Response to City Council resolution on arts funding 2025-2028

On Thursday, 11 July 2024, Councillor Meliani, who is responsible for arts and culture, announced, on behalf of the Amsterdam City Council, how she planned to address the opinion on arts funding in 2025-2028 issued by the Amsterdam Arts Council (AKr). While the AKr had positive things to say about Dutch National Ballet, it nevertheless advised the Councillor to reduce its funding by € 300,000 per year, the aim being to free up funds for bolstering the cultural infrastructure in Amsterdam’s urban districts. The AKr advised imposing similar percentage-wise funding cuts on the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and International Theatre Amsterdam (ITA). The Councillor has decided to follow the AKr’s opinion.

In its opinion, the AKr labelled the Councillor’s earlier proposed funding cut of € 3 million to be absorbed by the seven City-funded institutions, including Dutch National Ballet, as ‘irresponsible’. By freeing up extra money, the City Council has now managed to reverse this cutback, at least partially, as it has resolved to grant a one-off amount of € 12 million to the cultural sector for the upcoming Plan for the Arts period (2025-2028).

We greatly appreciate this extra investment in Amsterdam’s cultural landscape and we are pleased that some of this funding will be used to reverse the € 3 million cutback that had been scheduled for 2025 and 2026. For the years 2027 and 2028, the City Council has lowered the cutback to € 1.5 million per year, to be distributed proportionally across the seven City-funded institutions.

All in all, Dutch National Ballet will face a total funding cut of € 1.8 million in the Plan for the Arts period. To accommodate this still considerable cutback, we will be forced to make a number of painful choices. We will decide in the upcoming period what these choices will be. In our decision-making process, we will also make allowance for the proposed increase in VAT.