The Noorderzon Performing Arts Festival is working together with community organisation Quiet Groningen to get festival-goers to purchase an extra ticket for someone who would otherwise not be able to afford it.
Translation by Traci White
The Groninger Internet Courant reports that people buying tickets to the late August festival can also buy an extra ticket for someone of limited financial means for 10 euros. The initiative is part of a national campaign called Geef een Toegift (Give an Encore), which is a play on words in Dutch referring to an encore of a performance and giving a gift.
Noorderzon has set aside tickets for every performance, and the extra tickets will be given to people from the so-called Quiet Community of Groningen. The Quiet Community is a national organisation that aims to shed light on poverty in the Netherlands and make life a little bit easier for people living in poverty. There are seven “Quiet Communities” in the Netherlands, and each city recruits sponsors to provide goods and services that poorer members of the community could not otherwise afford, from second hand bikes to haircuts to tickets for cultural events.
Geef een Toegift is an initiative from the Verenigde Podiumkunstenfestivals (The Union of Performing Arts Festivals), a collection of 40 festival organisers across the Netherlands. Every festival is collaborating with a community project and calling on festival attendees to help buy a ticket for someone else who would not be able to afford it. The idea is based on paying it forward, similar to the goodwill gesture of paying for a cup of coffee for the person in line behind you.