The Rotterdam city council wants to abolish the Rotterdam Council for Art and Culture from 1 January 2023. The RRKC is no longer ‘effective’, the commission judges. At the end of this month, the board will decide definitively whether the subsidy of 700,000 euros to the arts council – six employees – will be discontinued. President Carlos Goncalves is stunned.
The reason for disbanding the council is an evaluation showing that the arts council is trying too hard to be relevant. As a result, ‘relations are damaged and the RRKC has increasingly come to stand on an island’, according to the evaluation ‘Out of the groove’ by consultancy firm Rijnconsult.
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This mainly concerns the relationship of the RRKC with the commission of b. and W. “The alderman (Saïd Kasmi, D66) has been displeased several times about the actions of the RRKC.” The relationship with the officials is also not good. “The cultural sector is suffering from this bad relationship,” the researchers write. Multiple conversations and agreements did not lead to an improvement, says the city council.
“It is a critical report, but not so critical that it justifies the decision to dissolve the RRKC,” said chairman Gonçalves. He does not find it remarkable that there is a clash between the RRKC and the municipality. “That is inherent in the task of an independent advisory body,” says Gonçalves. “A mature board should be happy with solicited and unsolicited advice. With someone who holds up a mirror to them and who looks at the importance of the city and culture.”
Museum Rotterdam
The RRKC has been advising the municipality about art and culture in the city since 2005. The most important task is the four-yearly advice on the distribution of cultural subsidies (a total of 85 million euros per year). That almost meant the end of the Wereldmuseum in 2016 and the end of Museum Rotterdam in 2020. The municipality largely adopted the recommendations.
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Councilor Ruud van der Velden (PvdD) thinks that the RRKC has taken too much of the political seat in recent years. “The advice to close Museum Rotterdam and the Wereldmuseum was political, that is not what they are about.” He is, however, surprised that Kasmi decides to close down the Kunstraad at this very moment. “The timing is not so right. I expect we will have a new lecture within a month, leave it to them.”
Goncalves also calls this ‘bizarre’. “Why the rush?” He believes that the municipality does not comply with agreements. “We were promised that a new council would decide on the RRKC and we would be heard extensively, which did not happen.”
Kasmi says through his spokesperson that the Board has experienced the RRKC in this way over the past four years and makes a decision based on that. “She won’t leave it to a new college that can’t decide yet.”
From now on, the municipality will seek advice from the cultural sector itself or will call in advisers for advice. Rotterdam also wants to allocate 700,000 euros per year for this.