What happened to the five million Overijssel gave the orchestra in 2011 to 'get more money from the market'? This was also what councillor Van Abbema wondered, and the answers the province gave her mostly raise more questions. What is abundantly clear is that the province wants to keep the orchestra no matter what and of no merger
When you think of Carel Kraayenhof, you don't immediately think of a young squatter orating about Karl Marx in circle discussions. Yet protest resides in the musician, just like in the tango. This becomes apparent when the interview gets off to a brisk start.
Relief for Amersfoort's cultural organisations. In the proposal for the multi-annual budget 2015-2018 (presented last night by the college to the city council), they remain largely unaffected when it comes to cuts. Only theatres De Flint and De Lieve Vrouw have to make cuts. It is possible they will merge in 2017. Recently, there has been a lot of unrest in the cultural world. The...
Everything comes together in Enschede. Revenue models that appear to be based on air, but are defended to the hilt by administrators. Jubilant reports on rising museum visits, but smaller museums are going under. Aldermen acting out of cultural interests, but then playing residents against each other to make draconian decisions. All this to disguise the ruins of Rutte I. A quick recap:...
Hatred of dependents runs deep in the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy. The political game the party plays nationally and locally cannot be explained otherwise. Amsterdam is now experiencing the latest example of how the party has launched its publicity attack on dependents: while the cut in cultural subsidies of four years ago was...
Possible (cultural) cuts are causing unrest in Amersfoort. The population was allowed to give its opinion via a website. Cultural organisations received the most support. But what will happen with the results of the public consultation? Just a reminder: due to setbacks in the land exploitation, the municipality of Amersfoort has to cut nineteen million euros in the coming years. To this end, an overview of possible cutback proposals was made. The Arts and...
What is already going on on a small scale in Groningen, Enschede, Zaltbommel, Amersfoort, Gorinchem and Vlaardingen, is threatening to happen nationwide as well: cultural institutions falling over while politicians look on helplessly. According to the Council for Culture, the situation is alarming: 'Institutions are draining their own funds, cultural funds are maintaining schemes by drawing on reserves. We therefore make the urgent...
Amersfoort's cultural scene is in turmoil over a series of possible austerity proposals. In recent weeks, the public was allowed to give its opinion. The city council will make final decisions in May. Meanwhile, beloved theatre De Lieve Vrouw is already in dire financial straits. Amersfoort has been under financial supervision by the province of Utrecht since the end of 2014. The municipality mainly suffers...
Kantelen is in. En dat is goed zolang het kantelen inhoudt dat je een scherpe bocht neemt en met nieuw elan de vers gekozen koers volgt. Kantelen is onverstandig als je aan de rand van de afgrond staat. Want dan wordt kantelen al gauw tuimelen. De cultuureducatie is, naar ik moet vrezen, begonnen aan een tuimeling. Vorig jaar bleek dat…
It sounds great, that Amsterdam Arts Plan 2017-2020. The city is increasing the culture budget to almost 90 million a year. And there suddenly seems to be a vision: away with all those different advisory bodies, one capital 'basic infrastructure' and for the rest there is the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (AFK). The municipality should stick to the main lines, not with individual subsidies....
Britain's Arts Index stands at 111. This puts the cultural AEX of a country that likes to call itself the world's cultural No 1, four points lower than last year, but still a point higher than in 2012, the year when the government also began cutting subsidies in Britain. The 'National Campaign...
Willem Jeths (1959) is one of the most successful Dutch composers. Through his enormous craftsmanship and drive, he manages to create his own sound world, which is surprising yet accessible. His work is regularly performed at home and abroad and has appeared on many CDs. In 2014, he received the Amsterdam Prize for the Arts and later that year he was appointed
Topicality is back in the Dutch acting scene for a while, and that is quite nice. De Verleiders, once started as a one-off play about fraudulent bosses by George van Houts, is now growing into a voluminous series. On TV, we have the series De Fractie, which manages to recreate the news of the day every episode in...
