6. Coherence or incoherence in multilevel funding for independent artistic and cultural actors: The case of Norway

The Norwegian cultural field is largely characterised as a mixed economy, where the participants live both off the market and from public support schemes. Since Norwegian (and Nordic) cultural policy can largely be said to be based on a Nordic welfare model (Sokka ed. 2022), with emphasis on public subsidies rather than private donations, and an active arts policy, the Norwegian cultural field is almost without exception heavily dependent on public funding. As part of this model, within the Nordic region, the general sentiment among both politicians and the public at large favours the importance of public funding t o keep a thriving cultural life. Consequently, for self-employed artists, applying for public funding schemes is an essential part of their artistic activity. Moreover, to have a diverse funding system, with numerous, partly parallel funding schemes across the different art forms, is widely considered a democratic good.

In addition to being a mixed economy, the Norwegian cultural field is also characterised by what Grünfeld et al. (2020) call a patchwork economy. Here, income from arts-based work (both from the market and public funds) often is supplemented with income from other types of work, either arts-related work or non-arts work (Throsby and Petetskaya 2024: p. 61). Consequently, in this economic model, income is garnered from a number – or patchwork – of sources: public, market and work-life based. Central to this economy is a peculiar creative work practice where many artists re-invest parts of their income to uphold art production, what Throsby (1994) refers to as the ‘work-preference model of artistic behavior’. Put simply, this means that many artists are so profoundly engaged in producing art that they will cross subsidise such production with funding that could otherwise have been used as salary for themselves. In consequence, broadly illustrated in the research literature (Bille et al. 2017; Throsby 2010, Menger et al. 2014; Heian 2018), the ideal-type artist often stretches far to gain arts-based work, even if it means long working hours for little money. Hence, as public project funding constitutes a relatively risk-free source of income that can be geared directly into art-based work, this explains the importance of such funding to many artists and cultural workers.

Although dependent on public funding, many artists and cultural workers at the same time see themselves as business actors (Røyseng et al. 2022). This is particularly true for the part of the field that holds industry resemblance, e.g., film, literature, music and architecture and design. Although the most commercial players are part of a large and global economy, it is still important to emphasise that in a relatively small national market, with relatively limited export, most players are completely dependent on the public policy instruments to survive, even artists and cultural workers who are considered outstanding within their fields. Although one can talk about differences between genres in terms of commercialisation degree, these differences are relatively small. This means that access to Nordic and international markets is important to many of these workers. To establish and maintain solid networks constituted by peers and arts, mediators are important. This also suggests the need for grants that sustain such work.

A third feature that characterises the Norwegian arts and cultural field and its need for public funding is how it in recent years has been subject to a rapid development related to digitisation and technological development (Hylland and Primorac 2024). A central feature is, of course, the transition from physical to digital (e.g., streaming) services. This development comes with new challenges in a small market like the Norwegian (or Nordic) one, and the need for cultural policy instruments to counteract various forms of market failure has increased.

With this development, which lately also includes the development of artificial intelligence (AI), the policy instruments (in this context, also the legislation and other regulatory authorities) have to a much greater extent than before had to deal with issues and challenges related to copyright. Also, this development is transnational and calls for cultural policy instruments that work across borders, be it Nordic or international ones. To some extent, national funding systems cater for such cooperation.

To sum up: firstly, public funding systems are crucial to most Norwegian artists and cultural workers. Furthermore, given recent developments in the arts and cultural field, the need for Nordic and international funding sources is assumedly greater than ever. But does that mean Nordic artists and cultural workers utilise the possibilities that exist? In this chapter, this question is posed, looking at the interplay between public subsidy systems for arts and culture in Norway and the Nordic subsidy systems for culture, represented by the two key Nordic funders: Nordic Culture Point (NCP) and Nordic Culture Fund (NCF). More specifically, the research question is as follows:

In this research question, the concept of coherence is central. How is this concept defined and measured in the context of Nordic cultural subsidy systems? On an overarching level, coherence points to the interrelationship between different instruments in the funding system. Often, but not solely, this will mean the capacity different funding schemes have to interact in fruitful ways. Consequently, a lack of coherence – incoherence – will thus point to how such instruments do not interplay positively. Even more specifically, positive interaction is found in different shapes, from instruments merely co-existing without interfering, to enforcing each other. This definition builds on Négrier et al.’s concept of internal coherence (2023: p. 10), which comes with a set of five indicators, ranging from textual and experienced, via chronological and axiological to political coherence.

