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The information in this document reflects the situation when it was written in 2006.
Please bear in mind that some contact information may since have changed.
ART FOR EVERYONE AS A WAY INTO WORK
A broad partnership of 11 organisations is using the ‘artist approach’ as a
way into the labour market for those furthest removed from it. By putting
people in touch with their own creativity, it enhances their confidence and
communication skills. The training it provides also breaks down the
isolation many severely disadvantaged people face. Kunstenaars&CO,
based in Amsterdam, its partners and its three transnational partners are
running pilot courses for over 300 people from six target groups: migrants,
prisoners, mentally handicapped people, young people at risk, workless
families and drug addicts. The approach is a proven success with the
mentally handicapped, and for the other groups research is under way to
provide policy-makers with the data they require.
ART – AN ECONOMIC DYNAMO FOR EVERYONE
The Kunstenaars&CO foundation was set up in 2001 under the directorship of Jo Houben, with
the self-imposed task of improving working conditions for artists in the Netherlands. At that time
the Dutch government realised that working artists are a tremendous asset to a society and to its
economy too. After all, most visitors come to Amsterdam precisely because of its rich cultural
history and collections of work by painters like Rembrandt and Van Gogh. Art gives life to a city
and is part of renewing the stock of intellectual property. And, more prosaically, cultural industries
account for an ever-growing share of Amsterdam’s jobs. So even to a businesslike Dutch
mentality, helping struggling artists to find their feet financially makes good sense. That is why
the Netherlands started a scheme called WWIK (Wet Werk en Inkomen Kunstenaars – ‘Work and
Income for Artists Act’) that gives practising artists a guaranteed basic income, but with the
obligation to generate a certain amount of income themselves. And that is how Kunstenaars&CO
found itself operating on quite a large scale, administering the WWIK scheme, with a staff of
approximately 70 working from a stately old house on the Nieuwe Herengracht.
As well as helping new artists to get established, Kunstenaars&CO also aims to broaden the
market for their products. And apart from corporate art, there are many applications for art in the
public sector. This is where EQUAL comes in. In order to make use of artists’ skills to help
disadvantaged people find a place in the labour market, Kunstenaars&CO went into partnership.
It teamed up with two prisons, a school, a reintegration company, a healthcare organisation,
three artists’ groups, the Netherlands Institute for Care and Welfare and the Ministry of
Education, Culture and Science to launch KunstWerk(t) – ‘ArtWork(s)’.
Experiments with four target groups
Starting in July 2005, the KunstWerk(t) partners have been piloting the use of art as a tool for
labour market integration with four separate groups of severely disadvantaged people.
The first of these is migrants. A group of 12 (10 women and two men) studying Dutch at the
Aventus Regional Education Centre (ROC) have taken a course of twice-weekly training sessions
in theatre skills alongside their existing language lessons. Two actresses, Brit Vreenegoor and
Esmeralda Detmers, helped them to improve their pronunciation, self-presentation and
assertiveness, and to deal with questions of high and low status. Many of the students, who had
six different nationalities, were illiterate as well as traumatised, and some had lived in the
Netherlands for only a few months. Despite these difficulties, and the cultural inhibitions felt
particularly strongly by the women, all the students learnt fast and contributed to the final product,
a video in which they introduce themselves in their native language and in Dutch. “Both the
school and the artist were very pleased with the result,” says project manager Anne van Otterloo.
“None of the women had ever worked outside the house before, but all the students undertook a
work placement, for instance helping out at their children’s school, sometimes against heavy
family pressure.”
The second group is composed of 11 mentally handicapped people, who were working in the
Ridderikhoff restaurant in Hoorn. Here, the acting input taught them to make a performance out
of their job, enabling to meet clients’ specific needs and to pamper them.
Thirdly, prisoners. Inmates at the Ter Peel women’s prison at Evertsoord near Venlo, on the
German border, and the nearby Maashegge semi-open men’s prison (which holds men who are
nearing the end of their sentences) were offered the opportunity to perform in a choir led by
musicians Jos Zandvliet and Tommie Freke, and a group of up to 13 women and eight men
volunteered.
And fourthly, a group of 12 young people at risk and difficult to employ. These were selected for a
series of theatre workshops from a group of 20 by FourstaR Reintegration Service and Stichting
Parels voor de Zwijnen. In several weeks of rehearsals with theatre director Saskia Huijbrechtse,
the group created the piece Leve Ik (‘Long Live Me’), based on their own experiences of love,
money, work, parents and finding your place in society. This has been well received at venues
including the prestigious Amsterdam arts festival Over het IJ, and if the Italian authorities permit,
will tour to the Prison for Minors in Palermo in Sicily in December 2006. One problem was that it
was difficult to enforce discipline and timekeeping, as actors could not be thrown off the cast as
this would endanger the final performance.
