Netherlands/ 7. Public institutions in cultural infrastructure  

7.1 Cultural infrastructure: tendencies & strategies

Since 1984 there have been major shifts in public spending between the various fields of cultural policy. In particular, there has been a redistribution of tasks between the national, regional and local authorities, including all or part of the related funding. A similar redistribution took place in the visual arts, involving the Ministry of Social Affairs in 1987. The reform of the state museums in 1993 brought a transfer of resources for staffing costs from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science to the museum budget. In this two-fold trend in Dutch cultural policy, more emphasis is on the market on the one hand, but public responsibility for cultural life is maintained on the other.

The two-fold system is facilitated by the establishing of Funds. The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science established a number of Funds, in particular after 1987 and supplied public money. Each fund allocates money to cultural institutions or individual artists according to its specific aims (for a list of these Funds, see chapter 8.1.2). In the new subsidy system, as of 2009, the public cultural Funds play an important role as a service desk for the multi-annual subsidy requests of producers of arts and culture (production houses, companies, initiatives, organisations, see chapter 4.2.4).

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