2010-09-09
Partly Cloudy
Now: 16°C
RSS-feed Subscribe via RSS


News

Artists might lose life time salary

Culture | 2010-02-24 | 1 comment
Would fewer quality books be written without a guarantee income? Photo: Wikimedia

The center-right government plans to abolish the so called life time artist salary.

A maximum of 157 people are receiving SEK 214 000 per year, without explicit demands on producing new pieces of art, music or literature. When one of them dies, the public can nominate new candidates who deserve the benefit. After nominations, the Swedish Authors’ Fund and the Swedish arts Grants Committee make a decision. The payments are reduced if the artists earn over a certain sum.

The main purpose of this system is to make it possible to create new pieces of art without having to worry about fianncial pressures but also for society to pay respect and appreciation to those who have contributed to the evaluation of cultural life.

The 157 people who already have the life time guarantee income would not be affected by the proposal; it only means that no new artists will get the benefit, so it will be slowly phased out.

Critics say that the artists receive the money for what they have done in the past and that the system should reward those who are doing something right now. Suffestions have even been to replace this with a hundred percent commercial system where artists must survive on a free market.

Minister for Culture Lena Adelsohn-Lileroth sais to the evening tabloid Aftonbladet that the system is unfair, randomly and has survived itself. She instead wants to create fewer scholarships which last for a limited time and is pensions-entitled.

However, those who get the benefit today, defend their privilege:

- Very few artists have the kind of incomes in life that afford them pension insurances. This income guarantee means that we get some safety and become part of a social system and I am very grateful that I have got it said the visual artist Anders Widorff to the daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN).

Also other representatives for the cultural sector as well as the political opposition criticize the decision and fear it will be a threat to a dynamic cultural life.

- The income guarantee can not be replaced with scholarships said Bengt Westeberg, chairman of the Swedish Authors’ Fund to DN.

Most of the 157 people on the list survive fine without the income guarantee. One example is Jan Myrdal, author, and far-left intellectual gives one example on what can be done with the money.

-The income guarantee makes it possible to do work where there is no profit, like visiting the guerilla in India as I recently did he says to Aftonbladet.
 

       Print Print article

Readers' comments

2010-05-26 16:05 Molly Brazen wrote:
Question: Since the implementation of this "life time artist salary", how many world-renowned artists has Sweden produced? Answer: Approximately zero.


Write a comment

All comments are reviewed by the moderator before they are posted. Only comments in English written in a respectable tone will be published.
Read a full description of our policy for comments.



Name:
  

Latest headlines




Question

After TV4 refused to show Sweden Democrats' commercial film, Danish politicians called for international election inspectors to be sent to Sweden. Do you agree with them?

News in short
2010-09-08
2010-09-07
2010-09-06
2010-09-05
2010-09-04

More...
Reader's comment
Stockholm Calendar
Sep 3
Sep 5 - Sep 11
Sep 7
Sep 12
Sep 16
Sep 17
Sep 19
Sep 22
Oct 8 - Oct 9
Oct 20 - Oct 22
Oct 27
Oct 29 - Oct 30
Nov 13 - Nov 14
Nov 26 - Nov 28