YOU CAN’T LIE WHEN YOU ARE SINGING
Kunstenaars&CO demonstrated some of its work at the launch conference for the Skills through
the Arts transnational partnership, which it organised from 30 March to 1 April 2006. The main
part of the event took part at Amsterdam’s Theatre Institute, but the second day was actually held
inside the Ter Peel prison – a testimony to the courage of the Dutch Ministry of Justice. The
combined choirs from Ter Peel and Maashegge shuffled in dressed as a chain gang, and gave a
very moving performance. It was a shame that, owing to security rules, it could not be filmed for
posterity. One of the women performers who had been released even returned to prison for the
day so that she could take part. “We made history today,” comments Ms Van Otterloo. “It is the
first time that male prisoners have come into a women’s prison to give a joint performance.” She
goes on to explain the project’s rationale: “Art taps the wells of a person’s creativity and gives
them a way of expressing themselves. The choir is an example – singing is one way of
communicating with other people, and once you have established a rapport through one medium
you can generalise this to build a relationship. You can’t lie when you are singing." The governor
of Maashegge prison, Willem Lingmont, said why it works from his point of view: “We have a long
history of this type of activity and we know it works – the question is, can we afford the costs of
running it, as budgets have been cut? I believe it makes a difference, and increases the chances
of work in the future. One day everybody leaves prison, so the community benefits.”
The 50 visiting delegates took part in various workshops to gain some direct experience of
methodologies for working in an artistic way with disadvantaged people. One of these workshops,
on drama, was run by Belgrade Theatre from Coventry in the UK, who are partners in the
Participation for Employability (APE) project. It looked at building trust. After limbering up, the
group moved on to collective games such as the ‘human knot’. In this exercise, the group stand
in a circle, shut their eyes, and hold their hands out in front of them. Each person then grasps
someone else’s hand with each of theirs – the ineluctable result being a big tangle of arms. What
the group has to work out is how to disentangle themselves, without letting go of each other –
and without spraining their wrists – and end up back in a circle, holding hands. “Getting untangled
means you have to be able to mime and communicate non-verbally,” says drama co-ordinator
Kerry Harvey, “so it’s a great way to improve trust and expression.” Amplifying this point, the
group then brainstormed their ideas on what skills it takes to communicate well.
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A song with your supper
The conference participants had already had a truly memorable introduction to the arts as an
employment policy tool, when they turned up for dinner at the Ridderikhoff restaurant 1 on the
main square of the ancient port of Hoorn, on the west coast of the IJsselmeer. Arrayed on the
front steps, and spilling over on to the redbrick square, were a dozen of the restaurant staff in
their white overalls, singing songs of welcome to the accompaniment of a banjo, and serving
glasses of the house cocktail. Former theatre artist Septimia Kuhlmann, from the ACCU
Community Arts Foundation, is the secret ingredient in their working lives. For these staff
members are people who would generally find it hard to get and keep a job, and the Ridderikhoff
is a very special kind of employer.
The restaurant is run by the Stichting Philadelphia Zorg 2 (Philadelphia Care Foundation), a major
charity that cares for some 8,000 elderly and handicapped people at 650 sites across the
Netherlands. “We opened six years ago under an agreement with the city council,” VicePresident drs. Theo Kralt explains. “This building was built in 1550 and is an architectural
monument, and the local council had renovated it and needed to find an appropriate use for it. As
it is right in the town centre, next door to the weigh house (Waag), using it as a restaurant was
ideal: the location is central enough to attract enough customers to pay a commercial rent, and
they could accomplish social goals as well. From our side, we wanted to move up a step in the
business of reintegrating disadvantaged people into the world of work. We wanted to operate a
high-class restaurant but with a workforce including mentally disabled people. But we don’t
compromise on service levels – in fact our staff’s enthusiasm adds an extra dimension.
Sometimes a staff member might surprise a customer by asking them what they see as a
personal question, but they usually take it in good part.”
