Jubilee festival Cinéma Arabe - 15 years window on the Arab world
The Cinéma Arabe festival is a stage for Arab cinema and aims to contribute to social debate. It celebrates its 15th anniversary this year, but is struggling with a tight budget.
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New audiences for subsidised theatre? The Netherlands is working against that.
Together with two 12-year-old kids, I go to a theatre performance. To a theatre performance labelled 'adult performance'. Tickets cost 25. Discount for students. Discount for CJP. No discount for children, excuse me, youngsters, because yes, those two bridge students are already 12. Is this performance made for children? No. It is made for the curious, open viewer, for...
Vis à Vis versus Almere (2): civil service finds building land too expensive for culture
A fortnight ago, we reported that the unique open-air theatre group Vis à Vis had started a petition. Reason: the Almere city council was reportedly planning to convert the company's permanent site on Almere beach into a residential area. This would go against an earlier promise made by the alderman. Since that alderman has since ceased to be an alderman, it would...
How a small riot in Eindhoven could have major consequences for all subsidies (But for now, it's just a blunder)
Thanks to a tip-off from a reader, we saw that there is fuss about subsidies in Eindhoven. Now that happens quite often, but here something special was going on. Eindhovens Dagblad reported (Blendle link €) that the entire Supervisory Board of Stichting Cultuur Eindhoven had resigned. There was trouble because, writes the ED, the...
Culture funds want slow renewal. But it is far too late for that.
On 11 April 2019, the Council for Culture put a shovel in the dykes of the polder that is the Dutch cultural system. After all, the basic infrastructure, established in 2009 to finally bake renewal and flow into the system, is dead. The structure carefully conceived over years has been turned into a ruin by 10 years of cultural policy in which the...
Shout out! The big fill-in for the new arts plan.
The Council for Culture has just proposed the new Basic Infrastructure (BIS), and it has become a very big, in traditional terms 'prosperous', baby. Since the Council is not allowed to name names, and can only list functions, we have already made a fill-in list here, in which we list (very briefly, because little time and not knowing about everything) which existing cultural...
All power to the city! Culture Council's opinion dissected into 9 opportunities and 10 threats
When the Council for Culture released its long-awaited musical advice a month ago, its president Marijke van Hees was remarkably nervous. This was particularly evident in her choice to act as moderator at her own presentation. When there, at Amsterdam's Allard Pierson Museum, came (very mild) criticism of the advice, she shot to the defence. That became...
(With PODCAST) The Netherlands worth a quarter of a billion more because of books. (And only a few writers benefit from that)
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...
Baudet wants the rebirth of a civilisation. The question is which one. (But actually we already know)
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...
Small artists tested for 'payback'. Culture Council wants a large 'revolving fund' for loans to the arts.
The art world needs to be more entrepreneurial. The VVD thinks so, D66 thinks so, in fact the entire Lower House thinks so. But how do you get that combined with the 'intrinsic value' that the last two culture ministers say it should also be about? The Council for Culture has now, in response to a question from minister Ingrid van Engelshoven in March last...
Innovation in dance: give young creators space and you'll get it!
Water and dance have agility in common. Yet there is much more to be gained from this interface. Two choreographies in the New Adventures series give audiences a water experience that is both playful and reflective. Under the title New Adventures, Dansmakers Amsterdam presents work by selected dancers and choreographers that they created during a four-week study residency at the production house,...
What is it with the dance sector in Amsterdam? Once again, a dance production house is being deprived of subsidies.
Is production house Dansmakers Amsterdam losing its housing? Together with other institutions in the dance sector, it has made every effort to align and further develop the whole spectrum of dance facilities in Amsterdam. In 2018, for example, the joint plan Danswerf was developed and submitted as an application for a two-year development grant to the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (AFK)...
![M carbunaru [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons](https://cultureelpersbureau.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Vasile_Craciun_-_competitie_internationala.jpg)
All balls to Cuijk. Why it really is a good idea for the Netherlands to have a Capital of Culture every year.
How nice it would be if Zutphen were to be Cultural Capital of the Netherlands next year, proudly representing itself and thanks to a strong impulse from its surrounding area: the province of Gelderland. They could immediately tackle the hopeless situation of the local theatre, the kids from the suburbs could also go to hip-hop in a real hall and everyone in the Netherlands would know...
