The three codes for the cultural sector for fair practice, good governance and Diversity & Inclusion must be ‘fully incorporated’ in the next culture memorandum period 2025-2028, wrote State Secretary Gunay Uslu (Culture) to the Council for Culture in December. In that same letter she asked the council: advise me on how this can be tested. That is not a simple question, because when will the codes be ‘fully incorporated’, what criteria will the Council recommend for this? Percentages, numbers, effort, a good story?
Particularly complicated, even according to the Council itself, is the assessment of when the Diversity & Inclusion code has been applied well enough. Being out advice from last week in any case, it appears that the codes will be central in the coming subsidy period: they will be taken into account in all four subsidy criteria. This means that application of the Diversity & Inclusion code will also become relevant for the first and, according to many, most important subsidy criterion: artistic/substantive quality. That raises questions.
1. Was application of the Diversity and Inclusion code not taken into account in the assessment of artistic quality in the previous culture policy period?
No, at least not directly. In the period 2022-2025, institutions had to endorse the code and make plans for compliance in order to qualify for a government subsidy. At the time, no concrete requirements were set for these plans, although in a number of cases the Council rejected subsidy applications if they represented too little, such as at De Nationale Opera: “The requested reflection on the application of the (…) Diversity & Inclusion Code is too concise and too unambitious for an institution that operates at this level.”
The Diversity & Inclusion code prescribes how organizations can draw up an action plan for more diversity based on the ‘four Ps’: programme, audience, staff and partners. About the program, the code says: “Given the diversity of society, quality always goes hand in hand with diversity.”
2. What is relevant diversity for an organization receiving government funding?
The predecessor of the Diversity & Inclusion Code was originally exclusively about cultural diversity, but the code now uses a broader concept of diversity, which also includes gender, limitations and socio-economic differences.
“It’s about all kinds of diversity, not narrowed down to color,” said chairman Kristel Baele last week in an explanation of the advice. This may concern cultural differences in the composition of the population of the region in which an organization operates, but also socio-economic differences or the history of a region. Baele: “The council is well aware that diversity is different in Arnhem, Rotterdam or Leeuwarden.”
At first glance, this may seem contradictory to the starting point that the Basic Infrastructure (bis) is intended for nationally relevant institutions. But the council recommends two general conditions for the coming bis period: national significance and local and/or regional roots. Organizations must therefore also reflect the diversity of their region, says Baele.
Following this reasoning, for theater companies outside the Randstad, for example, productions about farm life or the perceived gap between rural and urban areas would count as diverse, also in view of the BBB’s gains in the recent state elections. That’s right, says Noor Sloterdijk, specialist in diversity and inclusion at LKCA, the organization behind the code. “Diversity and inclusion are also about inaccessibility, and I can imagine that if you, as a rural resident, do not recognize yourself in art and culture, you experience that as inaccessibility.” But she has an important caveat. “In some cases, the inaccessibility is more urgent than not recognizing yourself in the stories. For example, with racist or sexist stereotypes, or when you as a person with a physical disability do not even enter the building. In the end, it is about treating and treating different perspectives and people as equals.”
3. Does this mean that organizations in urban regions, where the population is culturally very diverse, should reflect the same cultural diversity in their projects?
No, but how far they should go is not clear. The code itself states: not everyone has to do everything, but everyone has to do something. In its advice, the council writes that the application of the Diversity & Inclusion code should be viewed “in the light of the profile of each institution”.
The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, for example, does not suddenly have to program half non-Western classical music, or a large share of hip-hop. On the other hand: holding tight to a canon that was established in a period when only white men were expected to write valuable music will not be tenable.
This is how director Mirjam Terpstra of the Dutch Association of Performing Arts (NAPK) understands it: “The artistic mission of an institution is leading. But institutions must be aware of their environment. In a rapidly changing society, institutions must be able to adapt.” The NAPK has therefore advocated a less voluntary application of the Diversity & Inclusion code.
The Council for Culture wants institutions to think about what diversity and inclusion means to them, and how they want to reach a more diverse audience through their programming, for example. “Each institution must show how it deals constructively with this.” And the following applies: the more concrete, the better.
The council will publish a separate assessment framework in the autumn, which will specify in more detail how the council will assess artistic quality, and what role diversity and inclusion will play in this. Incidentally, State Secretary Uslu must first determine to what extent she will adopt the council’s advice. She expects to send a draft regulation for the bis to the House of Representatives before the summer.
organized on April 11 Arts ’92 a meeting in the Stadsschouwburg Utrecht in response to this advice.
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