On 2 March, Platform Aanvang! launched the petition Nederland maakt kunst / art makes the Netherlands at the Solidarity evening in ITA. An evening that opened the conversation for a solidarity sector, but most of all sounded the alarm for the planned downsizing of the arts sector. The petition was signed by more than 11,000 people in a week. When we saw the...
I have often resisted thinking of the Netherlands as a business. After all, a country cannot lay off people, or divest unprofitable sectors to make more profit. So anyone who speaks of the BV Nederland has not understood it. There are no competitors that you can fight out of the market while being entrepreneurial on those few square kilometres of polder land,...
After all, we did spend just under three hours on something completely nonsensical. Stupid, of course, as we had already written ourselves on 27 November 2019 that today's little debate in the Troelstra Room of the House of Representatives would be totally pointless. Everyone already knew that too, not least the movers of the motion, including Lodewijk Asscher ...
When a Dutchman thinks about art, he thinks of buildings that cannot support themselves, played by, or hung with work by, people who cannot sustain themselves. So money must be added, and we call this subsidy. In this way, art subsidies become a suspicious form of welfare, more suspicious than the billions in income support that wealthy...
While I was walking around Manchester with some cultural sector leaders, minister Ingrid van Engelshoven sent a letter to the House, telling it how much it would cost to enable state-subsidised arts organisations to get fair pay at the current offer. So that letter contained quite a few omissions: the minister was silent on the role played by regional and...
That government distrust of citizens in the Netherlands has reached bizarre proportions is proven by the hassle with benefits at the tax office and the state of affairs at the UWV. Or your average housing landlord where you want to report a leaky tap. Thanks to a politics influenced by false entrepreneurialism and rabid populism that treats citizens as fraudsters...
In April 2020, the Persgroep, now DPG Media because it smells better internationally, will stop regional art supplements in its newspapers. No more art reports and interviews, hardly any reviews. Local bookshops will lose their stage in all Dutch regions, as the publisher of Volkskrant, Trouw and AD has a regional monopoly. The message, brought by a reporter from the Eindhovens Dagblad, struck...
I am sitting at the dinner table at my parents' house. We are celebrating my mother's birthday with the whole family. I am there, but I am not quite there. In fact, I am so incredibly tired at the moment. As I jokingly tell my friends, "I can't say boo or boo anymore and am running on my gums". Suddenly, the conversation turns to...
We got some confusing messages last weekend. The reason was the festive announcement of the organisation of the Eurovision Song Contest that a special symphonic happening would take place at the finals in Rotterdam. Third year and master students of the Rotterdam Conservatoire, part of Codarts, as well as young professional musicians were invited. A 'fee' would be available for...
[update: they get even less, see post below] We received confusing news last weekend. The occasion was the festive announcement by the organisers of the Eurovision Song Contest that a special symphonic happening would take place at the final in Rotterdam. Invited were third-year and master students from Rotterdam Conservatoire, part of Codarts, as well as young professional musicians. For the performances...
In the first version of this post, we assumed 100 euros for 8 days. We turned out to be misinformed. The application of the remplaçants' collective agreement, mentioned in the explanation by the Song Festival, gives a bit more leeway, although its hourly and daily rates are still controversial. But 1,000 euros for eight days is now apparently the going rate....
A week before the end of 2019, Culture Press' membership stands at nearly 150, up from 40 exactly a year ago. A growth of more than 300 per cent is quite extraordinary. So we have demonstrated that we matter to a rapidly growing group of decision-makers in the cultural sector. So good that they are happy to contribute to...
With red cheeks, I hang up the phone a little bewildered. Just now I had a telephone appointment that took a completely different turn. I had a brief conversation with a theatre programmer who is still unknown to me. She unfortunately told me not to programme anything with our impresario, because there was really no need for artistic performances in her city. This lady stated that her...
Modest cheers in the performing arts world. A motion tabled on 18 November by Corinne Ellemeet (GroenLinks), together with PvdA, CDA and D66, forces minister Van Engelshoven to investigate the consequences of the cuts to the Performing Arts Fund before the subsidy is distributed. The House approved this on 26 November. Wonderful, you might say, because if clear...
For De Stadsbron, I interviewed Patrick Nederkoorn, comedian but in a previous life also politician, about his city, Amersfoort: You had a decisive role in politics here for eight years. In your programme, you reckon with that a bit. You argue that you were very much on form, and sometimes sold content where later you didn't... at all.
The culture sector will have to be patient for a while yet. Minister Ingrid van Engelshoven had no intention of changing any of her policies on Monday 18 November, during the discussion of the culture budget in the Standing Parliamentary Committee on Culture. Despite a fairly widely supported desire, especially from the opposition, to do something about the 8.6 million cut in the...
From 42 to 18 pages. Actually, that says it all about the new Diversity and Inclusion Code that saw the light of day on Friday 1 November. After all the wooliness and ifs and buts of the original Cultural Diversity Code, the new thing is a miracle of clarity. Is perhaps also necessary, in these times of identity wars, where on the left and...
Things are once again going insane for Dutch theatres and concert halls. Every year, the directors, gathered in the VSCD, manage to come out with truly fantastic figures in the autumn. This year too, the cheers are unrelenting. Everything is growing. The number of jobs, and the number of volunteers, for example. (both up by 3% in...
On 23 October, website Theaterkrant.nl wrote a piece on the future of the performing arts. A future that is black and gloomy when you, as a creator, count on growth, or even survival at all. In short: so much money is going away from the Performing Arts Fund, that from next year only between 50 and 60 applications can be honoured, in...
We treat our cultural heritage too casually. This is evident from the report 'Reserved and Involved', presented on Monday 30 September, drawn up by the Pechtold committee at the request of minister Van Engelshoven. In 110 pages (with pictures), it says that the current design of the Heritage Act leads to arbitrariness and uncertainty. This means that unsavoury situations like...
'Poignant to see how a lack of decisiveness, clarity and leadership - at both the Utrecht municipality and the management of the KLA - could lead to a split and even rupture among employees.' Karin Boelhouwer of the Kunstenbond is stuck with it, and she has a point. The Utrecht Centre for the Arts (UCK) recently went officially bankrupt. A major...
Members of the States General, This year about 72 years ago we had the first Holland Festival. After years of enslavement and tyranny, hope for a better future literally came from above, in the form of Maria Callas. Eyewitnesses who saw the lights in the Stadsschouwburg turn red that day would never forget that image. 72 years later, it seems...
Amersfoort has some catching up to do when it comes to culture. Festivals like Spoffin, for instance, have no money to pay real fees for performing artists. So they are there with the name recognition as a reward. The same is not true for tennis players, it turns out. Indeed, Amersfoort's alderman for sports decided to enrich this year's atp tennis tournament with a €50,000 subsidy to, for instance,...
'If we continue at the current rate, the fund will be exhausted in the foreseeable future.' This can be read in the 2018 annual report of the Performing Arts Social Fund. Plenty of reason to sound the alarm, indeed. Is this yet another victim of the cabinet's cuts? Not really, it turns out. When you look at the documents in detail, you see mainly that...
When you make theatre for children and young people, you tell stories to children and young people from your adult existence as an adult. You can do that. You can get funding for that. Artemis, previously named the second-best theatre company in the Netherlands here, is such a company. But, because this youth theatre company is led by Jetse Batelaan, Artemis likes to do things differently. Stronger...
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