The Chassé Theater in Breda received around 350,000 visitors in 2023. Location performances of Theater Group De Jonge Honden, home base in Zwolle: always sold out. The city company of Maastricht, Toneelgroep Maastricht: 100,000 visitors in 2023. These are very good visitor figures.
At the same time: in North Brabant, Overijssel and Limburg, the share of government subsidies for culture is half of what you would expect based on the number of inhabitants of those provinces.
And that has to change, was stated a month ago Access to culture, an advice from the Council for Culture in which a case was made for a more even distribution across the country of government subsidies for culture – and thus of the supply of theatre, music and dance outside the Randstad. The ratio within (read: especially Amsterdam) and outside the Randstad has been skewed for decades.
But is this adjustment necessary if regional theaters and companies still manage to attract audiences? And is there demand for more performances outside the Randstad?
Melle Daamen, former member of the Council for Culture, doubted the latter last week NRC. In an opinion piece under the provocative headline ‘There are plenty of theaters in the region, now there is still a paying audience’, he stated that there is less cultural interest “in the region” from an audience that is also aging.
We asked nine policymakers and experts in the cultural sector: what is the problem with culture in the region? Unlike Daamen, they do see a flaw. No, not in theaters. But there is support for local makers and companies, for cultural education and amateur art. In short, projects that make culture accessible to everyone, everywhere in the Netherlands.
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What about the distribution of the ‘stones’ of the cultural sector: museums, theaters, concert halls?
People rarely complain about this. With a few exceptions, many provincial towns in the Netherlands have a theater, a serious art museum and a music venue. There are few differences between provinces in the supply of theaters and concert halls, as is also evident from the Culture monitor of the Boekman Foundation. North Holland (read: Amsterdam) and Groningen stand out, Drenthe lags behind. Ruud van Meijel, business director of the Chassé Theater in Breda: “It is all pretty well organized in this country. There is a lot of infrastructure and it is in the right places.”
But the government is only responsible for a small part of that hardware. It is mainly municipalities that can decide for themselves how much money they spend on their own theater halls, concert stages and city museums. This does not always run smoothly financially – see the high costs of the Amare cultural temple in The Hague or the Boijmans Van Beuningen museum in Rotterdam – but the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science has little influence on this.
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What is meant by too little regional spread of culture across the country?
The makers are what this political discussion is mainly about. They have many more opportunities in the major cities in the Randstad, and especially in Amsterdam, than elsewhere. “Talent is fleeing from other regions to places where there are more facilities,” said chairman Kristel Baele of the Council for Culture in NRC then the advice Access to culture came out.
The subsidies from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and the six National Culture Funds – more than 500 million euros in total annually – mainly go to orchestras, film productions, ensembles, visual artists, opera, theater and dance companies: makers. The financial support from the government is distributed quite unevenly across the country. Converted, the cultural sector in Friesland receives 7 euros per inhabitant in government subsidies, in North Holland this is 63 euros, according to the most recent figures from the Culture monitor (2019). This creates ‘blank spots’, especially outside the big cities, where little culture is created.
According to council chairman Baele, this leads to impoverishment. Makers, united in orchestras, ensembles and companies, create “a cultural ecosystem” locally, says business director Miranda van Drie of the Residentie Orchestra in The Hague. “Musicians who play in a symphony orchestra in a city also live there, give music lessons, and conduct amateur orchestras.” The public also attaches itself to these local companies. “We have our own audience in Amare, our home base. They really come for us, take out subscriptions, become friends.”
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What about the demand for culture outside the Randstad? Is there less interest in culture there?
Melle Daamen wrote in NRC that there is “demonstrably much less public” outside the Randstad. In terms of population density, that’s true, because it’s lower. And so performances on national tours are, for example, three evenings in Rotterdam, and one evening in Zwolle or Nijmegen.
But that does not explain why there are national cultural subsidies per inhabitant are so unevenly distributed. Theater director Ruud van Meijel from Breda: “There are just as many highly educated, culturally interested people living here in percentage terms. They read newspapers, are curious, are older or young.”
Jolmer Versteeg, director at Theater Group De Jonge Honden from Zwolle: “I see no difference between the big cities and the region. They’re not different states or countries, are they? People are generally interested in the same themes.”
