LETTER TO THE AUDIENCE
Dear fan of Trix,
It probably has not escaped you in recent days: there is a lot of fuzz about the savings in the arts sector. The Flemish government has announced that it will reduce the promised structural operating funds by 6% from next year.
This also affects Trix. In addition, the city of Antwerp scraps 10% of our subsidy resources and the entire budget for a planned renovation. That's pretty strong and hurts, but luckily Trix is a class more solid than that. Trix will not close.
That somewhat worn out but oh so clean space on the Noordersingel remains a haven for alternative pop music, rock, hip hop, metal and electronics. In short: for the kind of healthy counterweight to the boring, brave mainstream of everyday life. Our role remains to make the city and the world a little happier and freer again. Today more than ever.
At Trix we regularly invest in loss-making festivals, projects, shows and residences of new talent. As a large pop stage we only run on subsidies for a part in the total budget, the rest we earn on ticket sales, beverage sales and room rental. In other words: where the government has failed in recent years, you still keep our house straight. Respect for that.
However, that does not work for everyone. In addition to the 6% saving on structural subsidies (for museums, theaters and stages such as Trix), the Flemish government threatens of reducing the pot of project subsidies for artists by 60% (!). We could look away from that hatchet because it doesn't hit us directly. But we cannot do that.
That unknown artist, who today makes things that we will say the day after tomorrow that they were important, we will need them later on our stage. And what that artist needs to grow is time. A budget from that project pot buys the great artist of tomorrow time to make his or her masterpiece.
The healthy counterweight to the boring brave mainstream of everyday life starts there. And that is where the happier and freer city starts. That is why those little artists receive our great support and great love.
Do you also want to support? Then sign the petition "Invest more in art, not less."
The Trix team