In line with this indicator set, coherence in Nordic cultural funding can be defined by its level of being open, well-communicated and easily accessible for all potential applicants. Moreover, coherence also refers to its ability to be experienced as transparent and fair, with similar quality assessment practice across the Nordics. Chronological and axiomatic coherence refer to instruments being recognisable over time and shifting assessments and governance systems, and not being seen as conflicted or incommensurable (Négrier et al. 2023).

The analysis includes public subsidy systems for arts and culture at state, county and municipality levels of government in Norway, and includes funding schemes for domestic and international art projects. The analyses will focus on grants given in 2022, since this is the year from which detailed data from the Nordic funders are available (see chapter 2). All data on the domestic funding is tapped from publicly available sources, mainly Statistics Norway, Arts Council Norway and Stikk.no.

One exception is data from Arts Council Norway about applicants for their schemes in 2022, where Telemark Research Institute has access to applicant names. However, since the data from Nordic Culture Point (NCP) and Nordic Culture Fund (NCF) only included applicant names to a very little degree, these domestic data were not used in the analysis.

Furthermore, all data and tables are assembled and produced by the author. In focus are the free public funds available from support schemes aimed at applications from individual artists and artistic constellations (ensembles, associations, groups, organisations, co-productions, etc.). Consequently, the analysis will focus on the project-based component of the subsidy system, excluding the part that aims to cover the operating expenses of cultural institutions or, for that matter, artists and artist organisations. In Norway, this project-based part is popularly referred to as “the free field” (of arts and culture)

Directly translated from Norwegian [frifeltet].

, often connoting being a counterpart to the institutionalised part of the cultural sector. Free here roughly implies a freer role, arguably with a more risk seeking artistic profile than the (safer, but more sedate) institutions. This, however, is frequently rejected by the latter. Nevertheless, as an idiomatic term (and connotation), it has come to stick.

In the following, firstly, the chapter provides an overview of the total support system for arts and culture in Norway, including the state, the counties and the municipalities. Secondly, it describes and analyses the different funding schemes for the project-based part of the Norwegian arts and culture field, focusing on the national and Nordic levels. Finally, the chapter discusses the interplay between the different levels and types of funding and sees this interplay against a broader backdrop of Nordic cooperation, and Nordic added value.

In this section, the total support system for arts and culture in Norway will be briefly explained.

In Norway the two main providers of public support to arts and culture are the state and the municipality levels of government, whereas the counties play a minor role (cf. Berge 2022). In 2022, the total public support for the cultural sector was €4,224 million

The Norwegian funding is reported and disbursed in NOK. In this article, the original sums in NOK were converted to Euro by the author, using the 2022 average exchange rate for €/NOK was 10.1021. (Source: The central bank of Norway, https://www.norges-bank.no/tema/Statistikk/Valutakurser/)

(NOK 4,670 million) (SSB 2024). The distribution between different levels is displayed in Figure 6.1 below.

Figure 6.1. Public Norwegian support for arts and culture, percentage by level

In this total number, we find a vast number of different recipients of public funding, where many cannot be described as arts and culture, including major cultural institutions like the Norwegian public broadcaster, NRK. Thus, in Table 6.1, we see an overview of the different purposes that received public support specifically aimed at arts and culture in 2022. They received as we see in total €940 million. As we also see, music and performing arts receives a lion’s share of these funds, with more than 25% of the budgets. The reason is that this budget post contains support for the largest cultural institutions in Norway, for example, the national opera house and the national theatre in Oslo, several philharmonic orchestras, etc. Museums are also a major receiver of public cultural funding; in 2022, this sector stood for almost 19% of the budget. The largest provider of funding for the project-based part of the arts and cultural sector (the “free field”) in Norway, The Norwegian Cultural Fund, in 2022 received almost 16% of the total budget. We will return to this funding in detail later.

Table 6.1. Allocation of public funding for arts and culture, 2022, million EUR

As in many Nordic and European countries, also in Norway, lottery funds are used for arts and cultural purposes. Almost 70% of this funding goes to sports purposes, but a considerable number goes to cultural purposes. In 2022, 92 out of a total of €418 million were spent on various purposes, with the Cultural Rucksack

The Cultural Rucksack is a national programme for arts and culture in Norwegian schools. For more information, see, e.g., Bjørnsen (2012).

as the largest recipient with €31 million. Frifond, another programme for children and youth organisations working with, e.g., arts and culture, received €20 million. Also, buildings, archives, libraries and museums, music and miscellaneous other purposes received funding from the lottery funds in 2022. This funding has moreover been shown to be relatively stable over time, both in numbers and with regards to allocation purposes. The lion’s share of the lottery funds, however, goes to various sports purposes.