Yet it is true that Dutch people do not consume the same amount of culture everywhere, says market researcher Willem Wijgers, who studies cultural consumption with his agency EMC Cultuuronderzoek. Frequent culture visitors are, not surprisingly, well off financially, and they are highly educated. According to Wijgers, it is a misconception that they are grayed out. There are also many culture vultures among people in their twenties and families with children. And they indeed mainly live in the city, says Wijgers. But the contrast between Randstad and the region is not as sharp as Melle Daamen sketches. Most cultural consumers are located in the Randstad, but they also live in and around the major provincial capitals. “They are also there outside there, but relatively much less.”
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But what is the problem that the Council for Culture wants to solve?
Culture therefore attracts an above-average, highly educated, wealthy, urban audience. The question of whether governments should settle for this cannot be answered objectively. That depends on your political view on the role of the government in the cultural sector.
In places where there are few makers, the bond with the audience diminishes, say proponents of regional strengthening of culture. That bond is necessary to tell local stories. Take the annual music theater Zummerbühne in Oosterwijtwerd (Groningen), neighborhood theater project De Wijk De Wereld, in the city of Groningen; local musicals such as Hanna van Hendrik in Enschede or Diary of a Sheepdog in Maastricht. Director Frans Hendrickx of Toneelgroep Maastricht: “We know what has impact: the stories that come from here. And only we can make those, they don’t come here.”
A nearby, diverse cultural offer is also necessary to bring young people into contact with art, and therefore to retain audiences and talent for the future. “Whether you come into contact with culture a lot in your youth depends on where you live,” says Willemijn Maas, business director of the Nederlands Dans Theater. “Everyone experiences something of culture, but often more limited if you live far away from the Randstad.”
This inequality is further reinforced by the fact that municipal amateur arts centers and music schools have been gradually eroded in recent decades. Councilor Marcelle Hendrickx from Tilburg: “We are still doing well, but there are areas where access to culture is difficult: little supply, facilities that are poorly maintained. Municipal finances are under pressure and that will only get worse.”
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What can the government do?
In its advice for a new cultural system, the Council for Culture proposes to distribute OCW subsidies in a different way from 2029: less centrally, more within provinces. The proposal is a ‘prototype’, the Council itself said – the last word has not yet been said about it. Market researcher Willem Wijgers believes that the government should make adjustments to make culture more widely accessible. “I find the claim that there is simply less public outside the Randstad a disqualification. As if people in the rest of the Netherlands would not be able to engage with culture.”
According to him, this has never been systematically investigated: people’s inner ‘need’ for culture is elusive. How do you know if you like spoken word, string quartets or afrobeats if you’ve never experienced it? “What is enough supply?” asks Frans Hendrickx from Maastricht out loud. “The law is: the more supply, the more audience. And the more diverse that offering, the more diverse the audience.”
“At Theater Rotterdam we are trying to find a different, broader audience, less traditional,” says business director Herman van Karnebeek. “What we see: the traditional audience is growing along with that changing repertoire. With what the younger target group wants, what they are interested in. And I think that interest is fairly universal, it is not tied to the big city.”
Director Willemijn Maas of NDT mentions Zeeland as an example. The dance company never performed in that province because no stage was large enough. Until 2021, when, with the support of a sponsor, it held a premiere in the Grote Kerk in Veere, accompanied by a project for dance students and asylum seekers. Suddenly there appeared to be an audience for modern dance. “People loved it.” It happened again in 2022, but not this year. Applicable problem: the budget was not met.
Simply because the Dutch population is also growing outside the Randstad, Wijgers believes that the cultural sector there must be strengthened. “Cities such as Assen or Enschede also want to attract highly educated knowledge workers.” Governments could also help cultural institutions to attract a broader, more diverse audience, he believes. “The Centraal Museum in Utrecht goes into underprivileged city neighborhoods to involve residents. That is a long process that should be better financed.”
Marcelle Hendrickx from Tilburg: “We still have Museum De Pont, the Textile Museum. And we have invested in cultural infrastructure. But what if you don’t have that? We would like all our children to visit the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam one day. But how do we finance that?”