Corona, culture and municipalities

Recommendations to creators

Among other things, the guide gives advice to creators, to strengthen their position. The position of all creators has generally deteriorated due to the corona crisis. Municipalities can help creators emerge better from the crisis.

Municipalities can help makers emerge better from crisis

In the guide, the Arts Union provides targeted advice to municipalities:

• Invest in the future of youth.
• Use support for culture not only for cultural institutions, but also for impulse schemes directly aimed at local makers. Exchange experiences as municipalities (also consider provincial cooperation) with existing maker impulse schemes.
• Under the Fair Practice Code, attach conditions that support trickles down the chain.
• Pay for artists and culture makers is often disproportionate to the work they do and the value they bring to society. Increase the culture budget to enable fair practice rewards, ensure performance requirements match resources.
• Engage with (representatives) of local makers, stimulate dialogue between institutions, municipality and makers. The Creative Coalition can play a role in this, as can the project organization Fair Practice Code.
• Utilize the tools and handouts of the sectoral labor market platform Platform ACCT, such as the Calculation Tool: caol wage to zzp rate. This allows municipalities to provide direction to applicants and also provides municipalities with a yardstick to assess applications.
• Utilize the Chamber of Commerce's Web Module Assessment of Employment Relationship to assess plans for prudent employment relationships, and refer applications to this as well to avoid sham constructions.

Financial compensation

VNG received many questions from municipalities and from the sector about the extent and possibilities of corona compensation from the national government for local culture. Therefore, the information guide also provides insight into the amount of this corona compensation to municipalities and the financial situation of the various types of local cultural institutions. The state has provided almost 170 million euros for this purpose in 2020, 120 million through the general resources of the Municipal Fund and 48.5 million through three state culture funds. For the first half of 2021, so far 150 million euros in state support for the local cultural sector through municipalities is available.

Recommendations

The guide provides a number of recommendations for municipalities to work on short-term recovery and transition of the local cultural ecosystem, such as: identify in local bottlenecks, stimulate demand for culture, drive digitization, support cultural working capital, and set requirements for fair practice. In addition, the guide contains a good number of good examples of how large, medium and small municipalities are using their resources to support the sector.

Download part 1 (Feb. 2021) of the guide here

Download part 2 of the guide here