Dutch Cultural Policy
A European Appraisal
For a number of years now the Council of Europe in Strasbourg has conducted a programme for the evaluation of the national cultural policies of its twenty-seven member states. In 1993 it was the Netherlands' turn to be assessed and as a first step a 220-page National Report was prepared by the Ministry of Welfare, Health and Cultural Affairs (whc), entitled Cultural Policy in the Netherlands.
Traditionally, Dutch cultural policy has been one of benevolent neutrality: while funding was provided, the official doctrine was that ‘the government is no judge of science and art’, a creed first formulated in 1862 by the then prime minister Thorbecke.
In the past ten years, there have been a number of significant changes in this respect. Where formerly culture was seen as a national good, to be supported and promoted by the government, we now find a special law for culture, which defines quality and diversity as the two key principles of Dutch cultural policy. Where formerly there were open-ended funding arrangements and provision of social security for poor artists, we now find a new management structure, a professional planning and advisory process, modern financial arrangements and a government exerting control at arm's length through a number of executive funding agencies. Where formerly the administration would supply the funds and the artists would get on with producing art, they now have to persuade the advisory and funding bodies of the artistic quality and the social relevance of the works they are producing. The most tangible outcome of this management revolution is the recent ministerial Cultural Planning Document 1993-1996: Investing in Culture, which presents the guidelines for cultural policy over the next planning period.
Having set out this central framework, the main body of the report is devoted to a detailed analytical description of what is going on in the various sectors for which whc is responsible: museums, monuments, archives, archaeology, broadcasting and media, libraries, literature, visual arts, architecture, design, film, music, dance, theatre, amateur art, art education and international cultural relations. In 1993, the total whc-budget for these cultural sectors was almost 2.2 billion guilders, which amounts to one percent of the national budget. Ninety percent of this goes to the five big sectors of Broadcasting, Libraries, Performing Arts, Museums and Art Education. Per sector the report contains information about historical developments, the aims of government policy, the statutory arrangements, the advisory and funding bodies involved, the financial situation, and data about supply and demand. For example, in the sector of Performing Arts in 1991 there were 21 orchestras with 1,688 performances, 4 ballet companies with 396 performances and 29 theatre companies with 3,800 performances. Together, they attracted an audience of 2.3 million, on a total of 238 million guilders in government subsidies. Over the past decade, the budget for culture has remained more or less the same in real terms, but while the amount of policy produced has increased, per capita spending for culture has actually decreased from 153 guilders in 1981 to 137 guilders in 1991.
The wealth of information in the report, much of which has been supplied by the Social and Cultural Planning Office (see The Low Countries 1993-94: 268), is put into perspective in a number of more thematic chapters, outlining the social and political background to Dutch cultural policy and its development over the course of Dutch history.
The closing chapters discuss the key challenges faced by Dutch society in the near future: the general decline in traditional religious and political loyalties, the rise of an underclass dependent on welfare, the accelerating information revolution, the internationalisation of culture, the growing number of immigrants (now 5.8 percent of the population), the changing economic and political climate. The strategies envisaged for meeting these challenges are a characteristic example of the dual approach of the Dutch to cultural policy making. On the one hand, steps are taken to preserve the national heritage with a new Delta Plan, to protect Dutch literature with a fixed book price agreement, and to encourage participation in Dutch cultural life by groups which are now clearly underrepresented: women, young people, immigrants, the less well educated. On the other hand, the challenge of free trade is welcomed too, and the Dutch government has not entered a cultural exception to the recent gatt agreement, which it sees as beneficial not just to Dutch
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