Schauvliege’s “concept note” is a sort of white paper on the evolution of cultural policy in the coming years and will eventually be translated into a new Culture Decree. One of the main goals of the paper is to increase the pool of members of the various committees that advise the minister on the subsidies to be granted to groups and organisations, in order to make it easier to avoid conflicts of interest.

The paper also extends the so-called “culture canon” of major institutions that receive international funding, which they are then free to spend according to management agreements reached with the culture ministry. At present there are six: deSingel, the Flemish Opera, the Royal Ballet of Flanders, orchestras deFilharmonie and Brussels Philharmonic and the Ancienne Belgique. To these might be added other multi-disciplinary centres like Bozar, Flagey and deBuren.

Schauvliege will also work to remove some of the firewalls that separate different disciplines when considering requests for funding, to give preference to more crossdiscipline projects. Individual artists would also be able to receive multi-year funding.

One of the minister’s pet projects has, however, found insufficient support to make it into the final white paper: the extension of the principle of handing funding over to sectoral agencies, such as already takes place for film and television (Flanders Audiovisual Fund) and literature (the Flemish Fund for Letters).