It is the right time to take a critical look at national cultural policy. The Council for Culture has been arguing for years for a review of the system, it has been established that the labor market in the sector must change and one of these days State Secretary for Culture Gunay Uslu will make a decision on whether or not to extend the subsidy period from four years to six years. whether or not once. Depending on who you speak to, this extra time should be used for corona recovery and thinking about system reform, or for making decisions.
The book by culture bobo-against-will-and-thank Melle Daamen, Grazing above the artificial grass – the failure of Dutch art policy, comes at an interesting time. Daamen is more outspoken than many about why cultural policy needs to be revised: the arts are in ‘a serious crisis’, according to the first sentence of the introduction. He sums up: even before corona, the number of visitors to subsidized art already fell dramatically, the public is aging, there is hardly any connection with young people of various origins, due to overproduction, visitors can no longer see the wood for the trees and the policy is technocratic. Enough reason for vigorous debate, says Daamen, but that is lacking. Partly because, he says, art and culture in the Netherlands are not taken seriously enough in politics and enjoy little respect in society.
Also read the interview with Melle Daamen: ‘There will come a time when it’s better that you leave’
Daam knows the sector well. The director, known as a ‘contradictory thinker’, already at the age of 17 harassed the bosses of the VPRO from the members’ council, became the first director of the Mondriaan Foundation, was director of Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam for a long time and considerably shorter of Theater Rotterdam, and as crown member of the Council. for Culture, he advised the government on cultural policy between 2008 and 2015.
Bundling of pieces
At that time, he also wrote articles in this newspaper about what he thought was wrong with the policy, and previously he gave, for example, Free Netherlands tough interviews about it. This book is a collection of those pieces, partly adapted, supplemented with new parts. This does not make it easy for the reader, because the book does not contain a logically structured, internally coherent analysis. Moreover, what he writes for people who follow the debate is well known. For those who did not follow the debate, the observations and analyzes in the various pieces are worthwhile, especially where he observes that major topics are taboo and the sector itself keeps it afloat.
Overproduction, for example, and the reward of excellence instead of subsidizing a broad humus layer of mediocrity. He argues for policy that does not always fall for the new, the next big thing for fear of missing another Van Gogh, but who opts more strongly for quality and delay; a funnel instead of a pyramid. The idea behind the pyramid policy (a broad bottom layer produces an excellent top) is unproven, he says. That is in any case one of his most fundamental objections to the past thirty years of national policy: “We just say something.” Politics is aloof, the countries around us are not looked closely enough, and the assumptions in the policy – such as the pyramid scheme – are not tested in any way.
In an epilogue under the headline ‘What do you want?’ Daamen gives eight initiatives for debate about future art policy, which should avert the crisis, but the more powerful points are mentioned earlier in the book. Like the observation that the policy is increasingly technocratic and the implementation is full of advisors, and he is not impressed by the quality of that. He also sees that nothing comes of the goals of diversity and inclusion that have been proclaimed for twenty years. Hard divisions have arisen in the art audience, rich and old against young and diverse. And in order to make subsidized art more attractive to the latter group – and thus to provide it with an audience for the future – much more radical space must be made for this young target group. Now the policy wants ‘them’ at ‘our’ institutions and ‘our’ art. That is not enough, he says. Focus on ‘their’ and see what happens, he suggests.