euros. Per person. Per...
There I stood. Next to THE RED LOPER. In THE PRESS box. Everything you must have done once in your life and this was MY MOMENT. THE BOOKBALL at THE CITY BURY which was renamed ITA because of the boss' career. To my left TEAM VOLKSKRANT, to my right a cute KRULLENBOL from the LINDA and in between them a journalist....
It was just missing the heavy music and gothic storm images in the Game of Thrones trailer whose lyrics Thierry Baudet uttered on the night of Wednesday 20 to Thursday 21 March 2019. 'And so here we stand, at the eleventh hour, among the debris of what was once the greatest and most beautiful civilisation the world has known. A...
There is an artist café in Utrecht that few Utrechters know about. And I don't mean Theatercafé De Bastaard, where by now a whole generation of actors, filmmakers and writers come from, but the artists' foyer of TivoliVredenburg. I've eaten and hung out there a few times, as an embedded reporter of De Nacht van de Poëzie, when it's very late into...
'I work five nights a week and so I have to find out specifically when I can go to a concert. Sometimes I take time off for it. And then they do say, "hey, are you going to a concert again already?", and I say, "of course I'm going to a concert again". But I don't think it's extreme either.' Petra Gerritsen is process expert
'When I look in the auditorium at a classical concert now, I do think: it's full now, but in 20 years eighty per cent will be dead. So the bottom has to be fed, and TivoliVredenburg does that well. They do it, for example, with Out of the Blue, which is a programme where you get great food and by a special host
Some people read Christmas stories over Christmas, others the interview supplements of newspapers, and a few do so with policy documents. So, quite a few people have read our Culture Minister's 'Advice Request' in the past few days. I, at least. Those who 'officially' cannot have done so are the members of the Culture Council, because the whole package came...
Peter Vossen says he experiences live concerts on average twice a week. Not just in TivoliVredenburg, although he visited there almost 40 times last year. 'I also see a lot of free concerts on the streets and in cafés, of course.' Jazz is his great love, but he also attends soul, funk, Latin or pop concerts. Regularly, he can be found
The Utrecht Centre for the Arts is bankrupt after a long ordeal. It was cut back. There is no more room in the Netherlands' fourth city for a large, centrally organised music and culture school. Nor for pottery, painting and video filming. The city council has found a solution. For the soon-to-be homeless UCK students, the municipality thinks...
'How many realities can we handle? For me, that is the theme of 2018. Those ladies from North Korea who were cheering, for example. But it was also in Halbe Zijlstra who had lied about Putin's dacha.' Greg Nottrot, theatre maker from Utrecht, had set out for this year to create an end-of-year performance that would capture the zeitgeist well....
Sounding Alchemy, is the name of the chunky volume recently published by music publicist Maarten Brandt (1953). It has 715 pages, including illustrations and an extensive index. In 98 articles, Brandt unfolds his views on music and music programming. He dedicated the beautifully designed book to his admired Marius Flothuis, programmer of the Concertgebouw Orchestra for many years. His heirs received a first copy during...
The province of Utrecht has launched the community platform 'Werkplaats Waterlinies'. This initiative of the Pact of Ruigenhoek is open to anyone working on the Nieuwe Hollandse Waterlinie, Stelling van Amsterdam and other waterlinies. It is a place where you can exchange inspiration, knowledge and ideas, as well as present projects, collaborate and experiment. In short, a place where new connections arise and collectively...
From the corner next to the revolving doors to the outside, he has a great view of the north hall of De Heuvel. The luxury indoor shopping centre in Eindhoven's city centre is bathed in golden glow, while subterranean rumbling sounds from speakers. Above the heads of the crowd, bright light of all colours shines, reflected off bent mirrored plates. Edward Dams has just...
Dutch film's market share threatens to be dramatically low for 2018. At the NFF conference, Film Distributors Netherlands presents the plan to create a think tank to turn the tide.
This edition, Theatre Festival Boulevard invited the audience to reflect on the two sides of identity: its immutability but especially its malleability. All this under the heading what you see is what you guess. If there is a performance to which this applies, it has to be Goat Song. A fascinating fifty-minute wordless performance by...
In 2016, I was unexpectedly struck by a Beatles classic. So what are the ingredients of perfect pop music? It is August 2016. I am standing with my friend at a ticket office in Liverpool, the British port city that is just as much an open-air museum. It is rather rubbed in on us that this city gave birth to The Beatles. In the harbour, tourists spend the night in a yellow submarine, equally...
Last week, while walking the dog, my neighbour Stefanie asked, "What is that anyway, this Holland Festival?", and I almost caught myself wearily going to explain that it was the most important performing arts festival the Netherlands and its environs and that everyone with a bit of education should know it. But I held back. And wondered: how...
First of all, the chairs have to leave the auditorium of the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ. Then some discomfort, those two hours that Octavia E. Butler's The Parable of The Sower lasts. At least it would make for some shared sorrow, and possibly some awkward swinging. Because the way things were going, that first night of Toshi Reagon's debut at the Holland...
The Association of Theatre and Concert Hall Directors and Festival de Nederlandse Dansdagen announce the annual nominations for the VSCD Dance Awards (the Swans). Nominated for the Swan 'most impressive dance production' are: Rule of Three, choreography: Jan Martens, by GRIP The hidden floor, choreography: Franck Chartier, by Nederlands Dans Theater We Are Nowhere Else But Here, choreography: Stephen Shropshire, by Stephen Shropshire Foundation,...
Of course, we have Chriet Titulaer. But it kind of ends there. And to say we took those very seriously, back in the day? No. The future, and fantasising about it, is not really a thing in the Netherlands, at least not with the big publishers and broadcasters. A writer dealing with science fiction will never join a big...
Grandpa tells. In 1989, a committee of experts chose a different theatre course in my city, Utrecht. The just-risen festival Theater aan de Werf would get more money, the marching theatre would disappear from 't Hoogt and the rest would have to take care of the newcomer with fewer days of programming. Then we took to the streets against the so-called 'festivalisation',...
You must be a serious misanthrope not to have a good time in Stadspark Maastricht that Friday. The sun is shining. It is subtropical warm with a light spring breeze. The location, next to a pond embraced by ramparts and turrets, is perfect. Under the ancient oaks, some 40 food trucks and bars with simmering kitchens await you. Oh...
Geenstijl.nl, the website once founded to celebrate free speech in all its manifestations, has discovered something. Well - it wasn't that complicated to discover, as the centre of Utrecht is rather difficult to get around. But so it is about Dries Verhoeven's construction site, one of the manifestations of the otherwise often rather inconspicuous...
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