Play Money – A performance about cultural entrepreneurship

Rose Akras, Jens Bohnsack (students Master of Education in Arts) & Franziska Menge (third year student Dance Teacher) researched new possibilities for a fruitful cooperation between business, banks and artists.

Performers: Akkerixt Tjalma, Btiisame Amadour, Bess Kuil and Jens Bonnshack.
Video: Hendrik Walter
Graphic Design: Bea Correa

The Dutch system of arts funding is under attack and the government asks artists to look for support in the private sector and learn how to think as entrepreneurs. How can art and the private sector come together? In the visual arts it seems more possible as there is a concrete product to be sold, but how can the makers of ephemeral art such as dance, theatre and performance art succeed in building a dialogue with the private sector?

This quest brought the creators of Play Money into the Walhalla of the private sector: the banks. The performance is based on meetings between executives of the banks DNB, ING, ABN Amro and Akzo Nobel and the artistic directors of the project where both sides try to understand their respective wishes and terminology. Play Money places this "artistic inquiry" in a series of unexpected moments of dance and theatre.

• Can you make art when it is your intention to have profit?
• Can a bank grow without gaining profit  as its highest goal?
• How sexy should art be packaged to seduce the private sector ?
• What role do we play? For ourselves, our colleagues, customers, the public?

The performance is followed by a profitable discussion with the creators, Arjaen Smits from www.ruilmeesters.com and Saskia de Leeuw from The Amsterdam Fund for the Arts.

Host is Ingeborg Nijboer.

Soups and drinks for everyone.