In Norway, the regional level includes both counties and municipalities. Traditionally, the municipal level has constituted a substantial share of the total public funding, for decades between 45 and 50% (cf. Berge 2022). As we saw in Figure 6.1, in 2022 the percentage was slightly below that, a little more than 44%.

If we start with the counties, in 2022, the 11 counties

A later reginal reform increased this number to 15 (2024). The Norwegian capital city, Oslo, is both a county and a municipality. In the overview of funding on the regional level, Oslo is counted as a municipality and is thus not included in the numbers presented in this section.

spent approximately €75.5 million on arts and culture. In all the Norwegian counties’ budget, funding for culture is distributed on the following budget categories: Libraries, museums, dissemination purposes, cultural production and other cultural activities. In 2022, in all counties seen as a whole, libraries received 8.9% of the total cultural budget. For the other categories, the percentages were: Museums 27.8%, Dissemination 23.6%, Cultural production 16.8% and Other cultural activities 17.7%. The observant reader will find that this does not add up to a 100%. The reason is that the county level includes funding for sports in culture, a funding that is excluded in this overview.

In Table 6.2, we see how the county fundings are distributed on different purposes.

Table 6.2. County funding for arts and cultural purposes, 2022, EUR 1,000

A brief analysis of the county level numbers, shows that there are relatively large differences between the counties, in terms of what category they fund the most. This is partly because they prioritise the different budget items differently and partly because there is no coherent system from county to county concerning where to post budget items. Consequently, when Innlandet spends almost €5.8 million on dissemination, and Nordland receives under a tenth of that, it does not necessarily have to reflect a large difference in priorities; it could also stem from the way funding and funding objectives are categorised.

As for the Norwegian municipalities, in 2022, they spent a little more than €1.4 billion on culture. This is a large number, also compared with the state level. However, one should not analyse these spendings unreservedly. Most prominently, one should remember that in Norwegian municipalities funding for culture could mean funding for more than just arts and culture production and dissemination. In some municipalities, e.g., funding for sports and general leisure time activities are included in culture. In others, culture funding includes funding for voluntary organisations that work with cultural matters in a wider sense. Consequently, as for the county level, it is difficult to extract data for an in-depth analysis of money streams specifically aimed at “free field” actors.

With 357 municipalities (2024), it is difficult to visualise their funding profiles individually. In Table 6.3, we see the overall funding for culture on the municipal level, sorted by county.

Table 6.3. Municipality net expenses for culture, by counties, 2022, million EUR.

From these numbers, several findings seem relevant. One that is apparent from the table is that the large regions consisting of Oslo and the surrounding municipalities, Oslo and Viken, are big spenders on culture. However, this mainly reflects that these are densely populated municipalities. As we see, the percentage spent in relation to the total municipal budgets differs relatively little between, e.g., Viken (4%) and the scarcely populated region Troms Finnmark (3.8%). However, Oslo shines both with its high percentage (5.4%) and its amount spent in relation to capita (€442 in 2022), a number that is almost twice the number of that spent in Møre og Romsdal (€231 in 2022). However, here it is important to keep in mind the national capital effect that Oslo has (Montalto et al. 2018). Perhaps most importantly, Oslo houses many of the national institutions, institutions that come with a high degree of state funding, but still require additional municipal funding. Consequently, Oslo needs to maintain its spendings on culture, to also maintain its institutional ownership, morally and formally.

Given the nature of the data on the regional level, the analyses thus far have had a general character. Seeking more targeted and specific analyses of Norwegian funding for the “free field”, I turn in the next sections towards the two most prominent national funding bodies for all project-based artists and groups: the Norwegian Culture Fund (NCF), administered by Arts Council Norway, and the Support programs for international art and culture collaboration (STIKK.no), distributed by the organisation Norwegian Arts Abroad, where the first body mainly funds art production, distribution and consumption in Norway, and the latter international – including of course Nordic – activities.

