Varied cultural offer in the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area
When you think of art and culture in the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area, you quickly think of the museums, the stages and the historical heritage that can be found in the capital. However, the cultural offer in the regions around Amsterdam is also worth mentioning. For example, Zuid-Kennemerland has the most art museums per inhabitant and Gooi en Vechtstreek leads the way in the number of protected city and village views.
Dashboard
These figures can be found in the new Culture monitor of the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area (MRA), made by the Boekman Foundation and Atlas Research, on behalf of the province of Noord-Holland. The monitor contains a dashboard with figures on the cultural offer, the degree of participation introduced and the money flows that are circulating in the sector. In addition, analyzes of the figures can be found per subtheme and per subregion. The monitor covers an area of a total of 32 municipalities.
Heavyweight
In many ways, Amsterdam itself is the cultural heavyweight in the metropolitan region. For example, Amsterdam has the highest number of galleries, national monuments, cinemas, bookshops, stages and cultural festivals in the region per inhabitant. And with about 12 million museum visitors a year, Amsterdam accounts for 88 percent of the museum visit in the metropolitan region. Amsterdam also excels in terms of money flows. For example, the municipality spends 235 euros per inhabitant per year on cultural costs, more than twice as much as the national average of 111 euros and well above the regional average of 144 euros. Most of the subsidies from the government also end up in the capital. In addition, the cultural venues in Amsterdam earn a total of 207 euros per inhabitant per year in their own income, more than twice as much as the regional average.
To collaborate
This does not mean that the art and culture offer in the rest of the metropolitan region is negligible. The ZuidKennemerland sub-region, for example, has the highest number of art museums in the metropolitan region in relation to the number of inhabitants. Most protected city and village views can be found in Gooi en Vechtstreek. Residents of Almere-Lelystad visit the library most often, and are also the most frequent members of it. And the IJmond region has the largest selection of cinemas per capita. ‘The fact that the supply is differentiated and that not every sub-sector has even a large supply in all areas reinforces the reason for working together as a cultural region,’ conclude the researchers.