'A commitment to cultural pluralism' Diversity practices in two Amsterdam venues: Paradiso and De Meervaart

Cultural policy has traditionally had close ties with the construction of the society as a nation state, which has been marked by its built-in tendency towards cultural homogenisation. Post-World War II, multicultural societies pose profound challenges to these traditional forms of cultural policy. Although, in the last decades, western democracies have been designing cultural diversity plans, this does not mean that governmental policies have successfully been translated in institutional practice. In the Netherlands, mainly established cultural institutions have failed to integrate diversity into their core business. Yet, there have been a few exceptions that continue to make attempts to adapt their programmes to address new populations. In this article, we use Parekh’s view of a multiculturalism that reconciles unity and diversity, as a heuristic device that allows us to explore and examine the bottom-up diversity policies and practices of two Amsterdam-based cultural institutions: Paradiso and De Meervaart.