‘Well-founded concerns’
When the Vlaams Belang member of parliament came on board the KVS board last year, concern quickly arose within the ranks of the city theater. “This man is homophobic and xenophobic. He is not very friendly to Brussels. Everything he says is at odds with what we stand for as a culture house,” De Cock said at the time.
Artists from the KVS joined in. “We are not concerned with that one person, but with the ideas of a party that divides instead of connecting and is in everything at odds with what we stand for and fight for,” said a press release signed by 36 artists.
Today, De Cock says that the concerns surrounding Brusselmans’ arrival at the time were clearly well-founded. “He abuses his role as a board member to spread lies. He is in internal opposition and has so far shown little interest. Maybe he should come and see a performance?”
Cultural pact
As in the discussion about the seat for Brusselmans last year, the KVS director cites the Cultural Pact, the law that is now more than fifty years old and stipulates that public cultural institutions must be pluralistic. Read: all political movements must be represented.
This is where boards of public cultural centers differ from boards of government institutions. It is the government parties that call the shots and determine who ends up where. The Culture Pact ensures that all political views are “proportionally represented”, with the distribution of seats in the Flemish parliament being the most important criterion in practice.
“That Cultural Pact is interpreted far too narrowly,” says De Cock. “We would better ask ourselves whether Mr Brusselmans contributes to good governance. Let’s think about what we do in the future with political representation on boards of directors. And I call on the sector to speak out about this, to draw a line here.”
