zzp’ers

'Dutch cultural world is full of happy volunteers.' Why the Culture Index misses the mark.

by Wijbrand Schaap
25 July 201830 March 2022
3 min read
ACTUAL, For members only

Last Tuesday, 24 July, in a week when the whole of the Netherlands is voluntarily lying down for pampus or any other island, the Culture Index came out with an important piece. In 'Five questions about volunteering answered', the Culture Index does indeed answer five questions. The question, however, is how relevant these questions are to the state of professional culture in the Netherlands. And, more importantly, does...

Minister at presentation of vision letter: 'number of arts productions may have to go down'

by Wijbrand Schaap
12 March 201830 March 2022
2 min read
ACTUAL, For members only

Culture minister van Engelshoven says it is inevitable that the number of productions in the arts sector will go down. This is necessary to make the labour market for the arts sector healthy. She stated this in an interview after the presentation of her vision letter at Rotterdam's Maaspodium. 'You see that a lot has been produced in recent years to...

Culture Council wants review of system, but cautious 'Theatre Sector Opinion' is licence for arbitrariness by House of Representatives

by Wijbrand Schaap
16 February 201821 April 2020
9 min read
ACTUAL, PODIUM ART, THEATER

Today, the Culture Council comes out with one of the weaker advices in its existence. The Netherlands' highest cultural advisory body showed vision, leadership and boldness earlier this season with the 'Verkenning' and the 'Sectoradvies Muziek'. The exploration called for a reversal of subsidy flows, with urban regions taking the initiative. In the advice for the music sector, it broke...

'We are too little aware of how well things are going at the moment'. HRM professor Paul Boselie on the future of our labour market.

by Wijbrand Schaap
15 January 201830 March 2022
4 min read
ACTUAL, SPONSORED

Next Thursday, at Utrecht's TivoliVredenburg music palace, it will not be about music for once, but about work. During the event The Future of Work, internationally renowned professor Paul Boselie will throw a big punch. According to the author of the international handbook 'Strategic Human Resource Management', employees and employers lack the much-needed sense of urgency about...

New Cabinet confirms with agreement culture line Rutte I and II

by Maarten van der Meer
26 October 201729 March 2022
5 min read
ACTUAL, For members only

The Rutte III Cabinet is finally in place after long negotiations. It is a cabinet that will govern in financial prosperity, but that prosperity applies to a very limited extent to the Arts & Culture sector. Step by step, the cabinet will work towards an extra 80 million euros for the Culture sector from 2020, it says. But if this were to be enough...

Fair Practice Code is beta version. (Why it will remain unsettled in the arts for a long time to come)

by Wijbrand Schaap
4 October 201729 March 2022
5 min read
ACTUAL, For members only

Art subsidy cuts have been passed on to the weakest shoulders. Minister Jet Bussemaker made no bones about it in one of her latest public appearances. 'I have often praised the resilience of the sector, and we should celebrate that,' she declared yesterday at the presentation of the Fair Practice Code, 'but I also saw that subsidised institutions...

Nog minder inkomen voor schrijvers. (wat je niet weet over de bezuinigende bieb)

by Wijbrand Schaap
28 July 201730 March 2022
2 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, LITERARY, PREMIUM

Dat het slecht gaat met de bibliotheken, was al bekend. Maar in het nieuws daarover, op 27 juli openbaar gemaakt door RTL, zit nog iets verborgen dat de redactie zelf onderbelicht laat. Want wie betaalt het werkelijke gelag in de bezuinigingsoperatie? Inderdaad, de schrijvers. Dat regelen de bibliotheken met een simpele truc. Ze zeggen de huur op van hun eigen…

The new theatre system is just about finished. Only seven 'dilemmas' remain.

by Wijbrand Schaap
10 July 201729 December 2017
7 min read
ACTUAL, DANS, MUSIC, PODIUM ART, PREMIUM, THEATER

[This post was already online under the title 'Save us from the Transition Office', but has been modified in a few details] While you are preparing for a well-deserved holiday, people in the arts sector are working on a new model. That new model is needed because the old model is no longer adequate. That old model, and we are of course talking about our...

Dramatic increase in volunteering in theatres and concert halls.

by Wijbrand Schaap
29 May 201729 March 2022
4 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, PODIUM ART, PREMIUM, APPRECIATE & DONATE!

One of the highlights of the year is always the presentation of 'the figures' by the Association of Theatre and Concert Hall Directors (VSCD). As it happens, these are unabatedly positive. For years. And so for years it has been a challenge to find out why those positive figures are so difficult to reconcile with the picture of reality. That not at all...

Collecting egg cartons! Why we need a jazz club like Persepolis.

by Jaïr Tchong
24 April 201730 April 2017
6 min read
MUSIC, PODIUM ART

Wondrous story: Utrecht had a famous jazz club between 1957 and 1967. It was founded - including egg cartons on the vault - by jazz-loving teenagers. Not only the fine fleur of Dutch jazz performed there, but also many an international big name. As part of Utrecht's Cultural Sundays, last Sunday (23 April), a wharf cellar on the...

How to get 10 million young people reading. The story behind Hooked.

by Wijbrand Schaap
24 April 201730 March 2022
4 min read
For members only, INTERNET, LITERARY, MEDIA, PREMIUM

Something is changing considerably in the world of literature. Libraries are closing or turning into flex spaces for poor freelancers. The sold circulation of an average successful novel remains in four figures. Young people no longer watch TV or listen to the radio, but make their own well-watched and generously paid films on YouTube. Or they sit the...