The Norwegian Culture Fund was established in 1964 and has since been the perhaps single most important source of funding for contemporary Norwegian arts and culture production and dissemination (cf. Berge 2022)

https://www.kulturdirektoratet.no/english

. The fund is administered by Arts Council Norway, an arm’s length body that in 2022 distributed a total of 44 grant schemes, within the seven areas of music, literature, performing arts, visual arts, journals and criticism, multidisciplinary projects and cultural heritage. As outlined in Table 6.4, in 2022, The Norwegian Culture Fund funded 3,409 projects with funds totalling €88.9 million. The field of music constitutes the largest recipient. Also, the performing arts field is a large recipient. That means that the classic performing arts receive an impressive 75% of the funding, underscoring the traditionally strong position of these art forms in the project-based economy in Norwegian cultural policy.

Also, in terms of approval rate, music projects perform strongly, with more that 50% of the applications approved. This can be interpreted in terms of quality, in which case, applications from music could be seen as of a particularly high quality.  This interpretation is strengthened by the fact that applications within the genre of music receive 34% of what they apply for. Performing arts here scores lower, with a 43%/​26% approval rate, which may indicate that the applications are not of the same high quality.

Table 6.4. Funding from The Norwegian Culture Fund, 2022, million EUR

If we look closer at the grants, the average application sum amongst recipients in 2022 was €26,815. The median sum was €14,353, which means that there was an overweight of small projects among those who applied for support. The same average among those who received grants was €20,133. Here the median sum was €9,899. We see the same trend here: the median sum indicates that there is an overweight of small projects amongst those who received support from the culture fund. The fact that the average sum approved is smaller than for the applications in general indicates that the committees are slicing the grants thinly. The common interpretation of this finding is that it is in line with the cultural democracy idea of the Nordic and Norwegian cultural policy model, where it is seen as more important to make many artists and projects benefit from the funding with a reduced sum rather than simply rewarding the most prestigious or high-quality ones (cf. Berge 2022). This interpretation is strengthened by the finding that the median sum is smaller than the average sum, both for all applications and approved applications, as it indicates that the overweight of projects that apply for funding is smaller than the average. The average application sum amongst artists that had their application rejected, to sum up, was €25,461. The median sum for this group was the same as for the ones that had their applications approved, namely €9,899.

From the list of 44 schemes, 34 schemes are particularly interesting in terms of support for project-based artists and groups. In Table 6.5, these schemes are listed. It is important to note that this project-based funding excludes support for operating expenses (e.g., for cultural institutions and NGOs). However, in some schemes such institutions and NGOs are welcome to apply for funding. In these cases, the “free field” – artists and groups – benefits from the funding more indirectly, as the institutions and NGOs are assumed to hire artists and groups for their projects.

Table 6.5. Project-based funding schemes from The Norwegian Culture Fund, 2022, million EUR.

As Table 6.5 shows, the funding covers all parts or levels of the cultural business chain, i.e., production, distribution and consumption. Hence, artists and cultural workers, agents and producers, and venues, galleries and festivals, etc., received funding. Several trends are interesting, e.g., the approval rate for venues and festivals was quite high: for music festivals it was as high as 78% and for performing arts venues 61%. The sum that each recipient received, however, was lower, with approval rates of 31% (music festivals) and 46% (performing arts venues). That means a high quantity of such venues and festivals received funding, but for much smaller sums than they applied for. This may indicate that the cultural democracy values central to the Nordic cultural policy model, referred to earlier in the section (cf. Berge 2022, Sokka 2022), remains important also here.

Another interesting trend is the production-distribution-ratio within music and performing arts. Music production, i.e., composing and phonogram production and publishing, received in sum close to €5.5 million. Music dissemination, on the other hand, i.e., venues, festivals and touring, received almost €36 million. The production side thus amounts to 15% of the distribution and consumption side. In the performing arts field, this relationship is different. Here the production side amounts to €17.6 million, while the distribution and consumption side sums up to €4.4 million. The production side, in other words, is more than three times as big as the distribution and consumption side. The same tendency is detectable within visual arts, as there the production side is much larger than distribution and dissemination. However, here the focus on production is more explicitly stated. Within the performing arts – music included – the urge to disseminate the art as widely as possible is at the core of the cultural policy, and has traditionally been seen as equally important as production. Moreover, access supply, as described by, e.g., Menger et al. (2014), is well known as a potential problem with the cultural policy model. Therefore, the quite large supply component within the performing arts is somewhat surprising. In terms of subsidy system coherence, it could indicate a lack.

