7. Financing and support
Sweden
Last update: November, 2016
Indicator 1: Public culture expenditure, at all levels of government, per capita in 2015 was SEK 2 636 (272 EUR).
Indicator 2: This corresponds to 0.62% of GDP.
Indicator 3: The share of cultural expenditure of the total government expenditure in 2012 was 1.3 %.
Last update: November, 2016
Table 2: Public cultural expenditure: by level of government, 2015
| Level of government | Total expenditure in SEK | Total expenditure in EUR | % share of total |
|---|---|---|---|
| State (national) | 11 185 000 000 | 1 154 260 000 | 43% |
| Regional (county) | 3 902 000 000 | 402 670 000 | 15% |
| Local (municipal) | 10 885 000 000 | 1 123 300 000 | 42% |
| TOTAL | 25 972 000 000 | 2 680 230 000 | 100% |
Source: Samhällets utgifter för kultur 2014–2015, Myndigheten för kulturanalys 2016.
Last update: November, 2016
Table 3: Direct state cultural expenditure and transfers (central level): by sector, in 1 000 of SEK, 2015
| Field / Domain / Sub-domain | TOTAL |
of which: Direct expenditure* (of government or its agencies) | of which: Transfers* | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| in 1 000 SEK | in % |
to other levels of government | to NGOs, companies, individuals | ||
| I. Cultural Heritage | 2 670 000 | 23,8 | |||
| Historical Monuments | 920 000 | 7.9 | |||
| Museums | 1 395 000 | 12,4 | |||
| Archives | 355 000 | 3,1 | |||
| Libraries | ** | ||||
| Intangible Heritage / Folk Culture | * | ||||
| II. Visual Arts | 80 000 | 0,7 | |||
| Fine Arts / Plastic Arts | * | ||||
| Photography | * | ||||
| Architecture | * | ||||
| Design / Applied Arts | * | ||||
| III. Performing Arts | 1 278 000 | 11,4 | |||
| Music | * | ||||
| Theatre, Music Theatre, Dance | * | ||||
| IV. Books and Press*** | 311 000 | 2,7 | |||
| V. Audio-visual and Multimedia | 310 000 | 2,8 | |||
| VI. Interdisciplinary | * | ||||
| Socio-culture | * | ||||
| Cultural Relations Abroad | * | ||||
| Administration | * | ||||
| Cultural Education**** | 3 800 000 | 34,0 | |||
| VII. Not covered by I-VI | 2 736 000 | 24,5 | 1 300 000 ***** | ||
| TOTAL | 11 185 000 | 100 | |||
Source(s): Myndigheten för kulturanalys.
* Information not available.
** Basic funding for public libraries is provided by municipalities. National government funding of public libraries is counted under literature. Funding for research libraries is not included in the table and is in most cases included in government grants for universities.
*** Not including government grants to the press, outside of the cultural policy budget.
**** Government expenditure on popular education and on culture in public schools. Higher artistic education is not included here since it is an integrated part of government grants to universities and university colleges.
***** Grants for regional cultural activities and institutions included in The Culture Cooperation Model.
Last update: November, 2016
Several public authorities provide funding for individual creative artists. Important government agencies in this area include The National Public Arts Council (Statens Konstråd), The Swedish Arts Council (Statens Kulturråd) and The Arts Grants Committee (Konstnärsnämnden). As a part of the inter-ministerial cooperation between the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and Communications, funding is allocated to support cultural and creative industries (see chapter 2.6).
Last update: November, 2016
There are common measures for visual artists, musicians, composers and authors, such as working grants for 1-10 years, income guarantees, project grants, travel grants and pension grants. There are also specific schemes which vary from field to field and taking the nature and needs of the different art forms into account (see also chapter 7.2.4).
The Swedish Arts Council is responsible for
- distributing national grants to independent theatre, music and dance companies, co-operative art studios, co-operative shops of arts and crafts and artist owned galleries; and
- granting exhibition funding to non-profit organisations, in order to pay remuneration to artists who have placed their artwork at public disposal in exhibitions arranged by these organisations.
