Do you work in the cultural and/or social fields and are you engaged in helping specific population groups participate in culture? Then the Making Culture Together 2022-2024 subsidy scheme may be relevant to you.

Like its predecessor, Making Culture Together, the current scheme aims to remove thresholds and to make culture accessible to everyone. It is an incentive scheme to stimulate new initiatives and to help intensify, expand and/or develop existing activities.

An important means to achieve this goal is to promote closer collaboration and interaction between makers, pioneers and/or participants in the cultural sector and the social field, for instance in the care and welfare domain. In this way, the unique power of art and culture is applied to help tackle societal issues, for example loneliness.

Who can apply?

You can apply to this scheme as a cultural organisation, an organisation in the social field, or as an independent professional in the cultural or social field. What matters is that you can demonstrate that you are collaborating with a party from the other field and that you share your knowledge about this collaboration, specifically your insights on how to reduce thresholds, so that others can learn from your experience.

(Collaboration partners can also be self-organised entities without legal personality in the cultural or social field, or can be education institutes. These parties cannot act as applicant to the scheme, however.) 

There are three tracks to choose from.

Track 1 – Try Out

Subsidy in this track supports small-scale or short-term projects that stand out for their experimental, innovative or unusual approach, allowing the applicant to try out new ideas, work with new collaborators, in new genres and learn by trial and error. 

Grant sum is between € 2,500 and € 25,000 covering a maximum of 80% of all eligible project costs. Duration of the project is no longer than 12 months.

Track 2 – Development

The focus of projects applying for funding in this track is on development; taking the opportunity to explore, to learn, and to improve with each other. Projects ideally go through (some of) these phases: exploring, researching, developing, implementing, evaluating, adjusting and follow-up implementation.

Grant sum is from € 25,000 and € 125,000 covering a maximum of 80% of all eligible project costs. Duration of the project is no longer than 24 months.

Track 3 – Multi-years programs

This is the final track and aims for projects that have already been proven successful, projects where the activities are secured in a sound organization and approach, projects that want to take a step towards developing, broadening, or scaling up and/or projects that work on making their activities more sustainable for the participants.

Grant sum is from € 125,000 and € 500,000 covering a maximum of 50% of all eligible project costs. Duration of the project is at least two and at most four years.

Every track has its own criteria the Funds uses to assert suitability with the scheme. You can find them in the full subsidy scheme publication available through the website (in Dutch only).

Please contact one of the advisors to further discuss the application possibilities for your project.

When to apply?

Application for track 1 (try-out) and track 2 (development) is open during these periods only:

Application for track 3 (multi-years programs) is open during these periods only:

For all application periods, application starts at 1:00 PM and ends at 5:00 PM 

More information

Some further practical conditions to take into consideration:

• Your project is not due to begin in less than 13 weeks, or after more than 6 months, from the date of submitting your application
• The ‘unforeseen’ budget item may not exceed 7% of the total costs
• Material investments may not exceed 20% (40% if you’re located in the Caribbean part of the Dutch kingdom)
• Applying in English is possible, but we communicate the results in Dutch

Open Calls 

Open Calls are intended for exploration, development, and implementation of cultural and heritage activities around specific topics. The social and cultural domains collaborate here.

Open Call Youth and their Mental Health 

This Open call is for initiatives that actively involve young people in art and heritage activities. Participation in these activities has a positive effect on mental health.
 
Grant sum is between € 2,500 and € 25,000 covering 80% of all eligible project costs. For applicants from the Caribbean part of the Kingdom is this 100%. Duration of the project is no longer than 12 months. 
Application period: 30 December 2023 until 31 May 2024 
 

Open Call Youth Culture

This Open Call is for initiatives that encourage cultural participation among young people and strengthen their cultural development. 

Grant sum is between € 10,000 and € 100,000 covering 80% of all eligible project costs. For applicants from the Caribbean part of the Kingdom is this 100%. Duration of the project is no longer than 24 months. 
Application period: 23 January 2023 until 30 November 2024

Please contact one of the advisors for further information. On Thursdays we offer telephone consultation from 3 pm to 5 pm. 

The scheme is part of the Cultural Participation Programme. This programme consists of three interrelated components:

• this grant scheme, which serves to support initiatives;
• knowledge sharing, to help make these initiatives sustainable in the long-term;
• making culture visible, with a focus on culture makers and their experiences.

Other partners in the programme are the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW) and the LKCA (National Knowledge Institute for Culture Education and Amateur Art).