Skip to content

second chamber

Belgium beware: artists defending subsidies. You can do better.

With a new government in Belgium, the debate on art subsidies has also erupted there. The issue there is only 0.7 per cent of the national budget. The cut of a mere 10% is less substantial than in the Netherlands under the PVV's noose, but the arguments are the same. Though they are often better articulated. Josse de Pauw, international... 

Joop Daalmeijer Marathon (3): "The arts sector should have reached out to consumers"

Wijbrand Schaap: 'There has been much talk about the change in Council attitudes under your leadership. After the confrontation course under your predecessor Els Swaab, you seemed appointed by Halbe Zijlstra to act as a kind of applause machine.' Marathon interviewAfter the uproar surrounding Melle Daamen's opinion piece on arts policy, we were invited for a 'conversation about... 

Joop Daalmeijer Marathon (2): 'So that caution is not always necessary.'

Wijbrand Schaap: 'When it comes to talent development and embedding in society, it is also very much about the absolute basics. It also touches on the minister's two functions: education and culture. Arts education in primary schools does not really help embedding. No attention has been paid to art in the pedagogical academies for years.... 

Municipalities pass on most cuts to the arts

Culture cuts have now reached 450 million euros. The Lower House earlier decided on cuts of 200 million. The cut in the municipal budget by the same Lower House now leads to a further cut of 250 million euro. This is calculated by research firm Berenschot in a report to be presented in Rotterdam on Thursday 30 January.

There are positive outliers. Utrecht, the fourth largest city in the Netherlands, is not cutting back further on culture. Daarme...

You can now log in to continue reading!

Welcome to the Culture Press archive! As a member, you have access to all, over 4,000 posts we have made since our inception in 2009!

(Recent posts (under three months old) are available for all to read, thanks to our members!)

Become a member, or log in below:

Lower chamber talked about art. We followed the debate for you

We kept a liveblog. Nice and old-fashioned, from the days when every month there was uproar somewhere about the government's handling of art. Now there is peace in the tent, as the PVV sardonically points out, because 'The Left' is now the bearer of policies devised by the PVV. The PVV predicts a black future for 'The Left' once the PVV comes to power.

Below are our updates, which paint a picture of a room that still doesn't really know where it is in d eculture ...

You can now log in to continue reading!

Welcome to the Culture Press archive! As a member, you have access to all, over 4,000 posts we have made since our inception in 2009!

(Recent posts (under three months old) are available for all to read, thanks to our members!)

Become a member, or log in below:

Daan Roosegaarde for president? Alderman? Councillor?

Jet Bussemaker believes in Daan Roosegaarde. She confessed this on Sunday 1 September during the traditional Paradiso debate. She admires his courage to imagine the unthinkable and his drive to come up not with opinions, but with proposals. Her message to the art sector, once again almost fully present in Paradiso, was clear: stop complaining, start doing something.

The political finale of this year's Uitmarkt was all about 'change'. Because that something needs to change is d...

You can now log in to continue reading!

Welcome to the Culture Press archive! As a member, you have access to all, over 4,000 posts we have made since our inception in 2009!

(Recent posts (under three months old) are available for all to read, thanks to our members!)

Become a member, or log in below:

Saving Tropenmuseum paid for from art acquisition budget

The Tropenmuseum has been saved, we already knew that, but the House of Representatives still wanted to know where that was paid from. After all: the government is not going to spend more money, we have to do that. Anyway. Culture minister Jet Bussemaker's answer to the parliamentary questions shows that museums will be able to spend 5.5 million less on art purchases in 2016 at least.... 

Culture Council with two new women on business tour.

Two new members of the Council for Culture are once again showing how thinking about art is changing: Jessica Mahn and Annick Schramme are women, which was necessary in this white male stronghold, but they are mostly business-minded. Mahn is a partner at global player KPMG, Schramme is a professor at the University of Antwerp and specialises in Culture Management.

The council, once established as an advisory board in which mostly people from the art world itself zi...

You can now log in to continue reading!

Welcome to the Culture Press archive! As a member, you have access to all, over 4,000 posts we have made since our inception in 2009!

(Recent posts (under three months old) are available for all to read, thanks to our members!)

Become a member, or log in below:

Are we saying 'No' to EU culture money again?

