The floating music stage with the TT Festival in Assen should return every year. Because that was a huge success last summer, with the celebration of 100 years of TT and 50 years of TT Festival. Thousands of festival goers stood on the pontoons. And that leaves you wanting more.
The organization of the TT Festival, as well as the political parties GroenLinks/PvdA, Lijst Homan, D66 and Leefbaar Assen, would like to have the stage back at future editions. However, it does have a price tag of 200,000 euros per year.
The four parties want to develop a plan together with the TT Festival, entrepreneurs and other parties involved, with the aim of an annual stage on the water for at least the next five years. They made that proposal today in the city council.
They think the stage in the Vaart is a valuable and distinctive addition to the festival in the city. “It provides extra appeal, a better distribution of visitors in the city center, and therefore more safety,” they say. They are also positive about accessibility, because space on the Vaart Zuidzijde was specially set up for disabled people.
According to TT Festival director Jan Gerbrand Krol, the floating stage was a great calling card for the city and the place is also desperately needed as an additional music location. Because, according to him, there is less space in the center. For example, Koopmansplein has become smaller since the redevelopment, meaning there can no longer be a main stage there.
Because the TT Festival has to spend a lot of money for this stage, two hundred thousand euros in extra support is needed every year, and Krol hopes to get this money from the municipality. But not everyone is cheering. For example, the city party PLOP, which is generally not averse to a party, reacts very critically. “The evaluation of the last TT Festival has not yet been completed, why would you get ahead of the music now,” asks party chairman Henk Santing. “Because whether it will be a success again, you still have to see, that is partly determined by the artists you present. And of course it was a special anniversary year.”
PLOP also finds it a bit too easy to immediately reach out to the municipality. “If space in the city is too tight, you could even consider making the water in the Vaart a little shorter again,” Santing joked. With this he referred to the time when the whirlpool of the Vaart was still a large parking lot for the former theater De Kolk. Even then it was used as a party location during the TT festivities. In 2008, the stone surface was removed and the former turning basin restored.
Councilor Martin Rasker (VVD) finds the idea ‘very sympathetic, but according to him ‘pontoons are just pontoons’. “It’s mainly about the programming, so what happens on those pontoons.”
According to Rasker, this year there was exclusive programming, due to the celebration of 100 years of TT and 50 years of TT Festival. “And it was certainly a fantastic party, with extra money from the province and municipality. But we already spend quite a lot on the festival, so whether you should do that every year remains to be seen.”
Rasker wants to ‘see very quickly’ whether such a floating stage can be created again before 2026. “And then we have to see what the programming does and of course the weather, and then we see how we proceed, and whether that should indeed be arranged for several years.”