Due to the bankruptcy of the Scala arts center and the financial problems of the Printing Museum, it all took a little longer (months) than planned. But now the municipality of Meppel has come up with a policy plan for the cultural sector. And it was almost immediately sent back to the drawing board.
The Meppel city council is pleased that there is now a plan. Some parties did not want to decide last week on almost 20 million euros needed to renovate the Ogterop theater. They first wanted to have a discussion about the entire cultural sector.
But the city council is not very happy with the content of this cultural policy. Coalition partner VVD is happy with it and so is opposition party SP. All other parties are missing something: guidelines. “You can go in any direction with this. How can we carry out our supervisory task with this?” asks Klaas-Jan Dunnink on behalf of the CDA.
The municipality’s entire cultural policy fits into eleven A4 pages. That is summary, according to all factions. “Better eleven pages with good principles than fifty pages without good principles, like last time,” says Xander Topma (SP).
The document sets out three principles: that culture is indispensable for growing children and young people, that culture must be easily accessible and available to everyone and that culture is a means to support goals in the social domain.
Goals are mentioned under those points. “It is mentioned that loneliness can be reduced through culture,” says Elisabeth Bakkenes (Sterk Meppel). “That’s very nice, but how?” she wonders.
That is why most parties call it a vision rather than a policy document. Councilor Jeannet Bos points out that, after the council approves, an implementation program will follow in which the policy will be made more concrete. “The discussion with the cultural sector about implementation will follow.”
The big question is whether the council agrees to this. After much deliberation, the council has agreed to discuss this further and vote on it in two weeks. Actually, the initial tenor, with the exception of SP and VVD, was to send the plan all the way back to the drawing board. Bakkenes (Sterk Meppel): “That could lead to even more delays. That is actually not necessary, because as a vision it is fine.”
That is why the parties have agreed behind the scenes, during the council, to discuss with each other over the next two weeks how they will proceed with the cultural policy. “Whether that will lead to this being established, to many proposals or any other form, we will see,” concludes D66 member Arnoud de Vos.