If the Netherlands consistently sticks to previously adopted PVV positions, the second chamber will say 'No' to a European investment in culture, innovation and media on 21 November 2012. However, if the current Rutte government sticks to the pro-European stance included in the coalition agreement, the Netherlands will cease its opposition to the 1.8 billion euro contribution to strengthening culture, which has now been approved by all other European member states.

Interest groups do via a letter...

You can now log in to continue reading!

Welcome to the Culture Press archive! As a member, you have access to all, over 4,000 posts we have made since our inception in 2009!

(Recent posts (under three months old) are available for all to read, thanks to our members!)

Become a member, or log in below:

Baldwin Live

On Wednesday 1 August 2012, the Performing Arts Fund will announce the results of the lottery that granting arts subsidies has now become. Huge cuts are looming: companies and makers that by now seemed to be a permanent part of the Dutch arts landscape will disappear. So what exactly it will look like, we will officially only know from 12:00 on Wednesday 1 August. To leak things in advance makes no sense, things are too dramatic for that.
What we do want ...

You can now log in to continue reading!

Welcome to the Culture Press archive! As a member, you have access to all, over 4,000 posts we have made since our inception in 2009!

(Recent posts (under three months old) are available for all to read, thanks to our members!)

Become a member, or log in below:

Actors' award for Theatre Institute threatened with dissolution

Mail from Actors' Interests, the actors' 'union'. Whether we want to abide by the embargo. Of course we do. We do. Butreh: so the Theatre Institute Netherlands, to be dissolved by Halbe Zijlstra together with the Netherlands Music Centre, is getting an award. And that seems to be a sculpture, which in turn makes us wonder where the thing should be after 1 January 2013.... 

Still 8.5 million needed to get Culture Card back to old level

The culture card has been saved. This is wonderful news, so soon after the rock-hard slap in the face of the schoolgoing youth of the Netherlands that the now outgoing cabinet dealt in 2011. On improper grounds, as the Court of Audit revealed, the negotiators of PVV, CDA and VVD already scrapped during the formation this opportunity for schoolchildren to gain knowledge at steeply discounted... 

'No idea what the consequences of my policies are'

"It is currently not possible to reliably predict the development of these characteristics of the cultural sector, let alone the impact of the cuts on them. Movements in the things mentioned in the question depend on many factors. First, many underlying data are missing. Furthermore, the development partly depends on the (still unknown) subsidy decisions of governments, the extent to which institutions can continue with less subsidy or new money flows....

You can now log in to continue reading!

Welcome to the Culture Press archive! As a member, you have access to all, over 4,000 posts we have made since our inception in 2009!

(Recent posts (under three months old) are available for all to read, thanks to our members!)

Become a member, or log in below:

Subsidy was not invented by the Nazis, they did embrace it

Apartheid activist Martin Bosma started talking about it during one of his many hilarious appearances in the second chamber, but, as is often the case, was wrong. He said art subsidies were an invention of the Nazis and therefore pernicious. We knew better, because researcher Benien van Berkel is thorough and deals with facts. From her doctoral research... 

Zijlstra investigates 'taking root' foreign art students

Many students studying at Dutch art schools are not from the Netherlands. At the request of PVV, supported by the government parties VVD and CDA, State Secretary for Culture Zijlstra is now investigating whether enough of these students also go to work in the Netherlands after their studies. Halbe Zijlstra made this commitment during a general consultation on the sector plan for professional arts education,... 

Arts colleges hopelessly divided

It was a 'roundtable discussion', so that is extremely informal. Lower house members of the ministry of OCW's 'lead committee' listen to people from the field. In this case, all people who are involved in, or lead, arts education. It was an awkward meeting.

Benefit Giving Act, cultural budgets, Brabant, Amsterdam, Arnhem, Eindhoven, Goes, Utrecht et al.

Tax benefits to be gained this year (...) With effect from 2012, under the new Giving Act, there is an additional tax facility for donations (incidental or via periodic donations) to charitable institutions (non-profit organisations) designated as cultural institutions. Those cultural donations may be multiplied by a factor of 125 per cent for the gift deduction. This... 

A'dam: big loss of art subsidies, fact-free politics at art colleges, sacred museum collections, N-H halts small cultural education, culture in abandoned railway station

'Amsterdam loses 127 million arts subsidy' (...) The 127.1 million euros is a sum of cuts from the state (70 million), the increase in VAT to 19% (45.6 million) and the announced municipal cuts to the 2013-2016 Arts Plan of 8 million annually. In addition, the so-called ID jobs (subsidised jobs) are being phased out more quickly. This will give Amsterdam's arts and cultural institutions another... 

