Cuts Make the Country Better

In 2011, a right wing coalition forming the Dutch government announced drastic cuts in public arts funding. What had before been one of the most generous systems of public arts funding in the world, began to favour the “winners”, the great institutions admired by tourists, and the law of the market. In 2014 François Lemieux and Edith Brunette decided to go to the Netherlands to produce a series of videotaped interviews with artists and cultural workers on the circumstances and effects of the cuts: we discussed the reasons that kept the arts milieu from blocking - or simply limiting - the cuts, the consequences of this failure, as well as the various political and artistic initiatives sparked by these upheavals. These interviews gave birth to Cuts Make the Country Better.