By Gabrielle Kennedy /asdf 25-02-2010

Whilst visiting the Olympics in Vancouver this month, the Dutch Vice Minister for Sport presented a film showcasing the government’s financial support for homeless soccer.  This was a part of the Netherland’s early campaign to win the 2028 Olympic bid. 

“We will never win the Olympics with that sort of presentation and mentality though,” was the reaction from Hein Verbruggen, the Dutch Honorary Member of the IOC, in this Tuesday’s NRC Handelsblad.  “The ambition is just not big enough.”

René van Engelenburg, the mind behind the Pleinmuseum and Dropstuff projects says a direct line can be drawn between how the Dutch think about sport and culture.  “It’s of course really nice that they have these sorts of big hearted social policies, but if you want to reach an international audience, you have to have your cake and your cherry on top,” he says.  “With this mentality we are not creating a real space for the best or the exquisite to stand out.”

The Amsterdam Arts Council is dealing with a similar mindset via its recent clash with the Labour party (PvdA).  Its board of seven has been at loggerheads with the local government for the past year and the upcoming municipal elections on March 3rd should decide how their disagreements will end.

The issue involves proposals by the Labour Elderman for Culture, Carolien Gehrels about how culture funding (which includes design) should be reorganized.  Her idea is that the government should have more of a say in how arts funding is spent – so to be able to direct organizations in their programming.  This does not mean telling a theatre company, for example, what play to perform, but will have more subtle implications like seeing to it that funding is dependent on whether a cultural institution is focussing sufficiently on Gehrels’ defined criteria, which are closely connected to the economy, education and city planning.

“The city council has already twice refused her proposals,” says Bert Janmaat, one of Gehrel’s most vocal critics and General Secretary of the Arts Council.  “She was angry and still is because her one ambition is to have cultural organizations play more of a role in the broader social and welfare needs of the city.  She sees this happening by taking culture to the suburbs and by redefining what matters.”

Amsterdam, however, has individuals and institutions with bigger ambitions that strive to achieve beyond the myopic vision of local politicians.  The potential is there for this to be one of the top artistic hubs in the world. To realize this, cultural funding must only be based on artistic criteria.  It’s as simple as that.  You have to select, fund and nurture based on excellence not on what might be good for the suburbs.

“If all the inhabitants of a square get to decide on what should be designed in the middle of that square, it will always end up being a fountain,” says Van Engelenburg.  “A fountain is the typical, average thing, but typical and average is not what culture should ever strive for.”

And it is not as if Gehrel’s ideas are not already a part of the decision making process.  270 organizations applied for funding during the current quadrennium and the Arts Council advised in favour of 140.   “We looked at what the Elderman refers to as social criteria when it was logical to do so, but our main focus was on artistic merit and evaluating the programme by studying how it connected to the past and the future,” Janmaat says.

One of Gehrel’s vaguely suggested ideas was that an institution like the Danswerkplaats, which facilitates and nurtures new choreographers, should programme more street and urban dance to be enjoyed by people living outside the city centre.  “But that is assuming people in the suburbs want street and urban dance,” says Janmaat.  “It proves how tricky bringing in such criteria will be.  We should never tell an arts organization what they should be doing.  That would be very un-Dutch!”

Van Engelenburg agrees: “At Dropstuff we emphasize public participation, but the emphasis is always on free speech.  I’m afraid that being too democratic when it comes to art and culture does not work because art is not a democratic process.  Arts funding based on political goals will only ever lead to the production of propaganda.”

It is indeed dangerous territory to start judging cultural organizations based on anything other than artistic merit.  To demand something extra based on criteria that are not properly thought-out, defined or tested puts at risk the current focus, which is to strive for the best.  “We fund the Concertgebouw Orchestra not because it reaches some vague social standard, but because it is top level and has ambitions to stay that way,” says Janmaat.

The Arts Council understands well the complications and controversies of strategizing funding within a multicultural city, but works according to the rule that where someone’s parents are born is not and should not be relevant.  “We never make a distinction,” says Janmaat.  “It’s only ever about artistic merit.  We fund based on quality and whether or not we find the proposal feasible.”

Any alternative runs the risk of breeding mediocrity as well as being absurdly controversial.  “And art and culture should never be forced to be politically correct or to produce work that in any way reflects the current colour of the political powers,” adds Van Engelenburg.

Janmaat is confident that given Labour’s unpopular public works projects the party will lose seats in this upcoming election and therefore power, which will make it even more difficult for Gehrel’s ideas to pass through.  But it’s not even as simple as that because Labour is promising to cut arts funding by less than either of the more conservative liberals (VVD) or christian democrats (CDA).  Only the democrats (D66) and the social party (SP) are promising to cut arts funding by less than Labour.  

“So it is not as if we fear Labour,” stresses Janmaat.  “Quite the opposite, in fact.”

In January of this year Ann Demeester, the director of the arts centre De Appel, issued her review of the arts policies of Amsterdam made at the request of the current government.  “This city likes to associate itself with metropolises like London and New York,” she concluded.  “In reality there is a village like atmosphere here.  Everybody has his own little square, with his own rules and own tastes.”



Images: top page Carolien Gehrels, large from top Concertgebouw Orchestra (by Simon van Boxtel), homeless soccer, René van Engelenburg, Carolien Gehrels, Bert Janmaat, Danswerkplaats and Ann Demeester,

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