No subsidy for Stichting Doek, despite extra funding

A month ago we posted the letter (in Dutch) that the Doek board sent to the members of the committee who will be considering the proposed cultural budget in November. Here’s the translated text of that letter.

Amsterdam, 26 September 2016

Dear Sir/Madam,
In September Minister Bussemaker announced that she had made an extra 10 million euros available to spend on culture in the coming 4 years. As Doek board members we heartily applaud this measure. At the same time we are shocked and bewildered by how this money will be allocated. There were many organisations in all categories of the performing arts who were judged positively by the Fonds Podiumkunsten (FPK), but who did not receive subsidy due to insufficient funds. The minister has chosen to devote the aforementioned extra money only to organisations in the festival and music theatre categories.

From our organization’s standpoint this decision can be neither explained nor justified. The FPK advisory commissions employed their expertise to consider all the applications and deliver a well-considered judgement based on a specific set of criteria: artistic quality, entrepreneurship, heterogeneity and geographical distribution of activities. The unilateral choice for festivals and music theatre ignores that fact that all the categories were judged using the same set of previously defined criteria and so were equally deserving of funding. Changing the rules for only a section of the playing field part way through the ‘game’ does not seem fair to us. Despite a positive judgement and a high position on the list of those who would be funded if more money became available, Doek still falls by the wayside.

We would like to take this opportunity to point out the importance of Doek for the musical landscape of the Netherlands and describe what will be lost with the ending of our structural subsidy. This experienced organisation’s disappearance from the cultural middle segment will result in an enormous loss of cultural capital and an impasse in the development of new talent.

Doek is a collective of improvising musicians that develops, promotes and disseminates improvised music. The FPK praises Doek’s ‘versatility, ground-breaking attitude and adventurous character’. ‘As platform and breeding ground Doek occupies an important position in the Dutch improvisation scene’. With the inclusion of a new generation of musicians in its ranks ‘Doek transmits its vision on improvisation to a new and relatively young audience, while maintaining its commitment to adventure and experiment’. Largely thanks to Doek the Netherlands has a flourishing improvisation culture and Amsterdam has a reputation worldwide as one of the capitals of improvisation.

The loss of structural subsidy threatens to bring to an end a period of sixteen years in which Doek contributed to the continuity and development of improvised music in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and further afield. This will have tangible consequences for the musical landscape in the Netherlands.

We ask you to prevent this occurence by supporting Doek in the approaching budget debate.

The Doek board,
Babette Greiner
Jappe Groenendijk
Lena Vizy
Malaya Zumel