State Secretary Gunay Uslu of Culture and Media:

“The corona crisis continues to hit the cultural and creative sector hard. In addition to the support for subsidized institutions, there is also extra support for freelancers. This is crucial to retain their knowledge and skills for the sector. We are extending various subsidy schemes for creators at the funds. There is also support for freelancers, creators, and technicians in the part of the performing arts sector that is not subsidized by the state through the compensation scheme at the Fund for the Performing Arts.”

A large part of this support package is intended to support creators, artists, and other cultural professionals.

• €15 million goes through the six national cultural funds. This allows the funds to continue schemes with direct support for creators. These include schemes for work budgets, grants, and support for experimental research.
• €10 million for the Rights Sector Support Fund. The aim of this fund is to financially support creators and performing artists from the entire creative and cultural sector. Through previous rounds, this fund managed to reach thousands of creators.
• €3.5 million for the Abraham Tuschinski Fund to support the production of Dutch feature films. This private fund is filled by Dutch cinemas, film theaters, and film distributors who contribute a fee per ticket sold.
• €1.5 million to the Royal Library to meet the high demand for ebooks. The amount is intended for authors, translators, illustrators, and publishers due to the extra loans of their works.
• €122.5 million for the compensation schemes at the Fund for the Performing Arts.

Producers of professional live performances and concerts are compensated for lost revenue from ticket sales through a scheme at the Fund for the Performing Arts. Up to 85% of the tickets for these activities are purchased, even in case of cancellations. For the compensation schemes, the fund has a total of €122.5 million available until March 8, 2022. Of this, €111.5 million comes from the new support packages and €11 million is still available from a previous package. The application portal for the scheme will open shortly for the period from November 28 to January 31. For the period from February 1 to March 8, the Fund for the Performing Arts will establish a new supplementary scheme and will communicate about it shortly.

The total available €251.6 million at a glance:

• €76.5 million for institutions in the basic infrastructure, institutions that receive subsidies via the Heritage Act and institutions with a multi-year subsidy from the national cultural funds.
• €30 million for the extension of direct support to creators.
• €8.6 million for a scheme via the Mondriaan Fund to support museums.
• A total of €111.5 million for supplementary schemes to support the restrictive measures in theaters, (pop) venues, and concert halls at the Fund for the Performing Arts.
• €25 million for the continuation of the loan at Culture+Entrepreneurship with a term until the end of the second quarter of 2022.
• With budget preservation, extension of the open monument loan from the National Restoration Fund until the end of the second quarter of 2022.

In total, more than €1.8 billion in specific support for the cultural and creative sector has been made available since the beginning of the corona crisis, in addition to the generic support packages.