Per Bergquist

Every year the Swedish entertainment industry is taken over for weeks by a single television show trying to find Sweden's representative at the Eurovision Song Contest. Melodifestivalen has grown into a center around which a large portion of the Swedish music industry revolves and is financed by. Is it really reasonable that so much power is wielded by a single production?

How can an entire career in the cultural sector not count? The Minister of Education has announced that one-third of the funding for adult education associations is to be cut, with the money instead being invested in educational programs that lead to “real jobs.” What happens to the next generation of creators? And what do we lose as a society when the pathways into the cultural sector become increasingly scarce?