In addition to the funding from the NCF, Arts Council Norway also administers and allocates artist scholarships. The scholarships are personal, and mainly aim to support the artists’ personal economy. However, when applying for these scholarships, in addition to pointing out their artistic merits, the artists also describe their project plans for the scholarship period. Since many artists prescribe to a ‘work-preference model of artistic behavior’ (Throsby 1994), meaning they are eligible to prioritise working with their own art projects over being paid, one can assume that a substantial portion of the scholarship is spent on art production and dissemination. In 2022, €44.9 million were spent on these scholarships, divided into working grants (€26.3 million), guarantee income (€15.4 million) and miscellaneous scholarships (€3.2 million). A total of 1,121 scholarships were assigned out of 9,123 applications, something that gives a 12% approval rate.

In addition to funding from the Norwegian Culture Fund, funding from the schemes within STIKK.no is important for Norwegian artists and cultural workers that specifically operate in international markets. The scheme is administered by seven artist organisations

Office of Contemporary Art Norway (OCA), Music Norway, Performing Arts Hub Norway (PAHN), Norwegian Crafts, DOGA, Norwegian Film Institute (NFI) and Norwegian Literature Abroad (NORLA).

that work under the umbrella Norwegian Arts Abroad (NAA). The STIKK.no schemes are funded by the two Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Culture and distributed by seven respective arm’s length committees, appointed by the seven NAA-organisations. The funding is allocated on an on-demand principle only, which means that the artist must have an invitation from an international venue, gallery, festival, etc., to be eligible for support from the scheme. As seen in Table 6.6, the grants allocated are relatively small, especially compared to those allocated from the Culture Fund. However, the funding is regarded as important, both as it comes with a certain status, and because such funding is hard to come by elsewhere in the funding system. The status related to the funding furthermore reflects the general high status international activity holds in society, and the assumption that to succeed in these markets, the artistic quality is extraordinary.

Table 6.6. Funding from the STIKK-scheme, 2022, million EUR.

As we see from the table above, many of the same features that we saw in the allocation of funding from NCF is also prevalent in STIKK.no, most prominently with the field of music as the (by far) largest budget post. In 2022, €1.2 million were allocated by the Music Norway committee. Music is also the area with the highest number of applications and the highest approval rates, both in number and sum. In approved sum, the field of visual arts is the second largest area, with performing arts as the third largest. Performing arts, however, received a higher approval rate than visual arts, almost at the same level as music. When music and performing arts receive a large portion of the funding, the most important reason is that artists from these two areas may apply for their performances abroad. The reason visual arts artists receive a relatively high proportion of the funding is that participation in large expos like the biennale in Venice, Italy, or Documenta in Kassel, Germany, which are hot spots that Norwegian artists have succeeded in entering in past years, is very expensive. Literature is the smallest recipient within the scheme. This may seem peculiar but can be explained by the fact that this scheme only includes authors’ visits to international literature festivals and fairs. For example, book agents and publishing houses are not part of the scheme. Consequently, funding for larger events have come from other sources.

For example, in 2019, Norway was Guest of Honour at Frankfurter Buchmesse, with NAA-member Norwegian Literature Abroad (NORLA) as the main partner. The event budget was almost €4.4 million, from which one must assume that also Norwegian authors benefitted.

In this section the allocation of funds from Nordic Culture Point (NCP) and Nordic Culture Fond (NCF) to Norwegian applicants will be described and analysed. The analysis will also include interplay between the Norwegian and Nordic funding systems. In 2022, out of a total of €10.64 million, NCP and NCF allocated €1.74 million to Norwegian applicants. Consequently, Norwegian applicants received 16% of this Nordic funding. In the following, these numbers and distributions will be investigated further, starting with NCP.

In 2022, through the nine programs Demos, the Culture and art programme, Long-term network funding, Mobility Funding, Norden 0-30, Short-term network funding, Volt, Support for Artist Residencies and Mentorship, NCP allocated €6.03 million. From this sum, Norwegian applicants were granted close to one million euro, or 28% of the total funding. As we can see from Table 6.7, in 2022, 61 applicants received €0.96 million in funding. Consequently, the approval rate for Norwegian applicants was 29% for applications approved, and 28% for the sums that were allocated. This was the same approval rate in sum as Denmark, somewhat lower than Finland (36%), but slightly higher than Sweden (23%), and much higher than Iceland (15%). The same year, a total of 305 applications were sent, with Norwegian actors as co-applicants. Here 29% of the applications were approved, while 28% of the application sums were approved.

