Transgressive behavior in the cultural sector

The publication "provides an overview of key documents and sheds light on the cases that were the reason for the request for advice from the Minister of OCW to the Council for Culture (June 2021), the lessons learned by the cultural organizations involved were drawn, and the actions that they undertook." Former Minister Van Engelshoven (OCW) asked the council in particular to provide insight into how the sector can shape its responsibility. The council is expected to publish the advice in March of this year.

Several visual arts and theater colleges became discredited in recent years, and more and more voices were heard calling for a major restructuring of the cultural sector. In particular, power relations and dependency relationships are observed in current art education. The Boekman Exploration gives a brief overview of the respective events and the reactions to them. Below we reproduce some parts of it. 

Particularly in today's arts education, power and dependency relationships are observed

At the KABK in The Hague, there appeared to be a lot wrong with the corporate culture: social insecurity, lack of didactic qualities of the teachers and a top-down management style of the director with resulting in an unsafe business climate. After the publication of an investigative report by the Bezemer & Schubad agency, the company leaves director. Her successor resigned four months later, as his attempt to reform the organization and give department heads less say met with resistance from students and staff. The Bezemer & Schubad report will be criticized in an open letter by students and staff for not sufficiently highlighting the functioning of the Supervisory Board. 

The Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam also conducted an investigation into social safety at the academy. The main recommendation was to establish more formal structures and processes in the future so that the close relationship between employees and residents need not be an obstacle to reporting unwanted behavior. As a follow-up, the agency has conducted an evaluation of the general working method regarding reports of undesirable behavior and psychosocial safety. Since November 2020, a code of conduct that residents must sign has already been in place and two external confidants have been appointed. 

Research firm Bezemer & Schubad spoke of the Amsterdam Fashion Institute (Amfi) as a a socially unsafe to very unsafe organization: students have had to deal with an excessive workload, have been intimidated by teachers, and had nowhere to turn with their complaints. 

The academy has appointed two staff members to advise on equality, discrimination and inclusion issues

In response to complaints, the Willem de Kooning Academy also had Bezemer & Schubad conduct research into the study and working climate at the institute. The researchers recommend that the management communicate more clearly about the complaints procedure. In response, the academy has appointed two staff members to advise on equality, discrimination and inclusion. In addition, recruitment is more focused on diversity in the team and the curriculum. 

The management of the Design Academy in Eindhoven also commissioned research from Bezemer & Schubad. The results showed that a large group of students had no confidence in the Academy. had more in the head of a department, who was nevertheless able to stay on. The management did not share the investigation report with the school community, because it would harm the "confidentiality and anonymity of all reporters," but comes up with an improvement plan.

Joint plan 

Resilient students, diversity and inclusion, and the relationship with the environment together determine the resilience of arts education. That's what the Association of Universities of Applied Sciences says in its Arts Education Sector Agenda 2021-2025. It calls a resilient arts education of vital importance in which social safety is central. Therefore, the industry has further developed a common approach in Contours of Social Safety Code, a plan of action for arts education. This states, among other things, that arts education should be supplemented with "a curriculum that from the outset to initiate personal development as an artist and the welfare side of it (...) a range of education and workshops explicitly focused on the specific development as an artist and a robust infrastructure of coaching and mentoring, student career counseling and student deanery, coupled with research in the field, the use of knowledge from professorships and the exchange of best practices." 

In May 2021, along with the aforementioned code, the Statement Social Safety in Arts Education, to send a signal that the sector is aware that social safety has and needs structural attention, not incidental attention. The signatories of the Statement Social Safety in arts education advocate for transparency and an organizational structure that makes reporting of inappropriate behavior accessible. 

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