Last update: November, 2016
Through the Swedish Authors' Fund (Sveriges författarfond) and the Arts Grants Committee (Konstnärsnämnden), the government supports individual artists financially through various grants. The Authors' Fund is directed towards authors, translators, book illustrators, and cultural journalists. The Fund allocates government compensation for public lending at libraries. A portion of this compensation is given to the individual author, in direct proportion to the number of public loans of his / her work; another portion is transferred to the Fund itself, from which grants and scholarships are allocated to writers etc.
The Arts Grants Committee allocates travel grants, project grants, or stipends for one year or more, to artists who do not fall under the responsibility of the Authors' Fund. The Arts Grants Committee also runs a studio programme for visual artists (IASPIS), open to artists both from Sweden and from abroad. The Swedish Institute (Svenska institutet) has grants for international exchange within the arts, sciences, and media. There is also a system of state income guarantees, through which chosen artists are guaranteed a minimum annual income.
The National Public Arts Council (Statens konstråd) is responsible for buying contemporary art to display in various premises of the government and government agencies, including universities, county administrative boards and courts. The National Public Arts Council also co-finances non-governmental partners for artistic contributions to housing areas, schools and public places, and even the traffic environment.
The Swedish Arts Council (Statens kulturråd) gives grants to groups, cooperative projects, and non-profit organisations. The Swedish Arts Council gives grants to artists' centres in various artistic fields. The role of these artists' centres is to find work opportunities and to find new types of artistic commissions for their members who are professional artists in their respective fields (theatre, dance, music, visual art, applied art, photography, literature, and film). On the regional and local levels, there are grants and schemes for artists living in their respective areas.
Last update: November, 2016
Grants or subsidies are not given to trade unions or other organisations that represent artists, as they are negotiating counterparts and need to strictly maintain their independence from the government. National committees of international NGOs, such as the International Artists Association (IAA), the World Crafts Council (WCC) etc., receive annual subsidies in the form of participation fees for travel to or hosting international conferences, as do many other non-governmental organisations.
Last update: November, 2016
Since the 1990s, business sponsoring has been advocated and tried as a complement to public financial support of cultural institutions. Expectations that sponsoring would become an important source of funding have proved wrong so far, and the issue has, in view of the marginality of current sponsoring, begun to cool down politically. Official cultural statistics does not calculate the size of voluntary contributions either in the form of voluntary work or in the form of donations. Since donations to cultural purposes are not tax deductible, and no statistics are collected, only very limited data exist on the size of donations.
During 2013, the Swedish Agency for Cultural Analysis collected information on both crowd funding and sponsorship as a source of funding for public cultural institutions. According to the Agency, such private funding of culture may still be limited in Sweden but they also see tendencies in Swedish society suggesting that it may continue to increase; an increasingly strong donation culture in Swedish society, an increasing concern in the wider image of business companies, and an increasing interest in corporate social responsibility. When it comes to crowd funding, increasing willingness to donate money is again an important factor, as is the increasing use of internet, and connectedness in internet-based networks. At the same time, the Agency for Cultural Analysis warns that private funding of culture in Sweden is likely to remain low for the immediate future, and that all artistic and cultural endeavours do not have the same chances to attract private funding; both corporate sponsorship and crowd funding requires networks and contacts. Furthermore, such funding for projects in many cases requires that basic funding is available. There is also a risk that private funding may contribute to public funding concentrating on those who have the resources to obtain private funding as well.
While these risks of resource concentration undoubtedly exist, it should also be noticed that the Agency for Cultural Analysis has focused on cultural institutions, which already obtain public funding. The extent to which sponsorship and donations are common on the local level in smaller towns and communities remain largely unknown, but this is likely an important source of income for minor cultural endeavours. It also appears that in terms of cultural funding from private foundations and in terms of the mobilisation of voluntary work in various cultural associations, civil society support of culture appears to be far more important than business. Civil society organisations in arts and culture have estimated that the total number of hours of voluntary work in their activities to nearly 16 million, or an average of 100 hours a year per volunteer. In addition, most state museums have a "friends of" association attached to them and these have, in many cases, provided significant financial contributions to the museum.