In the case where Norway was the main applicant, applications to the Mobility Funding was the most popular, with 104 applications. Fifty-six applications were sent to the Culture and art programme. 9 applications went to the Demos program, whilst the other programmes received only a few applications each.

Table 6.7. Funding from NCP to Norwegian applicants and in total, 2022, million EUR.

If we look closer at the Norwegian applications, we see that the applications almost exclusively come from institutions and organisations. The average application sum among the Norwegian recipients was €16,532, whilst the median application sum was €10,000. The average amount of support among recipients was €15,778. Also here, the median sum was €10,000. This means that some large, approved projects raise the average, which in turn could indicate that large projects are more inclined to receive funding than small projects. It is also interesting to observe that the applicants who received funding received almost everything they applied for. This is somewhat different from the National policy applied by the Norwegian Culture Fund, where many projects are awarded at least some of what they applied for, guided by the central Nordic cultural policy model value democratisation. The average application sum among those who were rejected by the NCP in 2022 was €16,491. Here the median sum was €2,540, which indicates that in terms of the average sum, there is little difference between the projects that were approved and those that were not. Looking at the median sum among those who were not approved, however, which is substantially lower, could indicate that projects that are not approved in general are smaller, and presumably less professional. If this is the case, the finding matches the NCP profile, aiming the funding at high quality, high professionality projects.

Furthermore, moving on to the Norwegian applications that received funding, as Table 6.8 shows, the approved applications cover most traditional art forms such as music, performing and visual arts, literature, etc. In the table, it is also displayed to what extent these applications applied for external funding, from how many sources, and the total sum.

Table 6.8. Distribution of the NCP funding to Norwegian applicants in 2022 by art genre, EUR

This information is interesting as it says something about the interplay between NCP-funding and funding from other sources. For example, in the 12 approved applications within music, an additional six funding sources are stated. For all the 61 projects, 34 such external funding sources are stated. Only among the 12 approved applications within visual arts, there are no external funding sources stated. In terms of funding sums, we can see that from the projects that received NCP-support (in total €962,431), the additional sum stated as expected from external sources is €999,531, very close to the sum the NCP gave to approved projects that applied for funding from a national funder (on the state, regional or local level). In fact, only one of the approved projects applied for funding from a European funder (e.g., Creative Europe, European Structural and Investment Funds, Erasmus, etc.), something that indicates that most Norwegian applicants to NCP operate within a Nordic context exclusively. In sum, this indicates that if the funding from external sources is approved, the NCP funding releases a substantially larger activity than what would have been the case had the NCP or external funding been isolated. There are no data that tell if this is the case, so it is very difficult to say whether these synergies are hence a reality.

Another interesting question regarding the interplay between Nordic funds and projects relate to which different countries are involved in the applications from one applicant country, in this case, Norway. In addition, it is interesting to see which countries these most probably are. In 117 out of the 209 applications from Norway, no information on co-applicant countries is available. However, in 92 applications, co-applicants are listed. Table 6.9 shows from which countries these 92 Norwegian applications to NCP found their co-applicants.

Table 6.9. Co-applicant nationality in approved Norwegian applications to NCP in 2022.

As we see from row 1, in 69 of the 92 Norwegian applications with information about co-applicants, Sweden was a co-applicant. In these 69, 42 also had co-applicant from Finland, 41 from Denmark, 25 from Iceland, 10 from the Faroe Islands, 7 from Greenland and finally 4 from Åland. Row 2 shows the same data for Norwegian applications with Finland as a co-applicant, etc. As the table displays, the Scandinavian countries are frequent co-applicants. In 17 of the 92 applications from Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland were also co-applicants. In 41, Norway, Sweden and Denmark were main and co-applicants.

Thirty-one applications with known co-applicants received funding. Out of these, 24 (77%) had Swedish co-applicants, 19 (61%) Danish, 14 (45%) Finnish and 11 (35%) Icelandic. Three or less had co-applicants from Faroes Islands, Greenland and Åland. Six of the approved Norwegian applications had co-applicants from Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland, while five had co-applicants from three of these countries. Only two of the approved applications from Norway did not include any of the four.