No party really shows heart for art, so vote for a human being #TK2017

by Wijbrand Schaap
24 February 201716 August 2017
5 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, PREMIUM

By now, we are a little surrounded by voting guides and electoral compasses. There is one for every area of policy. What to vote for if you have a beating heart for art? The Correspondent gave a nice little overview the other day. It showed that art is indeed a hobby of mainly left-wing parties, at least when it comes to subsidised art. Art...

They don't half know how bad it is. Sign up for Culture Panel

by Wijbrand Schaap
7 December 201630 March 2022
3 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, PREMIUM

In art, you work because of your passion, not because of the money. That's so, that was always so. In art, it's even suspicious if you care about money. And if you do worry about money once, it immediately comes out rotten. Are you going to shout about culture, march der your...

National Opera & Ballet seeks (almost) free help for general director

by Henri Drost
17 November 201630 March 2022
2 min read
ACTUAL, For members only

The National Opera & Ballet is among the showpieces of Dutch cultural policy. And rightly so. Like the Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Rijksmuseum, the opera and dance company is among the absolute world's best. That comes with a price tag. A hefty price tag. In the case of The National Opera: €24,420,000, in the case of The National Ballet: €6,950,000. Soon there will be a...

PvdA: 2x hundred million added for culture and NPO. Or not?

by Henri Drost
25 October 2016
3 min read
ACTUAL

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...

Sell that artist, or: the eternally inhibiting modesty of the self-employed worker

by Hannah Roelofs
13 October 201630 March 2022
3 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, Culture+Enterprise

There are very, very many artists and creatives who did not start out as entrepreneurs but need or want to get into business. Their number has only increased since 'the Halbe Zijlstra period'. I know them, I mentor some of them and last but not least, I am one myself. The perfect occasion to take some continuing education to me....

ISH Fund Performing Arts awards

Performing Arts Fund cuts dance subsidies. Not enough, according to some.

by Ruben Brugman
3 August 201629 March 2022
7 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, DANS, PODIUM ART

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...

Theatre festival Boulevard

Theatre Festival Boulevard: Not the Avignon, but the Berlin of the Netherlands?

by Wijbrand Schaap
30 June 201620 February 2017
4 min read
ACTUAL, Boulevard, PODIUM ART, SPECIALS, THEATER

There are many reasons not to go on holiday. It costs money, you come back more stressed than you went, the food is no good, it costs tons of CO2 and it doesn't increase mutual understanding between countries either. Reason enough, then, to just stay here and enjoy the free time given to you by the boss, or by yourself if you are self-employed. Without being barked at by airport staff.

Courage Conny Janssen Danst

COURAGE by Conny Janssen Danst shows a delicious new world

by Ruben Brugman
19 June 201629 March 2022
4 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, DANS

You don't have to go to Terschelling at all for an atmospheric location performance. COURAGE by Conny Janssen Danst is an exciting experience on a totally, totally neglected place.

In the 1980s, she started choreographing with Djazzex, years later she performed for Obama. Now Conny Janssen (interview here) with her ensemble at the Ferro Dome. A dilapidated venue you wouldn't expect much from the outside. Plans to turn it into a Rotterdam Heineken Music Hall are according to the AD cancelled. It's as if the city of Rotterdam said to Conny: here's a place we can't do anything with, you do something with it. Dut succeeded her wonderfully: thanks to a creative approach, the entire industrial entourage has a underground-appearance.

Self-employed: you don't have to be able to do everything on your own, seek career guidance!

by Jacqueline de Kuijper
19 February 2016
4 min read
IMAGING, DANS, FILM, LITERARY, MUSIC, OPERA, THEATER

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...

Reactie Bussemaker op inkomensalarm kunstsector is totaal verkeerd

by Wijbrand Schaap
22 January 201629 March 2022
3 min read
ACTUAL, For members only

De SER heeft vandaag bevestigd wat wij al voorspelden in 2012: de inkomenspositie van werkers in de kunsten is ernstig verzwakt. Tussen alle positieve berichten over stijgende inkomsten en bezoekcijfers door is dit een harde confrontatie met de werkelijkheid achter de cijfers. Vast personeel is in veel grotere mate dan in de rest van het bedrijfsleven vervangen door zzp’ers. En…

Let zzp'ers keep the supervisory boards of cultural companies on their toes!

by Giep Hagoort
23 August 201529 March 2022
3 min read
ACTUAL, For members only

How next for boards in the cultural sector? Supervisory boards are under considerable pressure following publications about possible failures of supervision at Rotterdam's Wereldmuseum, Grand Theatre in Groningen and recently again from Rotterdam's Het Nieuwe Instituut. Previously, similar reports appeared about De Utrecht Games and the Groninger Museum, among others. In practically all cases, the cases involved a Council...

Delft Library

Dear Annemarie van Gaal, in the library they don't have time for bubbly talk.

by Giep Hagoort
16 April 201530 March 2022
3 min read
For members only, LITERARY, PERSONAL

The interesting thing about Financieel Dagblad columnist Annemarie van Gaal's stories is that you don't have to agree with her text at all but can still enjoy it. In her column in the newspaper of 13 April 2014, however, there is something else going on. Here, the conscience of financial and business Netherlands shows a very serious lack of...

agenda culture Council for Culture

Culture Council sounds alarm: 29.5 million needed to preserve arts sector

by Wijbrand Schaap
8 April 201529 March 2022
7 min read
ACTUAL, For members only

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...

Disaster at Grand Theatre mainly due to supervision failure

by Wijbrand Schaap
12 March 201530 March 2022
4 min read
ACTUAL, For members only

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...

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