Museums, Boxmeer theatre, IKON, ANP, regional broadcasters, impoverished library

MuseumgoudA not expelled MuseumgoudA may still remain a member of the Dutch Museum Association (NMV). A majority of the members were still of the opinion in September that the museum should be expelled because it had auctioned Marlene Dumas' The Schoolboys at the end of June without consulting other museums. That is against the NMV's rules. It did, however, decide to change the rules for the... 

Friday the 25th. Bergen puts extra money into art, while new disasters emerge for the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

Amsterdam - Mayor finds cuts to Rijksakademie "beyond comprehension" During the official opening of RijksakademieOPEN 2011, Mayor of Amsterdam Eberhard van der Laan expressed his concerns about the government's severe cuts to the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten. "Cutbacks are necessary. Capitulating is not necessary. There are limits." The mayor stressed that a healthy art climate is important for... 

Fransche School in jeopardy, blind library closed, nibbling on VAT measure via CJP and Volkenkunde/Tropen Institute merger possible

Arnhem - Scepticism over success of cultural heart Rijnboog Arnhem city council has many doubts about the financial feasibility of the Rijnboog arts cluster. (...) [Alderman] assumes 16 million subsidy from the province and another 4 million in contributions from sponsors for the new arts centre containing the Museum of Modern Art Arnhem, the Schouwburg and Focus Filmtheater.... 

Halbe Zijltra loves his job more than the ministry dares to show

That Martin Bosma, culture spokesman for the PVV, wants to withdraw the subsidy to Toneelgroep Amsterdam because that company plays works by 'enemy of the people' Tom Lanoye, was not even the most bizarre incident of the culture budget debate on 21 November 2011. More bizarre, too, than the PVV's demand for the establishment of a Colonial Museum celebrating the glory of 'Our Indies',... 

Progress news: Give Act no more for culture, Utrecht more expensive and Purmerend stops all subsidies

Lower House approves Tax Plan 2012 (...) Furthermore, the adjusted Giving Act was also passed. The 7 million euro tax support shifts from cultural institutions to sports and music associations. Source: Belasting.nl 18 Nov 11 Utrecht - Culture may cost something - by Wouter de Heus (...) this week, when I finally saw the renewed operating plan for the Music Palace in... 

We are going Liveblogging again! Monday, November 21, to be exact.

On Monday 21 November, the chamber has one more chance to stop the desertification of Dutch culture. After all, the disproportionate attack on the budgets for music schools, orchestras, theatre groups and drawing lessons will be discussed by the chamber then. It all happens in the Groen van Prinstererzaal in the House of Representatives building, and it is of course broadcast on the... 

Distress call for theatre school Roosendaal at last minute, arts venue Veenendaal scrapped Discount news from all regions

(...) The Youth Theatre School Roosendaal received a project subsidy of 36,779 euros from the municipality in 2010 and 2011. The school also fulfils a regional function. Forty per cent of its 330 pupils come from the surrounding villages. The proposal is to end the subsidy from 1 January. It was only this week that this apparently dawned on Hofplein's management. Which immediately started a... 

Private Membership (month)
5 / Maand
For natural persons and self-employed persons.
No annoying banners
A special newsletter
Own mastodon account
Access to our archives
Small Membership (month)
18 / Maand
For cultural institutions with a turnover/subsidy of less than €250,000 per year
No annoying banners
A premium newsletter
All our podcasts
Your own Mastodon account
Access to archives
Posting press releases yourself
Extra attention in news coverage
Large Membership (month)
36 / Maand
For cultural institutions with a turnover/subsidy of more than €250,000 per year.
No annoying banners
A special newsletter
Your own Mastodon account
Access to archives
Share press releases with our audience
Extra attention in news coverage
Premium Newsletter (substack)
5 trial subscriptions
All our podcasts

Payments are made via iDeal, Paypal, Credit Card, Bancontact or Direct Debit. If you prefer to pay manually, based on an invoice in advance, we charge a 10€ administration fee

*Only for annual membership or after 12 monthly payments

en_GBEnglish (UK)