If the shock of 9-11 in 2016 highlighted anything, it was the yawning gap between the higher and lower educated in our neoliberal society. White, less-educated and angry male America elected a racist and war hitter as president. We can't help but conclude that democratic, liberal, highly educated and bigoted America refused to see the blow coming. In the spring ...
It really is there, although it is unclear whether there will be an additional 100 million twice or whether public broadcasting and the entire cultural sector will have to make do with one additional 100 million. But at least it is clear: as in the rest of the draft election programme, the party mainly distances itself from the VVD and the four-year...
'Not only work has disappeared, but also knowledge and craft - the whole perspective is disappearing. While the Netherlands as a dance country was renowned in the world precisely because it had the luxury to research, to build, to stimulate.' Ronald Wintjes, the brand-new director of De Nederlandse Dansdagen, worries. What about the future of dance?....
This play is going to cost me a lot of friends, but it needs to get out. After all, the theatre industry is doing badly. And I can see more and more clearly where that is due to. And for once it's not Halbe Zijlstra. Or the VVD, or the population, or the Netherlands in general, or the zeitgeist. And it's not because of Netflix either...
There is no such thing as free money. The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science has shown that many times. Extra money turns out to be a cigar from its own pocket. The ministry has elevated cash shifting to an art. Of course, it sounds so nice, all that extra money for the cultural sector, but where does it actually come from? Simple: by abolishing tax breaks for private individuals with listed buildings....
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...
In these election times, it is just how you put it and calculate it. That 24 million extra for culture, which Pechtold triumphantly mentioned with the addition that 'the journey through the desert is over after 2016', has, for the time being, as much value as Rutte's illustrious 1,000 euros: first see, then believe. And since Pechtold gave no further explanation,...
When you go to a concert, you think about the music, the ensemble, the soloist and/or the conductor. Maybe you look up something about the composer but you never think about the programmer who made the concert possible. Astrid in 't Veld is someone who thinks about the range of concerts on offer years in advance in order to help you with...
10 days of Festival Boulevard. I threw myself into it. I saw 14 performances, saw a lot of corners of Den Bosch (and Tilburg) up close and experienced more different theatre than usual in six months. I also ate more chips than is good for me, drank more beer than usual and enjoyed eavesdropping on conversations of...
They totally agree with us, the employers in the performing arts sector. These company and theatre directors and other managers of dwindling coffers, gathered in the Dutch Association of Performing Arts (NAPK), are circulating a letter today, calling on the Lower House to review the system of subsidies. After all, now the middle class is falling between the cracks. Has happened before, and...
The Performing Arts Fund announced the awards for the 2017-2020 period. What does this mean for the dance sector? Pluralism and 'bleeding through'. While everyone is on holiday, the Performing Arts Fund announced the grant awards for the performing arts for the 2017-2020 period. And it was reiterated: the fund is facing a previously initiated budget cut of 30 per cent. That would...
The effects of the previous cabinet's arts cuts are finally becoming clear. The Performing Arts Fund today announced the winners and losers of the battle for four-year subsidies. From 2017, the Dutch art world will be a lot smaller, more meagre and poorer than it was until 2013. Big names are gone, traditions broken down, while what is new faces an extremely uncertain existence.
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.
Finally, it was not quite literal, but he was clearly referring to it: Richard III. Geert Wilders, himself not too culturally savvy, quotes Shakespeare in his umpteenth plea to get the Netherlands out of the EU with pot-covered borders. In the second chamber. I saw it on Nieuwsuur, and you can watch it back. At 39′:49″ minutes into the broadcast he is in debate with his great friend, the VVD's Halbe Zijlstra.
Marketing strategist Halbe Zijlstra has failed. His valiant attempt to use a 'Giving Act' boosting donations from small individuals to arts institutions has backfired. Since 2011, contributions made by ordinary households to cultural institutions fell from 32 euros, to 28 euros on average in 2014. This is according to the survey 'Cultural institutions in the Netherlands: Changes in giving behaviour, donations, fundraising and income between 2011 and 2014', which was presented in a small gathering on Friday 10 June.
No, the culture debate on 8 June in the province of Overijssel was not uplifting. The 2017-2020 Culture Note was adopted unanimously, except for two votes from the SGP. No fireworks about, for instance, the forced cooperation between the Orkest van het Oosten and Het Gelders Orkest. No hefty investments to fix national and provincial cuts. All spokesmen came up with predictable monologues, comparisons were made with other regions and, above all, they looked enviously at the Randstad, but there was no debate. The Christian parties are worried about empty churches, and the PVV, which is of course actually against subsidies, made some obligatory remarks about safeguarding the Overijsselian identity.
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 is 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.
The past and future of the Netherlands Reisopera are dominated by money worries. Nicolas Mansfield, director, during the season presentation on 20 April last in the foyer of Theatre Carré, stressed not only the necessity of a national opera company's existence but, above all, the necessary quality requirements to keep attracting audiences. And quality cannot exist without decent...
I wrote about it a while ago. About all those people who are now barely sustaining themselves on a minimal grant amount from the Performing Arts Fund, and that they have all done a fan-tas-tic job. This is what director Henriëtte Post told me in a conversation sometime this winter. 'Based on their performance, none of the current institutions can get out of...
On 30 January, choreographer Erik Kaiel was presented with the prestigious Victor Award at IPAY, an international youth theatre fair in Canada, for his performance Tetris. "It's a kind of Buchmesse for youth theatre. If you get picked up there, you go around the world" says Kaiel. Kaiel (1973) has been working in the Netherlands since 2003 and has so far produced his work at...
The raw in Something Raw can mean all sorts of things. The first thought might be something rough, as in the effect of sandpaper on skin or the havoc left by an elephant in the china shop. But rough is a derivative meaning. Raw first of all means unprocessed and fresh. There is a certain hope in the combination of rough and raw: artists who like...
Following the exploration of the labour market in the cultural sector made by the Social and Economic Council (SER) and the Council for Culture last month, there was a lot of attention on the low earning self-employed in the cultural sector. Promising headlines such as "Everyone gets paid except the artist" (NRC) and "It's a matter of waiting every month to see if I earn enough" (Volkskrant) could account for recognition...
Making art is too much fun and too unnecessary. People really like making art, and really want to show it off. So much so, that they are the only ones doing their contribution to an art event for free. While all other contributors are simply paid. Thus, the art world, including the subsidised one, is one of the places in the Netherlands where slavery is still common. It...
It is not often that Norman Lebrecht, author of the globally widely read blog Slipped Disc, covers conductors of the Orchestra of the East two days in a row. First on the departure of principal conductor Jan Willem de Vriend, then on the appointment of former principal conductor Jaap van Zweden to the world-famous New York Philharmonic. Naturally, Lebrecht brought both...
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