Estonian Cultural Endowment director Margus Allikmaa answers to a Finnish online publication MustRead. Eveliina Talvitie's article can be read here
What is
the importance of art and culture in Estonian society?
I believe I should start my answer
with reference to our constitution. Namely, in the introductory paragraph or
preamble to the Constitution of the Republic of Estonia, it is stated that our
country was created, among other things, to
guarantee the preservation of the Estonian people, the Estonian language and
the Estonian culture through the ages. Therefore, the preservation of
culture is protected by the constitution, but of course, this requires the
state’s continued contribution to the development of culture. Culture is an
ongoing process; it cannot be preserved like the mummy of a pharaoh, and
luckily, this is also quite well understood at the national level.
Whether the
state can handle this task and how depends a lot on the world view of the
person evaluating it and the field close to their heart or their personal
values. People directly related to the fine arts and living mainly from their
own creative work or interpretations of those created by other people would
probably say that in Estonia the importance of culture is not sufficiently
appreciated, freelance creatives are not valued enough, they lack social
guarantees, and scholarships and grants are meagre and the state does not have
its own cultural policy. They are partly right. In Estonia, a very large part
of the money intended for culture goes to large institutions from broadcasting,
the national opera, the film institute that supports film production, dozens
and dozens of theatres and museums, the male choir and the national orchestra.
Freelance creatives, above all writers and artists, receive a relatively modest
amount of money and attention allocated by the state.
On the
other hand, comparing the facts, we have several things to be happy about – and
even proud of. For example, the share of general government expenditure on
cultural services is one of the highest in Europe and probably in the entire
world, and by adding here the subsidies of local governments and sponsors and
funds earned by the cultural sector, we get the share of the gross domestic
product produced by culture, which is also among the best in Europe.
In order to
support the above-mentioned freelance creative persons and the art they make, a
well-functioning public system independent of the central government has been
established in the form of the Cultural Endowment. It is a public fund mainly
intended for the support of freelance creatives and cultural projects born from
private initiative, and decisions in this fund are made by experts in their
field.
Is art
considered an independent value and something that should be accessible to
everyone?
Estonia
may not have stated it so explicitly, but the cornerstone of the cultural
policy that is consistently also confirmed in practice is precisely that
culture must be accessible to everyone. Generous subsidies for museums,
theatres, concert organisations and others make it possible to keep ticket
prices low, and various support measures keep the offers in various cultural
fields very high.
What is
the earning logic of the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and how successfully can
it finance different fields of art?
The Cultural Endowment receives its funds
mainly from two sources. 3.5% of the tobacco and alcohol excise taxes collected
in Estonia and 47.8% of the gambling tax are received directly into the budget
of the Cultural Endowment. In 2023, this will be 40 million euros or slightly
more. The final amount depends on the actual receipts, but the practice of
recent years shows that we always receive slightly more than we initially dare
to plan. These funds are mainly divided between eight areas, and in addition,
almost a third of this amount must be directed to investment subsidies for
nationally important cultural buildings. These eight areas are music, film,
theatre, visual and applied arts, folk culture, sports, literature and
architecture.
It is clear
that there are many applications for funding and it is not possible to satisfy
all of them. There is not enough money, but that in itself is not a bad thing.
The experts who make the choices can, or rather must, evaluate the quality of
the projects applying for support, and this helps to keep the bar high. It
would be bad if all requests received a positive response, and the same amount
of money as requested would be allocated. This would definitely make the quality
of the projects that come to fruition quite meagre.
Each year,
about half of the applications receive a positive response, and even those that
receive a positive response do not receive funding for the full amount
requested. Speaking in the language of numbers, the ratio of requested and
allocated amounts is 100:38; that is, for every hundred euros requested, 38
euros are allocated by the Cultural Endowment. Whether the percentage of
requests that receive a positive response is optimal or whether the ratio
between the amounts requested and the amounts allocated should be different is
a matter of preference. Personally, I am of the opinion that the percentage of
requests that received a positive response could be considerably lower, around
30%, whereas the amount allocated per request could be at least 75% of what was
requested. In this way, only the best of the best projects are realised, and
the project participants can improve how they do this with quality and
according to the original plan.
What
kinds of challenges does your organisation currently have?
The Cultural Endowment pays quite a
significant amount for scholarships and creative work grants to creative
people. Scholarships are primarily intended for acquiring a new skill or honing
existing skills, whereas creative work grants are intended for the creation of
a new work. The challenge is that, according to the law, these scholarships and
grants can be paid tax-free; that is, free of income tax, but this also means
that the recipient of a scholarship or creative work grant does not have the
obligation to buy health insurance or make payments to the pension pillars.
Creative people do receive some income from the Cultural Endowment, but they do
not automatically have social guarantees. The allocated amounts are also so
modest that they are not even enough for voluntary payments. Together with the
Ministry of Culture, the Cultural Endowment is looking for ways to increase the
scholarships and grants that are paid out in such a way that they are also accompanied
by payments for health insurance and contributions to the pension fund. This
topic has also reached the coalition agreement of the new government, and for
the first time in years there is hope that the problem will find some solution.
One possible solution lies in the fact that the taxes collected from excise
goods are increased, and this automatically means an increase in the funds used
by the Cultural Endowment. These funds could then be used to pay the social
taxes of freelance creatives who receive scholarships or grants for creative
activities from the Cultural Endowment.
What kinds of expectations do you have for the
cultural policies of the new Estonian government?
There are many matters in Estonian cultural
life that require a clear position on the part of the state. We all know that
there is never enough money in culture because creative people always want to
a) do something more, b) do something better, or c) do something completely
new. This is natural and no one can be blamed for that. Again, those who have
to finance these desires must be more courageous and specific in order not to
feed vain hopes and frustration. We either support the creation of something
new or more of the old things, but there is certainly not enough funds to struggle
in both directions. Doing things better must be supported in one way or
another. Therefore, making clearer choices is long overdue.
And yet, in
the last thirty years, the number of theatres has increased sixfold, the number
of museums has increased sevenfold, several new concert halls have been built
etc. All of these take quite a bite out of public funds. We expect the new
government to provide individual creative people, above all freelance artists,
writers, translators, editors, composers, musicians etc., considerably more
attention than before. The goal should be to raise their incomes and social
guarantees to a level somewhat comparable to other areas. Fortunately, as I
already mentioned, this topic is also included as a goal in the coalition agreement.
Do
Estonian political parties have very different ideas about the status of
culture?
This topic
would require a longer analysis because every political party has specific
nuances in their approach to cultural policy. In general, however, everyone is
of the opinion that the quoted sentence in the preamble to the constitution has
a significant meaning and it determines the direction of cultural policy; that
is, everyone understands that we must contribute to culture. Some people think
that cultural exports should grow significantly, others consider it important
to increase self-earned funds, yet others think that culture has an important
impact on the tourism sector, and there are also those who think that too much
money and attention goes to culture, but these are rather individual opinions
deviating from the mainstream, not positions that shape policy. All the
political parties are also united by the principle of the protection and
prioritised development of the Estonian language as well as education and
culture in the native language.