“Time for culture” • Swedish Culture Bill

Swedish Government recently presented the new Culture Bill with suggestions of changes in the national cultural policy from 2010. The suggestions follows to some extent the work done by The Committee of Inquiry of Cultural Policy and their report presented earlier this year (read more here and here). Some suggestions were expected as the transition of responsibility from the state to the regions, where regions and local politicians are expected to take a larger responsibility of culture in their areas of responsibility. The suggestion has been criticized, mainly with the question of who does then take responsibility for a cultural policy equal for all citizens? The risk is that every region will act differently, some politicians put a lot of money to culture, while others in other regions will put less to Art and culture.

One worrying point in the new Culture Bill is the suggested changes of the support to cultural journals and literature. One of the basis of Swedish democracy is the many voices expressed in the myriad of cultural journals. They concern society, Art, literature, environment, human rights, feminism and all sorts of topics. Some of these get support from the state to secure their publishing, with the argument that many voices are important in society. The changes suggested by the government threaten these journals existence. Not only by cutting funding, but also by the suggestion to change the definition of what can be seen as a “cultural journal” from a more general definition including societal journals to one more specified focusing on the Art forms. Will be interesting to follow.

Many newspapers and journalists have of course reacted of this. Read some of these (in Swedish) in Göteborgs-Posten, Expressen, and for a long list of points made look at Föreningen för Sveriges Kulturtidskrifter (FSK).