The Effenaar has had to let 45 out of its 81 people go. That’s a result of the corona crisis. This includes both permanent and temporary employees.
“It’s unavoidable,” Effenaar director, Jos Feijen, says. “Every week we only have one or two small concerts with 100 visitors. Normally, we’d now have plenty of sold-out concerts with 1,200 visitors. The financial impact is enormous.”
The music hall usually organises around 300 programmes a year. This year that will be 70, at most. The Effenaar is, however, responding to the corona crisis.
Isolation sessions
It’s holding about 200 ‘isolation sessions’ – live concerts that can be watched via the internet. But, this is a free event, so it doesn’t generate extra income for the music venue. The current restrictions make it impossible to run an economically sound business.
Feijen expects the current stage restrictions to remain in place well into 2021. “The Effenaar is anticipating this. We’re, therefore, reducing the number of employees to a small, decisive team.”
“These people will run the limited number of available programmes. We’ll that be able to scale up quickly,” adds Jos,” as soon as the restrictive measures are lifted.”
‘Losing know-how’
“It pains me to have these talks with all the employees. With this many people leaving the organisation, we’re also losing a lot of knowledge and experience. But we aren’t going to sit back and do nothing.”
“We’re seizing the opportunity to look ahead with a fresh perspective. We must plan for the post-COVID 19 era,” the director says. The events industry has already said it would go under without government intervention.
Source: Studio040
Translator: Bob
Editor: Melinda Walraven