In 2022, through the four programmes Project support, Start-Up, Globus and Puls, NCF allocated €4.61 million

The funding from NCF is reported and disbursed in DKK. In this article, the original sums in DKK were converted to euro by the author, using the 2022 average exchange rate for €/DKK = 7.44 (Source: https://www.exchange-rates.org/no/valutakurs-historikk/eur-dkk-2022)

. From this sum, Norwegian applicants were granted €0.78 million, or almost 17% of the total funding. As we can see from Table 6.10, in 2022, a total of 207 applications with a Norwegian main applicant were sent to NCP, amounting to €4.52 million. Forty-nine applicants were approved and received €0.78 million in funding. Consequently, the approval rate for Norwegian applicants was 24% for applications approved, and 17% for the sums that were allocated. This was the same approval rate in sum as Denmark (19%), Finland (15 %) and Iceland (16%), but considerably higher than Sweden’s 11%. Also in 2022, a total of 329 applications were sent, with Norwegian actors as co-applicants. Here, 29% of the applications were approved, while 20% of the application sums were approved. In the case where Norway was main applicant, applications to the Project support-programme was the most popular, with 100 applications, where 28 of these were approved. 40 applications were sent to each of the Start-Up and Globus programmes, where 9 and 3 were respectively approved. In addition, five applications were sent to Puls, where all were approved.

Table 6.10. Funding from NCF to Norwegian applicants and in total, million EUR

If we look closer at the Norwegian applications, we see that they come from both individual artists/​ensembles and institutions and organisations. Among those who are refused, there are particularly many applications from individual artists and ensembles. The average application sum among the Norwegian recipients was €23,357, whilst the median application sum was €15,118. The average amount of support among recipients was €15,890. Here, the median sum was €13,441. In 2022, on average the application sum among those who were rejected by the NCF was €21,372. Here the median sum was €8,770. The lower median application sum among those that were not approved could indicate that these applicants were in general smaller than the ones that were approved, something that could also indicate a lower degree of institutionalisation. If this is the case, it would match the NCF profile, targeting its funds more towards grassroot applicants, with a broader scope. Since the difference between the average and the median sum among recipients was much smaller than for the NCP, one could argue that the allocation policy of the two in fact matches their different profiles.

In Table 6.11, we find to what extent the Norwegian applications received external funding, i.e., from how many sources and its total sum. Again, this is interesting, since it indicates the level of interplay between NCP-funding and funding from other sources. In the 49 projects that received NCF-support (in total €837,366), a total of 70 external funding sources are listed, amounting to €999,531. Thirty of these projects list that they also applied for funding from a national funder (on the state, regional or local level). Only one of the approved projects, however, notes that it applied for funding from a European funder (e.g., Creative Europe, European Structural and Investment Funds, Erasmus, etc.). As in the case of NCP, this indicates that the NCF funding releases an additional activity and subsequently potential synergies.

Table 6.11. Distribution of the NCF funding to Norwegian applicants in 2022 by art genre, EUR

In the data from NCF, it is interesting to look for which countries are involved in the applications from Norway. In 100 out of the 207 applications from Norway, no information on co-applicant countries is available. However, in 107 applications, co-applicants are listed. Table 6.12 shows from which countries these 107 Norwegian applications to NCF found their co-applicants.

Table 6.12. Co-applicant nationality in approved Norwegian applications to NCF in 2022.

As we see from row 1, in 60 of the 107 Norwegian applications with information about co-applicants, Sweden was a co-applicant, whereas 46 had a co-applicant from Finland, 57 a co-applicant from Denmark, 20 a co-applicant from Iceland, 8 a co-applicant from the Faroe Islands, and five a co-applicant from Greenland; none had a co-applicant from Åland. Row 2 shows the same data for Norwegian applications with Finland as a co-applicant, etc. As the table displays, in NCF, as in the NCP-data, the Scandinavian countries are frequent co-applicants. In 15 of the 107 applications from Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland were also co-applicants. In 34 of the applications where Norway was the main applicant, Sweden and Denmark were co-applicants.

A set of questions both sustains and arises as we analyse data from both the Norwegian and the Nordic levels of public funding namely: What is the interplay between the public subsidy systems for culture at different levels of government in the Nordics? Moreover, are these systems coherent and meeting the needs of artists and cultural workers in current times?

As stated in the introduction, today’s art world is highly internationalised, something both the public funding system and applicant behaviour should reflect. As artists and cultural workers are increasingly dependent on Nordic and international networks, and since the domestic markets for Nordic artists are relatively small, to at least maintain relevance in the Nordic region appears as a fruitful point of departure for most such artists. Given the cultural field’s level of dependency on public funding, to have a coherent and effective funding system stands out as an important prerequisite.

