Cultural City

Bringing the city to life

More livelihood in the city and attracting international culture

Wageningen needs to be and stay a city that’s filled with life. A city full of smiles, laughter and dancing. Our city is bursting with entrepreneurs and volunteers who want to organise epic events and evenings. Wageningen doesn’t have a more permanent international culture showing, even though 17,6% of its citizens is born outside the Netherlands. We want to actively go on a quest to find entrepreneurs willing to set-up internationally oriented businesses, because Wageningen is filled with knowledge and cultural affinity to create a more cultural city. Some examples are a Japanese style karaoke bar, Chinese style internet café or a Scandinavian style coffeehouse. These ideas are mentioned to the new owners of the Aula, so some connections are already made.

Priorities

More livelihood in the city and attracting international culture
Public piano in the city centre
Regionally organised theatre
Actively standing againstbuilding vacancy

Context

Connect Wageningen believes that culture is an important way to improve wellbeing and strengthen integration among all groups. The cultural policy of 2014 was one big retrenchment, which means that there are a lot of opportunities on the subject of culture. Even on the idea of a popstage has seen a big cut with planned retrenchments for 4 and 5 May. It also hasn’t been to long since the Venster was declared bankrupt and a lot of cultural education takes placein schools. Last year the CultureActionplan was secured in the municipal council, which will give the cultural sector a much needed boost after difficult pandemic years.

Wageningen spends about 2,8 million ofits 106 million euros on culture, whichis about 2,8%. Part of these finances go to the library or initiatives like Popcultuur Wageningen,Unitas, Popronde en PopUpop.

Priorities further explained

Public piano in the city centre

We really love the piano’s at the NS-stations! We think a public piano would be a fantastic addition to our city centre. We believe that the piano’s should be made accessible when the stores are open. We hope that this prevents vandalism and noise disturbance.

Theater must be organized regionally

We want theater and higher culture to be organized and financed regionally. We are very happy with our theater, but we pay Junushoff half a million a year, while half of that does not end up with our own residents. After all, more than half of the visitors come from outside. If our plans do not work, we want at least more Wageningers to use Junushoff.

Take action against vacant property

We think it's a shame when buildings are empty for a long time. Unfortunately, owners in Wageningen have no reason to fill their buildings quickly. We want these owners to allow temporary rent for pop-up projects such as galleries or stores. The fact that a building is for rent does not have to mean that it is empty, because there are enough creative ideas.

Achievements 2018-2022

Regional theatre Junushoff

Theatre the Junushoff is proud that more than half of their visitors come from outside Wageningen. We think it’s a nice achievement, bit also find it a bit unusual. That’s because 0% of its 1 million euro municipal subsidies come from outside the municipality. We believe a regional theatre strategy fits the contemporary time more where we share the costs with other municipalities instead of the idea that cities can claim theatres. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a majority for this motion, but there was majority approval for more regional cooperation. We submitted this and this was adopted. We will see what kinds of fruits these labours will bear.

Anti-stressjar and conversation jars Wageningen city centre

We live in an ever accelerating society where the amount of stress is continuously increasing. It’s difficult to talk about stress, because it’s seen as a weakness, as if you can’t handle modern society. This is alarming, because it’s work disease number 1. The past years Connect Wageningen has tried to push the subjects of stress, depression and burn-outs to the centre stage. We handed in a motion to the mayor to call him to action for spreading anti-stress conversation jars in the city centre

Less talking, more action in the city centre

Wageningen created avision in 2017 for the city centre, by and for the entrepreneurs of its citycentre. The municipality choose for talking about the new vision for the city centre instead of taking actionable steps. We believe that money can be spent better as municipality. We have repeatedly mentioned that we rather see that the municipality is working on painting the walls and organising the events, because as the city’s heart the city centre needs to be more lively and in motion.

Supporting the CultureActionplan

We support the development of the CultureActionplan. After the bankruptcy of the Venster wefind it important that de municipality takes on a coordinating role for cultural education and development

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