A small miracle did happen, in recent months. The result of that miracle can now be found in letter Jet Bussemaker, minister of OCW, sent to the chamber yesterday. And actually, it is not one miracle, but three. We list them for you. 1: The art world pulls together. Artists often find actors...
Wijbrand Schaap: 'When it comes to talent development and embedding in society, it is also very much about the absolute basics. It also touches on the minister's two functions: education and culture. Arts education in primary schools does not really help embedding. No attention has been paid to art in the pedagogical academies for years....
Over 60 million has disappeared from the coffers of the Netherlands' amateur artists in recent years. That money from your daughter's dance class, the brass band and your son's hip-hop class has been spent by municipalities, which had to compensate for cuts elsewhere, and provinces that suddenly saw no point in amateurs. That the national government additionally took 200 million from professional arts institutions is added to that.
The UWV stated last Thursday that it has no idea how many people have actually been made unemployed by the culture cuts. From a rather ramshackle-looking research by NRC Handelsblad, which looked exclusively at jobs lost in Amsterdam and only at state-subsidised institutions, found that that category alone had generated 600 clients for the UWV. The rest are beyond the scope of the Amsterdam office.
The first assessment of the cold clean-up by Rutte 1 is there. Bussemaker sent it to the 1st chamber. In the Netherlands, 41 arts institutions have been closed down, while 132 other clubs are bravely holding on without subsidies (and therefore without staff). How long these firms will continue to run on volunteers is still unknown. Next year, we will surely be able to add a few to the list of the deceased.
Everywhere, arts attendance is falling dramatically, except, for now, in Rotterdam. There, the Rotterdamnse Schouwburg managed to keep the number of paying visitors the same, or even increase slightly to over 147,500, in its first real cultural disaster year 2012. In its own press release, the management (currently in the hands of Jan Zoet) attributes this to sharper programming and revivals of successful productions, and an increase in the number of concerts:
The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science is investing time and money in improving cultural education in primary schools in the coming years. Through a combination of existing pots and money contributed by the state, municipalities and provinces, 41.5 million euros a year will be freed up for arts education in the coming years. And before every self-employed artist starts making plans now: that money will mainly go towards research and procedures, with the most concrete goal being: 'the development of a curriculum for cultural education'.
According to the Volkskrant, Rick van der Ploeg was state secretary of culture in the early 1990s (in reality, he was at the end of those years), and in Het Parool columnist Gerard Mulder claims that the fact that he "thankfully knows nothing about art subsidies" need not deter him from some wild speculations...
We do not have much to comment on Halbe Zijlstra's explanation. Other than that the state secretary of formerly culture breathes an almost legible sigh of relief now that he can almost close the 'arts' headache file. His "masterpiece", the amendment to the Specific Cultural Policy Act, is before the chamber and if it is approved (hammer piece), the state secretary does not really need to do anything more.
While 2010 was still the year of PVV positions on culture that were suddenly shared by other parties ("we are abolishing art subsidies"), the year 2011 fell under their implementation. What was striking was the ease with which regional and local administrators also wielded this same machete, as PVV spokesperson Bosma did not fail to testify. For instance, in the municipality of Almelo, 30 % went àff from...
Interesting things are happening these days. The digital revolution is beginning to have traces of a real revolution. No one has yet set themselves on fire, as in Tunisia, but more and more people are taking to the virtual streets to overthrow the old powers: after the record companies, which let themselves be overwhelmed by people downloading, and the newspapers, which let themselves be overwhelmed by people searching freely for information, it now seems to be the turn of book publishers.
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