However, to measure whether the funding system is in fact coherent across national borders, I concur that the understanding of coherence presented in the introduction is tricky. To see whether the same artists that apply for funding provided by Norwegian municipalities, counties or Arts Council Norway also consider Nordic Culture Point (NCP) and/​or Nordic Culture Fund (NCF) schemes as relevant funding sources is difficult, as the applicant’s names are not fully accessible within the data set, or at least were not in this study. Consequently, it is difficult to conclude whether the same applicants extract multi-level synergies from various forms of funding. However, as we saw in the analysis of both the NCP and the NCF cases, many of their applicants also apply for national (and even international) funding from other sources. This indicates, at least on a general level, an interplay between funding bodies and schemes, and thus the fact that the artists, on the same general level, show an awareness of a synergy potential.

At the same time, the number of applications to the national and the Nordic levels show that there is a large potential in the Nordic funding bodies for more applicants. In 2022, more than 7,000 artists and cultural workers applied for the funding administered by Arts Council Norway. At the same time, just a little more than 500 applied for each of the Nordic funding bodies, NCP and NCF, and that includes both main and partner applicants. The share number indicates that there is no significant interplay between national and Nordic funding schemes, at least for the majority of Norwegian applicants: too many Norwegian artists and cultural workers do not see Nordic funding as relevant.

If this really is the case, why? To analyse and fully answer why this is the case would require comprehensive qualitative research. This would indeed be relevant and attractive knowledge to have, both for the cultural policy research community and for public funding authorities. However, based on the analyses provided this far, and seeing the coherency concept as an indicator, some key factors should be considered briefly. In Norway, the popular support for Nordic co-operation is high, as recently stated by the Minister of International Development Anne Beathe Tvinnereim. In a speech to the Norwegian parliament,

https://www.regjeringen.no/no/aktuelt/redegjorelse-om-nordisk-samarbeid-2024/id3058628/

she pointed out that out common culture is one of the cornerstones of Nordic cooperation, and that the effort to promote such a common culture is well supported by the priorities in Vision 2030.

https://www.norden.org/en/publication/nordic-region-towards-being-most-sustainable-and-integrated-region-world

In other words, there should be no cultural barriers to Norwegian applicants, and assumedly this general openness to the Nordics should work as an incentive for the cultural field to react aptly to Nordic funding opportunities. This is supported by many of the findings in this study, which show that both the NCP and NCF through their various schemes attract a variety of applicants from different groups and genres. This also indicates that there are few barriers regarding spreading the word about these funding opportunities. The two Nordic funding bodies communicates well and are easily accessible on platforms frequently used by the actors in the cultural field. Consequently, one could conclude that the Nordic funding is also accessible to Norwegian artists and cultural workers in a communicative sense.

A final factor to consider is the need for funding. This might seem an odd factor to look at, given the claim that public funding is pivotal to the Norwegian cultural field. However, one could speculate whether national funding systems are so well established that most artists specialise in this system. Given the fact that both NCP and NCF require some level of Nordic co-operation to be eligible for funding, this requires that the applicant has some level of Nordic network available. Even if many artists frequently operate in both Nordic and international markets, this requirement probably has a substantial selection-effect. To many potential applicants regarding the cost/benefit ratio of different funding sources, developing such a network assumedly appears as a too high price to pay for relatively small sums. The average funding to approved applications from Arts Council Norway in 2022 was, as we observed in chapter 6.3, approximately €20,000. The same average sums given by the NCP and NCF those same years were, on the other hand, €16,000. Consequently, a crude economic rationale favours the national funding system, if the Nordic system requires considerable investments in a Nordic network. In the cases where artists do these cost/benefit calculations, perhaps necessary investments are reserved for wider international networks, with even more prestigious actors. This barrier, related to an effect of cool pragmatism, could explain why the number of applications to the two Nordic funding bodies is, after all, relatively small, compared with those seen in the national funding system. If this is the case, it is a shame, as it overrides the effect from seeing Nordic co-operation as important in an increasingly internationalised and competitive (art) world. This is something that is not easy to mitigate, given that premise that interplay between different levels of the Nordic funding system is a good. Again, it is a shame, as being able to connect and develop the different levels of Nordic funding would contribute to increasing the Nordic added value, and moreover contribute to achieving the Nordic region’s vision to be the most sustainable and integrated region in the world.

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