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'I'm not the discrimination police.' Romana Vrede on her role in Gloria Wekker's team on SPOT-LIve.

'How do I make the world a little more beautiful? That's what I ask myself in everything I do.' Romana Vrede, award-winning actress with Het Nationale Theater, 'table lady' on De Wereld Draait Door and Summer Guest, likes to look positively into the world. So will her contribution to SPOT-Live, the performing arts symposium taking place in Rotterdam on 28 May, be optimistic... 

'We have become spectators rather than actors'; Philipp Blom tells performing artists on SPOT-Live what is at stake.

'We are on the brink of a new cultural revolution. We need to move away from our paradigm and art can play a role in this. Art can show us images of a different future, a different thought. Artists can help bring that realisation in.' Speaking is writer and journalist Philipp Blom. In 2017, his... 

Eric de Vroedt (Het Nationale Theater)curates at SPOT-Live: 'Let's talk about love.'

'What we so often forget is to just talk about our love for theatre.' Eric de Vroedt, artistic director of The National Theatre, wants to talk about substance for once. And then with the entire performing arts sector. Soon there will be SPOT-Live, the renewed Congress of Performing Arts, and there he wants to talk about love. 'Quite by chance, it happened a month ago.... 

René Ten Bos tells on SPOT-Live why we play stage: 'On four legs we don't look it.'

'I recently spent a day working with municipal administrators. It was about bureaucracy. Well, if anything is about bureaucracy, it is the work of Samuel Beckett. So I also invited theatre people to illustrate what I was talking about with Becketian texts.' Philosopher René ten Bosch, currently Denker des Vaderlands, is one of the three curators of the... 

Daria Bukvić holds up a mirror to theatres and companies on SPOT Live: 'I don't shy away from new forms of marketing.'

'With my performances, I always try to make people feel that they are really going to miss a happening. 'The first performance with personal stories of four Moroccan-Dutch actresses in the big theatres of the Netherlands, the newest this, the most surprising that.' Daria Bukvić is one of the most exciting creators to enter the theatre world in recent years. She is not only... 

Merlijn Twaalfhoven on SPOT-Live: 'Outside the Randstad lies a huge source of inspiration'

'I have knocked on the door of the Congress of Performing Arts a few times in recent years on my own initiative, really from the idea that we can do a lot more as venues in the Netherlands. But yes, every time I was there, people got enthusiastic, but does it stick?' Composer Merlijn Twaalfhoven is happy that he now serves as 'curator' of SPOT Live, the new... 

SPOT-LIVE takes you into the minds of leading, original and exciting creators and thinkers. 15 May 2018, Stadsschouwburg De Harmonie Leeuwarden

What happens when original and exciting makers and thinkers shape the SPOT-LIVE programme? If a leading philosopher, theatre-maker or musician is allowed to fill the stage with debate, what would it be about? If they were allowed to inspire you with work that touches them, what would they showcase? Get inspired by three curators who will share with you their views on... 

Figures don't lie: Dutch venues are doing badly

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 goes 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.

Theatres are doing better and better: 6 lessons from the VSCD @congresPK

On Monday 23 and Tuesday 24 May, the VSCD met, and the Congres Podiumkunsten (@congresPK) was going on at the Nijmegen Concert Hall De Vereeniging. I went to check it out and discovered some new things.
1 The eminent gentlemen are gone.
Things have changed in Dutch theatre since the beginning of this century. Sometime around the year 2000, I was a guest at a meeting of the Association of Theatre and Concert Hall Directors, and it was a bizarre experience. I found myself among a...

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The Culture Congress

On Monday 27 October, "The Culture Congress" took place. A cleverly chosen name that suggested that this congress was unique in its kind and that there was a big organisation behind it. All the more surprising that this was only the first edition. And that the initiative came from one person. During his opening speech, Job Gerlings took us through... 

BPP Kaputt (6): All theatre awards and collective marketing discontinued

Not a cent more goes to the annual theatre awards and all other collective marketing activities, such as the performing arts congress, also go to 0 euros or very little. Says one chairman to another director, who is also chairman, and is actually the same. Because that's how it goes at the Association of Theatre and Concert Hall Directors:

Tate London has 100,000 members. Fortunately not all of them are active

Martin Barden realises that an old model works, where everyone is always clamouring for new forms. As marketing boss of the Tate museums in London, he created a large network of friends. So that museum has more than 100,000 members. people who feel part of the club, and whom you need to pamper.

Nancy Wiltink: 'a good story has to smell like blood'

People asking for clarity often clamour for "names and (back) numbers", but in classical music, that fuss with names and numbers is precisely why nobody understands anything anymore. So, according to ex-marketer and now storyteller Nancy Wiltink, it's not just about your story, but also whether that story is applicable.

Together with internet and marketing agency wecross, we interviewed a number of hotshots about their stories at the Performing Arts Congress (late May 2012 in Rotterdam). And Nan...

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'Publicity after the show is more important than before'

He is a professor of it, so if there is a problem in the economics of culture, Arjo Klamer knows about it. He says there has been growing resentment against subsidies for years. So the arts sector will have to get used to making a living in a different way from now on.

We now think too traditionally first about subsidy, the Rotterdam professor tells us in the interview we had with him during the Performing Arts Congress 2012, at the Rotterdam Doelen, late...

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Save a museum: make sure you make friends

There are funny answers in the way people sometimes try not to answer a question. As director of Museum Boerhaave, Dirk van Delft managed to rake in a sloppy €1 million from the market. This immediately made him the darling of Rutte's cabinet. After questioning him twice, it turns out that he actually thinks there are too many wild things happening in the performing arts, and that this could be the reason why they have been hit so hard. But we have da...

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Classical musicians: stop thinking in money, think in ideas

Classical music audiences have been declining by 1% a year for 20 years. Structurally. That means that since 1992, 1/5 of the audience has already disappeared, without anything else taking its place. According to Johan Idema, strategist and author of a useful book on new methods for early music, the sector is entirely self-inflicted.

In a collaborative project with the friends of wecross, the Cultural Press Bureau interviewed a number of speakers, gurus and veteran...

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It's all the fault of "Roundabout Art"

You don't see Henk and Ingrid in theatres with subsidised theatre, so the VVD and PVV's hatred of the fine arts cannot be blamed on that, according to Hans Onno van den Berg, former director of the Association of Theatre and Concert Hall Directors. No. it is the fault of the roundabouts in the Netherlands. That's where Henk and Ingrid always have to drive around art on their way to the musical. And they don't like that. Of those roundabouts.
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"A viral has to have humour"

They can do quite a bit, at Fitzroy. Always fun to attend presentations, as the Amsterdam-based marketing agency showed at the Performing Arts Congress on 29 and 30 May 2012.

Fitzroy must be doing something right. Otherwise you won't be in such an office.

In full partnership with marketing, multimedia and web agency wecross (the creators of this website), we interviewed 10 people who came to represent the performing arts world at that conference,...

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