“You can ask any turkey what it thinks about Christmas, but then I can be sure of the result.” Supportive responses from the mayor of Antwerp The morning on Radio 1 on the criticism that came from the culture sector on the announced cuts. The cancellation of the project subsidies was seen by the cultural sector as the end for young artists. ‘The project subsidies are next to nothing, a detail in the entire budget,’ said Bart De Wever (N-VA) on Radio 1. ‘That is a minimum saving of three times nothing.’

The city cuts away a total of 70 million euros. The city scraps with the project subsidies 720,000 euros per year. De Wever reassured that the city of Antwerp is ‘financially the healthiest city in the whole country’. “Ten years ago we were the bankrupt city ​​of the country. I have been running a budget surplus year after year for ten years now.’

The Antwerp youth sector is also not unscathed from the cost-cutting exercise of the city of Antwerp. Ships of Youth Jinni Beels (Vooruit) has decided to index the operational resources of professional youth work with only 2 percent. By 2024, some 23 youth workers will end up on the streets. That is almost 15 percent of the total number of people (157) employed by professional youth work in Antwerp.

Working for the pennies

The Wevers party member and alderman of Culture Nabilla Ait Daoud first came under fire from the culture sector for scrapping the project subsidies. But her words in an interview also went down the wrong way. When asked what she would do as an artist herself after the subsidies were cut, she replied: ‘Then I will work for my money, like everyone else.’

‘I really don’t see what’s wrong with that,’ says De Wever. Even after that statement, he is still “100 percent” behind Ait Daoud, “an alderman who has been complained for weeks.” It is more difficult with the words of the Antwerp alderman of social affairs Tom Meeuws (Vooruit). He said on Radio 1 on Tuesday ‘that some in our college feel that they are gaining support by dismissing artists and culture workers as lazy profiteers’. Meeuws called for an end to this ‘culture war’.

De Wever calls these words ‘nonsensical’. ‘The atmosphere in the college is not tense at all,’ he concludes. “I am not a socialist and never will be one.”