As a social enterprise, the Ridderikhoff
meets a market demand for high-class
meals in an original and congenial
setting, and uses the profit it makes to
create a social benefit. It employs a
quota of mentally handicapped people,
giving them a place in the workforce
that suits their specific needs. Restaurant manager Henk Pannekoek explains
how conscience and competition can
be combined: “We are a commercial
operation. Most of our staff are professionals, and two-thirds of our income is
from sales,” he explains. “To top this up
we receive a wage subsidy from the
government in respect of our handicapped employees, who work partA choral welcome to De Ridderikhoff, a social
time. This way we can guarantee
enterprise restaurant in Hoorn, Netherlands
consistent high levels of service to our
customers, and still give the trainees the care they need. Eventually we hope they will leave for
other jobs, but most of them would love to stay on for ever.”
CONVINCING FIGURES
KunstWerk(t)’s initiatives are certainly a model for replication elsewhere, and the results have
been taken up by the website and magazine of NIZW, the Netherlands Institute for Care and
Welfare.3 The work will be documented in a number of ways: the Hungarian and Italian partners
are each making a film, and there will also be a book and a CD to describe the various artistic
methodologies. Stichting Philadelphia Zorg is sufficiently impressed with the results at the
1
www.ridderikhoff.org
www.philadelphia.nl
3 www.nizw.nl
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Ridderikhoff in Hoorn that they are following it up with another arts-based training programme at
their teahouse in Monnikendam, just along the coast.
As regards influencing policy, progress is slower. “We hope that the Regional Education Centres
(ROCs) will recognise the useful role a theatrical method can play in language teaching, for
instance in studying for the new compulsory citizenship examinations,” says Ms Van Otterloo.
“We’ve brought the EQUAL national network on entrepreneurship on board to make an approach
to educational policy-makers.”
Unfortunately, halfway through the project, a new governor took over the Ter Peel prison, and the
regime changed nationally. “Daytime working hours were extended, and after 5 p.m. all the
prisoners have to be in their cells. So there is just no time left for artistic activity,” Ms Van Otterloo
admits. “This means that although the ministry has said that it is ready to look at our research
findings, at the moment we cannot collect the data we need on this target group. Luckily, we shall
be able to restart the project later this year at the Bijlmer men’s prison in Amsterdam, and the
research can continue.” However the picture is not so gloomy on the other side of the North Sea.
Randel Barrows, a visiting adviser to the British Probation Service, views art as an important aid
to getting ex-prisoners into employment, and thus meeting one of the targets of Britain’s
reoffending strategy, to reduce recidivism by 10% over four years. Art can make a particular
difference in altering offenders’ thinking and behaviour, which are just as important in
reintegration as ‘harder’ factors like accommodation, debt or the family situation.
A powerful tool for getting the arguments across will be the research results, which will be ready
in 2007. A research team, led by the SCO-Kohnstamm Institute of Amsterdam University, is
attached to each of the four partners in the transnational Skills through the Arts partnership. This
brings together a sample of over 300 beneficiaries of six different types – the four studied in the
Netherlands, plus workless households, who are taking part in the British project, and a
Hungarian group of drug addicts. Data are being collected by observation, questionnaires,
interviews and focus groups. The researchers have agreed a common methodology, based on
measuring each beneficiary’s ‘distance travelled’ – that is, how their capabilities have increased
during the project. In fact the project has decided to take three measurements – at the beginning,
midpoint and end, and to measure a standardised set of ‘core competences’ such as
presentation, time management, ability to collaborate and ability to deal with differences in status.
These social skills make an important contribution to a person’s employability.
DP name: KunstWerk(t) in de Tertiaire Sector – ArtWork(s) in the Third Sector
DP ID: NL-2004/EQD/0008
National partners: Kunstenaars &CO; Fourstar Reinegratie Service bv; Ministerie van Justitie/
DJIPI Zuid-Oost/Maashegge; Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap; Nederlands
Instituut voor Zorg en Welzijn (NIZW); ROC Aventus; Stichting Parels voor de Zwijnen; Stichting
Philadelphia Zorg; Stichting ACCU; Stichting Alice
Transnational partnership: TCA 4427 Skills through the Arts – partners: UKgb-80 Arts
Participation for Employability (APE), HU-36 Akiket kezd elveszíteni az élet (‘Lost by Life’), IT-ITG2-SIC-086 On Stage
Contact: Anne van Otterloo
Address: Kunstenaars&CO, Nieuwe Herengracht 119, NL-1011 SB Amsterdam, Netherlands
Telephone: +31 20 530 5935 (direct); +31 20 535 2500 (switchboard)
E-mail: avanotterloo@kunstenaarsenco.nl
Website: www.kunstenaarsenco.nl
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