The cabinet must now follow a roadmap when reopening or closing cultural locations. The ‘Taskforce cultural and creative sector’ has designed a ‘traffic light model’ for this. It indicates in colors which measures are required at which risk level for ‘indoor halls’ (theatres and concert halls), ‘flow-through locations’ (museums) and ‘outdoors’ (festivals). There must also be guidelines for the use of corona tickets.
These are two of the six proposals that the task force will send to the new State Secretary for Culture, Gunay Uslu (D66) on Wednesday. Three of the proposals in this ‘opening and recovery plan’ are about measures to get through the corona crisis ‘maneuverably’, the other three concern measures to get out of it ‘resiliently’.
Attention for self-employed persons
In the twelve-page plan (including appendix) more financial support is requested for self-employed persons in the cultural sector. They have been hit hard by the pandemic: many institutions cut back on these forces. Because they leave the sector, not only is talent and expertise lost, but it also makes recovery from the crisis more difficult.
According to the task force, a ‘package of recovery measures’ is also needed to ensure that the cultural sector bounces back after the corona crisis, which includes investing in innovation. It should be noted that the contribution of the cultural and creative sectors to the economy before the crisis was 3.4 percent of GDP (gross domestic product) and that it accounted for 4.3 percent of employment.
This is the second time in a relatively short period of time that the cultural sector itself has come up with a plan for improvements. In 2017, the ‘Fair Practice Code’ was launched, which aims to put an end to the structural underpayment in the cultural sector.