“Ik hoef er natuurlijk niet rijk van te worden…” Het is zo’n beetje de meest gehoorde opmerking als je veel optrekt met kunstenaars en creatieven. “Waarom eigenlijk niet?” vraag ik dan. Geschrokken kijken ze me aan. Onthutst dat je durft te tornen aan deze algemeen geldende waarheid. Als antwoord komt er dan iets buitengewoon vaags als “Nou, gewoon….geld is toch niet het belangrijkste?”
We took another close look at the news surrounding the near bankruptcy of Groningen's illustrious Grand Theatre. Yesterday, it became clear that that theatre is in serious financial trouble. Problems that the municipality does not want to solve simply by an extra injection of thousands of euros. And they are right. After all, the Grand's coffers are as leaky as...
The Grand Theatre in Groningen is dying. Yesterday, the city council of the northern university city decided that no more money should be poured into the theatre, which is in acute cash trouble. Bills from suppliers and independent artists have not been paid for several months, and financial reserves are more than depleted. We have received reports from artists...
Minister Jet Bussemaker omarmt het rapport dat de WRR op donderdag 5 maart uitbracht volledig. De Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid doet in dat rapport, getiteld ‘Cultuur Herwaarderen’, een oproep om cultuur weer gewoon als cultuur te zien. “Daarmee neemt de WRR, en ik steun dat ook, afstand van de instrumentele benadering van cultuur. Alsof cultuur alleen wat te betekenen…
Use arts funding for research&development, attracting venture capital and crowdfunding with public money. In this way, according to the Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR), the same public money can yield more. In an 'exploration' presented to the government today, this advisory board breaks a lance for more daring and commitment from the government to strengthen the Dutch cultural sector: 'Increasingly,...
Of Dutch people, the province can cut back even more on Culture. This week, Ipsos Synnovate presented a survey to that effect, and it was another slap in the face for the sector. Apparently, the image of art as an expensive kind of leftist hobby has not yet been eradicated by three years of optimistic NLPing by culture minister Jet Bussemaker's PR machine....
Schouwburg De Nieuwe Doelen in Gorinchem sluit op 31 mei de deuren, wegens gebrek aan steun in de lokale politiek. De gemeenteraad van de stad, die eerder ook de muziekschool sloot, wil het gebouw graag als Dorpshuis blijven gebruiken voor amateurkunstenaars. Voor professioneel theater, zo meldde een fractieleider van CDA-huize, kunnen die paar liefhebbers gewoon naar Dordrecht. Schouwburgdirecteur Rob van Wijk…
According to Rotterdam alderman Visser, the current subsidy system is unsustainable. The system, in which cultural institutions submit a plan every four years and thus have to look years ahead, no longer fits with the times. Nowadays, there is a need for flexibility and change, not rigidity and certainty. The alderman said this during the presentation of the sector analysis by the Rotterdam Council
Op het zesde PopArts festival geen buitenlandse voorstellingen. Laten de bezuinigingen zich gelden? Het festival programmeert om het jaar internationaal en dit jaar blijft het dicht bij huis. Met Nicola Unger waren er de andere Nederlandse ‘usual suspects’ als Duda Paiva en gastkunstenaars van de Ulrique Quade Company. Maar in de De Krakeling en het Ostadetheater zijn ook jonge makers…
The General Court of Auditors, a high college of state that independently audits government spending, is blowing the whistle on Culture Minister Bussemaker. Indeed, in an interim opinion, published on 12 February, the Court of Audit states that nothing at all is yet clear about the real consequences of the previous cabinet's cuts. That cabinet, with the widely beloved Halbe...
Hedendaags choreograaf Sibi Larbi wordt de nieuwe directeur van Ballet Vlaanderen in Antwerpen. Een opvallende en onorthodoxe keuze. Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker mag ondertussen wegblijven uit De Munt in Brussel. What’s up België?
Municipal cultural politics are often about 'bricks and mortar'. People put up a cultural building and then pray/hope that fantastic things will happen there, which the city council, in turn, has no money for/power over. Take Enschede. In a council meeting in which it was decided to reinvest in cultural bricks by means of a €475,000 loan, there was actually some unrest. No, not about those bricks, but about...
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