In the series In Perspective, Erik Akkermans looks back and ahead at developments in cultural policy and practice. Today: international solidarity. When Hans van Manen does want to receive Russians Scene 1. White House lawn On the lawn in front of the White House, first lady Pat Nixon1 walks past the assembled choirs singing to her. Suddenly, during a silent moment, the...
Today, the Supervisory Board announced that Tobias Kokkelmans has been appointed as the new director/manager of Stichting de Theaterdagen, organiser of the Nederlands Theater Festival, Amsterdam Fringe Festival, NTFJong and the in-depth platform for professionals NTF-Pro, as of 1 September. In doing so, he succeeds Jeffrey Meulman, who in May this year left the Foundation after sixteen years for the Verkadefabriek....
Better to die standing than to live kneeling. The statement is fresh in memory after the murder in the Lange Leidse Dwarsstraat, as a mantra in praise of Peter R de Vries, his fearlessness, non-conformism, straightforwardness and honesty. This same statement jumps out even from the first paragraphs of the introduction to the biography of poet Jef Last, written by Rudi Wester.1....
Young artists, filmmakers, musicians, writers and other new thinkers are drowning in the effects of the Corona crisis, as a cry for help from Jett Rebel in de Volkskrant again showed. Assignments are falling away and there is little room for new initiatives. A whole generation of creative talents seems to be lost in jobs in the hospitality industry or at the GGD. The European Recovery Fund...
Naomi Velissariou (1984) was actually supposed to be at the Bossche Festival Boulevard 2021 with more performances. This year, her entire trilogy 'Permanent Destruction' would be performed in a setting like club rave. Fierce musical theatre, based on playwrights Sarah Kane and Heiner Müller, and concluded with the more subdued work 'Pain against Fear'. All parts have received rave reviews from audiences and press, but...
Is it okay to be a proud alien in a world where marginalised people feel alienated? The LGBTQ+ project group at Framer Framed's Open Studio for i-psy participants have created a utopian future where differences and diversity are celebrated and recognised as something beautiful. Proud Aliens is the annual exhibition of the i-psy Arts, Amsterdam, created in collaboration with Framer...
From Thursday 2 to Sunday 12 September 2021, the Netherlands Theatre Festival will show the best productions of the past theatre season. The Netherlands Theatre Jury, headed by jury president Hadassah de Boer, selected the eight best theatre productions of the moment. Today, the jury announced its selection. The full selection can be seen during the upcoming edition of the festival
Over the past year, the global pandemic and reignited Black Lives Matter protests have had a huge impact on our daily reality. A Funeral for Street Culture seeks to explore and make visible the sense of loss and other consequences of these events within art and culture. The group project, curated and initiated by Metro54 and curator Rita Ouédraogo,...
After three centuries of colonial oppression and exploitation, it is now pay-back time. However, we, the progeny of the navy that came to get nutmeg there, are not so good at it. Because we come back to Indonesia with mass tourism, cheap clothing dyers and multinationals like Unilever. We do little else but drain the place further. Economically, but also culturally. This can be subject...
Whether we want to speak only of 's-Hertogenbosch from now on. Apparently, a last vestige of decency has bravely survived in the provincial capital of Brabant. Nazmiye Oral, master of ceremonies at a party at Den Bosch's citadel on 9 June, forgot right the first time. City marketers and old nobility fight hand in hand for a respected name to trump the vernacular....
'Are we ready? Yes. Is everything ready? No, far from it, because it is all very complex. But in the end the jubilation now prevails, because until a week and a half ago we didn't even know if we were allowed.' In this Nerd podcast, Emily Ansenk, director of the Holland Festival for the second year, tells Marijn Lems and Wijbrand
Dutch museums, partly due to the recent digital Museum Week, have been able to retain a large part of their audience. There is - reports the Museum Association on its website - a slight turnover though. And the hitherto loyal public will not find their way to museums automatically and to the same extent. But the picture is that the...
All happy families look alike... But the family we get to know in "Dutch Comedy" is anything but happy. On Thursday 1 April at 20:30, De Gemeenschap's show "Nederlandse Comedie" (try-out) can be seen at Concordia via a live stream. The try-out is an upbeat play that deals with intense topics. An emotional group portrait of people who...
The party may be the biggest loser in the parliamentary elections, but Melody Deldjou Fard is not sitting back. Now that is a bit the standard response of politicians when they face defeat, but Melody's enthusiasm is convincing. We invited her to the podcast, as she was a contributor to Culture Press before she turned...
The Dutch cultural sector is in distress. Halbe Zijlstra's spending cuts ten years ago started a free fall that has still not stopped. The Social and Economic Council (SER) calculated that these cuts of 200 million not only caused impoverishment in cultural supply, but also wreaked havoc on the labour market. 20 thousand permanent jobs disappeared
Everyone balks. Let's put that first. And a lot of people are badly affected. Hospitality, retail, schoolchildren and especially students: everything that is not necessary for survival balks. So does the arts. Not all art, of course, especially larger institutions are coming through the corona crisis reasonably well so far. Quiet and closed, but not bankrupt. We can't take that from...
It is a fresh and lively book, the new novel by Adriaan van Dis (74). In his characteristic humorous tone, Van Dis broaches the big themes of our time in KliFi: climate change, the refugee crisis, political populism, (im)freedom. When in the republic of the Netherlands a crushingly hot summer turns into a hurricane and a village of refugees is wiped out, silence...
With 'A monument to the BKR', Fransje Kuyvenhoven has indeed written a tribute in her "history of a high-profile artists' scheme (1949-1987 )". If only because the first hundred pages contain no text, but a chronological showcase of artworks from the BKR. By Karel Appel, Corneille, Constant, Lucebert, Jan Wolkers, Kees van Bohemen, Ger Lataster, Armando, among others. And because there are...
A good friend calls me, sounding like he wants to share and check something important. He was talking to his sister this week about the Nieuwsuur headline: Black Lives Matter: Was it a turning point or a hype? His sister stumbles over the title and notices that important parties are left out of this item and that stings. On the...
After Guido Weijers' Fieldlab turned out not to be a superspreading event, and nobody laughed hard enough at Dolf Jansen to infect others, now also good news from our relations in Poland: over the past month, since the reopening of theatres in Poland on 12 February, 55,000 people have already been to the theatre. Plenty of reason for enthusiasm, as it apparently...
The annual Inktspot Battle will take place on Saturday 6 March from 2.45pm. The battle, which can normally be followed at Concordia in the Inktspot exhibition, will, like last year, take place from the participating political cartoonists' own drawing tables and be broadcast live via Concordia's website. As an online visitor, you can watch as the participating draughtsmen...
'There is no other sector in the Netherlands that is as controlled and regulated as the cultural sector.' D66 MP Salima Belhaj sighed this towards the end of the debate organised by the assembled cultural sector lobby clubs on Monday 8 February. 'It takes an incredible amount of work, time and especially money. And the basis is distrust.' The most culture-friendly party of...
News arrived this week that Andreas Fleischmann, the highly esteemed director of Amsterdam's DeLaMar Theatre, has now officially become director-director of Stichting MusicalMakers, the foundation he had set up last year, a day before the deadline for grant applications for four-year state funding. And that is not allowed.
On 1 February, the 50th International Film Festival Rotterdam kicks off online. Here are some advance viewing tips.
What happens in 2022, when refunds are due or not, we will determine on 17 March. But we may just have to count on the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science changing its name already.
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