7. Financing and support
Sweden
Last update: December, 2021
- Public culture expenditure, all levels of government, per capita in 2020: 3 307 SEK, 2 867 EUR.
- Public culture expenditure in percentage of GDP, in 2020: 0.69 percent.
- Public culture expenditure in percentage of the total public expenditure in 2019: 1.60 percent.
Between 2008 and 2015, total public spending on culture increased by around 10 percent. There has been a noticeable trend of regional governments increasing their part of total government spending on culture while the municipal part is decreasing. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the national budgets for arts and culture increased further in the last two years.
Of the 15.8 billion SEK national government expenditure on culture, media, religious denominations, and leisure (as defined in the national budget) in 2019, 4.7 billion SEK went to popular adult education (folkbildning), 1.4 billion SEK to regional cultural activities, 1.7 billion SEK to museums and exhibitions and 1.4 billion SEK to theatre, music and dance. Public spending on culture varies a great deal between different parts of the country, both because different municipalities and regional governments spend different amounts and because the national government's cultural budget is spent unevenly in relation to different parts of the country. Priorities within cultural policy may also differ between different levels of government.
Last update: December, 2021
Table 7. Public cultural expenditure by level of government, 2020
| Level of government | Total expenditure in million SEK | Total expenditure in million EUR* | Share of total |
| State (central, federal) | 17 240 | 1 693 | 50.3% |
| Regional (provincial, Länder, etc.) | 4 670 | 458 | 13.6% |
| Local (municipal, incl. counties) | 12 411 | 1 218 | 36.1% |
| TOTAL | 34 321 | 3 369 | 100 % |
Sources: The report Public cultural expenditure 2020 by The Swedish Agency for Cultural Policy Analysis, The Swedish Tax Office (currency conversion).
* Conversion from SEK to EURO based on monthly data from the Swedish Tax Office: https://www.skatteverket.se/foretag/drivaforetag/euronochskatterna/omrakningskurser/redovisningsperioder.4.2ef18e6a125660db8b080004155.html
Last update: December, 2021
Table 8: Direct state cultural expenditure and transfers (central level)*: by sector, 2020, in 1000 of national currency
| Field/Domain/Sub-domain | Total in 1000 SEK | Total in % |
| I. Cultural Heritage | ||
| Historical Monuments | 728575 | 0.2 |
| Museums | 2016919 | 0.6 |
| Archives | 410353 | 0.1 |
| Libraries | 379341 | 0.1 |
| Intangible Heritage / Folk Culture | 67678 | 0.0 |
| II. Visual Arts | ||
| Fine Arts / Plastic Arts | 1094129 | 0.3 |
| Photography | 0 | 0.0 |
| Architecture*** | 43145 | 0.0 |
| Design / Applied Arts | 51594 | 0.0 |
| III. Performing Arts | ||
| Music | 249732 | 0.1 |
| Theatre, Music Theatre, Dance | 1294701 | 0.4 |
| Multidisciplinary | 0 | 0.0 |
| IV. Books and Press | ||
| Books | 322462 | 0.1 |
| Press | 0 | 0.0 |
| V. Audiovisual and Multimedia | ||
| Cinema | 562144 | 0.2 |
| Television | 9721 | 0.0 |
| Sound recordings | 0.0 | |
| Radio | 0.0 | |
| Multimedia | 707488 | 0.2 |
| VI. Interdisciplinary | ||
| Socio-culture | 1495618 | 0.4 |
| Cultural Relations Abroad | 0.0 | |
| Administration**** | 503611 | 0.1 |
| Cultural Education**** | 213126 | 0.1 |
| VII. Not covered by domain I-VI | 0 | 0.0 |
| TOTAL | 10150336 | 2.8 |
Sources: The report Public cultural expenditure 2020 by The Swedish Agency for Cultural Policy Analysis.
Last update: December, 2021
The objectives for public support of artists in Sweden are those of cultural policy in general (see chapter 1.1), and perhaps in particular that cultural policy should “promote quality and artistic renewal” and that it should “promote international and intercultural exchange and cooperation”. As noted above, when discussing the particular areas and art forms, some of parts of the arts and culture sector also have specific policy objectives directed at them. Even though Swedish cultural policy has a long tradition of focusing on improving the financial situation of artists, the income of artists and other professionals in the culture sector remain low compared to other professionals with education of comparable length. The Arts Grants Committee is responsible for monitoring the social and financial situation of artists (see chapter 2.3).
Several public authorities provide funding for individual creative artists. Important government agencies in this area include the Swedish Arts Council (Kulturrådet), the Authors’ Fund, the National Public Arts Council (Statens konstråd) and the Arts Grants Committee (Konstnärsnämnden). These are discussed further below, under 7.2.2.
Last update: December, 2021
As noted above, a number of agencies and public actors in Sweden award grants, awards, and scholarships to artists and projects in the area of arts and culture.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.
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). 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 organizations, in order to pay remuneration to artists who have placed their artwork at public disposal in exhibitions arranged by these organizations.
Additionally, on the regional and local levels, many regions and municipalities award grants, awards, and scholarships to artists and projects in the area of arts and culture.
Last update: December, 2021
A number of grants, awards, and scholarships exist for artists, writers, and other cultural professionals in Sweden, ranging from minor grants for travel or projects, to the Nobel Prize in Literature. Many of these are provided by the national government (see chapter 7.2.3), or by regional or local authorities. Others are provided by private funds, or by other private sector actors. In some cases, professional unions keep track of these, but there is no comprehensive overview, or database, covering all of these stipends, grants, awards, scholarships, etc.
Last update: December, 2021
Grants or subsidies are not, as a rule, given to trade unions, or other organizations 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 organizations.
Last update: December, 2021
Compared to the situation in many other European countries, public sector funding is unusually dominant in funding arts and heritage in the Nordic countries, especially in Sweden. During the post-war decades, commercially produced culture was considered low quality by official cultural policy, and private donations were considered to threaten the independence of arts and culture. Since the 1990s, donations on sponsoring have been increasingly viewed 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.
In 2013, the Swedish Agency for Cultural Policy Analysis collected information on both crowd funding and sponsorship as sources of funding for public cultural institutions. According to the agency, such private funding of culture may still be limited in Sweden but they also observed changes in the structure of the arts and culture sector suggesting that these sources of revenue may continue to grow in importance, for example there is 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 the Internet, and connectedness in Internet-based networks. At the same time, the Agency for Cultural Analysis warned that private funding of culture in Sweden is likely to remain low for the foreseeable 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 (Swedish Agency for Cultural Policy Analysis 2013.
While these risks of resource concentration undoubtedly exist, it should also be noted that the Agency for Cultural Policy Analysis focused on cultural institutions, i.e. on organizations already obtaining public funding. The extent to which sponsorship and donations are common on the local level in smaller towns and communities remains 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.