Just out of curiosity, how much money or what percentage of the budget does your country out towards the arts? What is the funding like for classical music in particular? The Australian government is pretty stingy when it comes to the arts and in the past, supporting classical music has even been looked down upon. When the famous Sydney Opera House was being built one politician (I think it was a politician, it probably was) said something along the lines of "Why do we need an opera house? Opera is only for poofters and Jews!"
I don't know about how much money goes to the arts exactly in Australia, but I'll check and post it soon.....
COAG, which state in OZ has the least funding would be interesting- Tasmania, Northern Territory, Queensland or even Victoria! Could be similar in the US which state has the lowest per capita funding for the arts Iowa, Texas, New Mexico?
I note that Germany's public arts funding, allows for 23 times more full-time symphony orchestras per capita than the United States.. now there is a stat.
I note that Germany's public arts funding, allows for 23 times more full-time symphony orchestras per capita than the United States.. now there is a stat.
In Germany, funding for culture is around 0,8%. This includes libraries and museums. Theatre and music is around 0,3%. That's still around 3 billion Euros. I understand that without subsidies, tickets for concerts would have cost three to four times as much.
According to Arts Council England's website, "between 2011 and 2015, [they] will invest £1.4 billion of public money from government and an estimated £1 billion from the National Lottery."
That's a lot more than I was expecting. BBC News says prior to 2010 and the rise of Thatcher 2: Electric Boogaloo they had a 30% bigger budget.
Interestingly, I wonder how much of this gets "misused" by intelligent organisations. I remember in the 1980s hearing of a folk band which ran regular local concerts. They would approach local organisations with a proposal and get a guarantee from the Arts Council so that if the show failed to make a profit, the organisers would not suffer a loss. They inflated their charges and made a useful living out of this which funded their appearance at genuine folk events which could not afford big money or get guarantees. You can see that people have caught up on this when you look at this quote :
The Australia Council considers the remuneration of artists to be integral to effective budgeting and planning, and requires information on artists' remuneration in appropriate funding applications.
In Ireland, the budget for the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht is under 0.5% of the total, coming to about €260 million in 2013. This includes all the arts and museums, nature reserves and conservation, and promoting the Irish language; I'm not sure what percentage goes to music per se.
There's a report by the Canada Council for the Arts that lists per capita public arts spending. The table below comes from that report. The spending numbers are in pounds. (Sorry for the table formatting - I can't get it to look reasonable)
Country/ spending / % of GDP
Finland 59.2 .47
Germany 56.5 .36
France 37.8 .26
Sweden 37.5 .29
Netherlands 30.3 .21
Canada 29.9 .21
UK 16.6 .14
Australia 16.4 .14
Ireland 5.6 .07
US 3.8 .02
I'm not surprised that Scandinavian countries spend more than most. The one strange fact that jumps out at me is that countries that speak English do not fund the arts as well as others.
(The trick for anybody else is to switch to the wysiwyg editor and paste it in from word or similar. I replaced the spaces with tabs and made it into a word table and could then paste over directly.)
Thanks so much for reformatting the table. Just one correction. The spending is per capita so it's in £ not million £. That column should read Per Capita Public Arts Spending (£).
These numbers are tricky and sometimes misleading. In the US, for example, almost no federal budget goes to support orchestras. But 60-70% of the costs of municipal orchestras are funded by tax-deductible charitable contributions. So probably 20% of the cost of the orchestras is, indirectly, paid by the federal government.
A home-cooked appendix: Denmark: The Ministry of Culture had 6.3 Billion DKK to spend in 2013 = 1.14 Billion $. There are 5.58 million inhabitants and the BNP/GDP 2012 is 315.5 Billion $. So the Ministry of Culture = 0.36 % of BNP/GDP or 180 $ per capita. There is public art funding on a munipal level too though, but less substantial.
In Romania, the Ministry of Culture (which includes the arts) received a budget of approximately 128.5 million euros for 2013, 4.73% less than in 2012. The government supplied a budget of approx. 8.7 million euros for organizing the 2013 edition of the George Enescu Festival (ever since the first edition the Government of Romania has been the principal partner and sponsor of the Festival).
Moreover, the current prime-minister of Romania says (or should I say promised) that there will be enough funds to hold the Festival in 2014 (the Festival is currently held once every two years). That remains to be seen.
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