|
Ministry of Culture Train 'Kafka' in the Netherlands You can give comments on these letters Dead ends along its journey, europartrain met a lot of possibilities to contribute to other projects or intermingle with them. In contrary the 'Europa Expres' initiated by the Dutch ministry of Foreign Affairs. A story of bureaucracy and a lack of love for beauty on track, blocking communication between cultures. The Dutch Ministry of Culture (OC&W) together with the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs created a Fund (HGIS). The HGIS Culture Fund of the Ministries has a mission to intensify the cultural bonds between the Netherlands and foreign countries. They have a special dedication towards Vlaanderen, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, The Czech Republic, Poland and the Province of Nordrhein-Westfalen in Germany. With all these countries as planned destinations, Blinde Schilders handed in a request for funding the travels to these countries. It took the HGIS fund very long to decide about the request. Waiting for a decision, the organisers at the office got a phone call from the cultural office ³Ideëel Organiseren², asking for help with the organisation of Europa Expres. This cultural organising office was asked by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to make a train to combine art works from all over Europe, concentrating on Eastern Europe and promote the European unification process. The people from ³Ideëel Organiseren² found out to their surprise that europartrain already did what their assignment was. Both organisations planned to work together. De Blinde Schilders made a calculation for their contribution to Europa Expres, using it as a tool for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to promote cultural exchange between the Netherlands and four of the countries nominated to be part of the European Union, being Hungary, Poland, Romania and Turkey. The communications-carriage 'Kulturzug' from Naumburg could be part of it. It troubled the organisers that at the same time their request for funding of the europartrain got turned down, the initiative was taken by the same Ministry to organise a similar train-project, financed by the HGIS fund. But the aim of the Ministry was to have a train going only from Maastricht in the south of the Netherlands to Groningen in the north. The whole cooperation got blown off, officially because it was to expensive. The real reason of collapse might be a misunderstanding of the concept of europartrain at local and national governments.
The request was presented with an overload on information by supplying many international references, five catalogues, newspaper and magazine articles. The conclusion was:
Jeroen de Swaaf, art historian was making an 50 hours effort and analysing their reasons mentioned. Our accountant Ale Bosma couldn't figure out any valid reasons on the financial part. We went to go against the decision.
About the same time we received the second decision we also received an invite.
You can give comments on these letters |