Children's music saved, but relationship between North Brabant and philharmonie zuidnederland remains 'cool'
What exactly was said remains unknown for now. That there was considerable discussion is clear. In any case, the result is clear: the Philharmonie Zuidnederland (which does not want to be written with capital letters) is back in business with the arts education projects in North Brabant. The brass band and kettle music, with which the Limburg-Brabant merger orchestra earlier announced all the little kids, together with three smaller youth theatre institutions, in...
Brabant feud between orchestra and province comes at the expense of children, schools and small companies.
Cultural summit will take place Friday, February 1, 2019, at the North Brabant Provincial House. Reason: The 'Orkexit', or, the decision by the Philharmonie Zuid Nederland to cease all education activities in North Brabant with immediate effect. This not only deprives thousands of children of culture, but also puts a number of small youth theatre companies in dire financial straits. The Philharmonic, a merger orchestra, formed...
Culture Council: The Netherlands underestimates its own music theatre culture. (Why opera still seeks talent abroad)
The Performing Arts Fund is failing to professionalise and make the music theatre sector sustainable. So says the Council for Culture in an advice leaked yesterday on the future of music theatre in the Netherlands. The advice presented today to the rest of the Netherlands therefore wants to transfer more different music theatre makers and companies from the Performing Arts Fund to the Cultural Basic Infrastructure. This partly...
Lower House gets less say over arts subsidies. (If the minister gets her way)
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...
Kind of a recovery in the performing arts, but pay particular attention to what's happening in the southern Netherlands
As part of "Hi, Figures!", Statistics Netherlands today released updated figures on the performing arts in the Netherlands. These show a cautious recovery, although the consequences of the 2011 interventions by the VVD and PVV are still painfully visible. The figures show that theatre in particular is struggling. There, the...
The Culture Index goes regional. Cherry-picking season has begun
It took about a day for the PVV Enschede branch to discover the message. Quite fast for a club that is usually not very interested in art. Anyway, this one detail at the presentation of the regional culture index was of course grist to the mill of the far-right local party: Region Enschede has the biggest mismatch between amount of subsidy and...
Performing artists miss out on million in European grant due to 'administrative inability'
'Indecent and rude,' is how Miep van Diggelen, former chairman of the board of the Performing Arts Social Fund (SFPK), calls the actions of the board of that same fund. That board, or at least about five members of the seven-member board, decided - outside the official meeting - to withdraw a subsidy application they had initiated earlier, without having read it. The promising...
A late poem for Kunsten92, the minister and the Culture Council.
I had so promised not to write anything about it, that meeting of Kunsten 92 about the regional profiles. After all, I still have to write a few Saint Nicholas poems for good friends and they deserve all my attention. So for now I'll just write in rhyme. Because someone has to do it. There are now seventeen region profiles from urban regions to villages with a thousand souls, Because...
'There are far too many books being written and no one is earning from them anymore.' (But we do rank 1 in Japan.)
A good selling book earns an author an average of 10 to 15 per cent of the selling price. Bestsellers go towards 20 per cent. But how much does it really yield? KVB Boekwerk, the research arm of the Royal Booksellers' Association wanted to find out. Jurriaan Rammeloo presented the first preliminary results of his research on 27 November. Not something to be very happy...
Top art is too expensive to improve the Corso. Do something about it, VVD!
Zundert's flower parade, a piece of unique folk culture (since 1936!) in which the - non-native - Dahlia plays a leading role, had a tough time this year. Due to the drought, there were fewer flowers than other years and so improvisations had to be made by the hundreds of volunteers who, every year, make the village where the memory of Vincent van Gogh is alive and well again...
Demise of VVD culture spokesman during budget debate in St Nicholas mood, with surprise for PvdD
A little pity was in order during the debate on the culture budget in the Lower House. Thierry Aartsen, the VVD's brand-new culture spokesperson, still hadn't done his homework and therefore got terrible on his mitre from fellow culture spokesmen in the Lower House. And then also from the minister. Was he allowed to speak around 11...
Thierry Aartsen of the VVD is quite right. And no idea.
'Culture is about stimulating, fraternising, challenging. Then there is no difference between corso and ballet.' Says Thierry Aartsen on Friday 16 November in the Volkskrant. Thierry who? Thierry Aartsen, the one who will be speaking on culture at the VVD in the coming months. The next few months? Yes, because VVD culture spokespersons are usually appointed for one or two debates, after which...
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