Newsletter
What is needed to enhance the working conditions of artists?
Many artists are committed to social issues such as sustainability, well-being and loneliness. Unfortunately, it is often temporary, project-based and poorly paid work. What is needed for improvement? Joost Heinsius describes five necessary actions. (originally...
Some thoughts on the role of autonomy in the arts and its role in discourses on the value of the arts
Introduction The cutbacks of the previous government in the Netherlands caused a shock in the art sector. Not only because of the scale, but also because of the ease with which these cuts were accepted. The only protests came from the sector itself, the rest of the...
The lesson of the Trump victory for the art world
November 13, 2016 Trump for president. Who would have thought so. More people than you think. The dichotomy in the US is stronger than we wanted to acknowledge. Alie Hochschild wrote a wonderful book about it:. Strangers in Their own country a divide between the high...
The art of funding the arts
October 22 2016 The combination of art and money is and remains interesting. In earlier times, an artist had a client and was paid per job, if he was employed by a rich man, a patron, he produced works in paid employment. The best art works produced this way we can...
The challenge for crowdfunding in the cultural sector
Thursday, February 11 I was one of the panelists at the crowdfunding cafe Crowdfundinghub. A lot of discussion about the possibilities of crowdfunding in the cultural and creative sector. Afterwards I want to share a few thoughts. Crowdfunding is a rapidly growing...
David Byrne against Spotify
David Byrne (ex-Talking Heads) speaks out against Spotify. Why? Revenues go mostly to record labels and almost nothing to artists. So he has taken most of his work off Spotify. Also Adele has her doubts when launching her new album. David goes further to say that if...
Art for Innovation
Blog 22 juni 2015 I The Start Big words: art and innovation. How can we connect them? Trying to define them is going to get us in trouble. So let’s broadly assume: this is about all kinds of art-forms and what they can contribute to all kinds of innovation in...
The Value of Connecting Arts and Business
Blog 26 april 2015 Recently there is the discussion on the authentic or intrinsic value of the arts and how this is instrumentalised or compromised when put into a business setting. So let’s see some examples of how this works. Someone from a big insurance company...
The Art of Impact III
Blog 11 maart 2015 The discussion on public value of culture is here to stay Revaluing culture is the name of a publication last week by the Scientific Council for Government Policy (www.wrr.nl) in the Netherlands. It was received well within the cultural sector...
The Art of Innovation
Blog 2 februari 2015 This blog is inspired by a book: The Innovators by Walter Isaacson. It has some 600 pages on the invention of computers and the internet. I am not going to do a summary here, that is impossible. There are so many people and stories involved in the...
