Our mission
About the fund
The Cultural Participation Fund encourages people to actively engage with culture. We support initiatives throughout the Kingdom of the Netherlands – at school and in leisure time, and across all disciplines. Culture is created by everyone and it shapes us all. What about you?
Cultural Participation Fund
We, the Dutch governmental culture fund of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, have been tasked with making culture accessible for everyone. Accessibility is important for society, and is also the key to revitalising the cultural landscape. By focusing on cultural participation, intangible heritage and cultural education, we promote a culture that invites and facilitates everyone’s participation.
Why we are doing this. Culture. You make it.
We believe in the power of culture. Culture is like oxygen: a society cannot exist without it. Culture shapes us, touches us, amazes us, enables us to develop ourselves and to play a role in society. Through imagination, we are better able to understand and help shape the world around us. Creating culture gives pleasure and brings people together, and allows us to share our stories. Culture stimulates our creativity. By personally contributing to culture, people give shape and meaning to their changing environment. And what’s more, participating in culture has a positive impact on our spiritual and physical wellbeing.
Culture. You make it. We help to make it possible.
Everyone deserves the opportunity to engage in culture, in their own way – both at school and in leisure time. Creating culture gives pleasure and brings people together, and allows us to share our stories. By personally contributing to culture, people give shape and meaning to their changing environment. This is why the Fund offers grants to cultural initiatives throughout the Kingdom of the Netherlands – from Zeeland to Groningen, from Aruba to St Eustatius, from large to small, and across all disciplines.
Culture is what people make and do – with their heads, hearts and hands.
What is cultural participation?
Cultural participation means to be active in art and culture. By expressing yourself, you are seen or heard by others. Examples are playing the guitar, making street art, passing on stories or traditions, or breakdancing in the street with your crew. But no matter the diversity of cultural manifestations, they all have one thing in common: people do not experience culture passively. They do, develop and create culture, together.
Facts
More than 6.4 million Dutch people are culturally active in their leisure time. More than 80% of cultural practitioners are active throughout the year – most of them even (nearly) every week!
What we do
We are an incentive fund. Our primary task is to allocate grants in line with our ambitions, our programmes and our grant schemes.