The Luxembourg State “has put in place a whole range of measures and mechanisms to promote the knowledge society, the preservation of our memory, the support and mobility of artists and creators both nationally and internationally, local support for certain cultural projects and cultural training.”[1]
The main support system chosen by the government is an agreement mechanism (“Conventions”). The ministry of Culture has signed agreements with more or less 80 cultural and creative structures, associations, federations etc. that receive a fixed amount of public funding in return for a specific project or, mostly, specific missions to be fulfilled by the beneficiaries that thus become important actors for the implementation of cultural policy. Subsidising is another direct support system provided by the ministry of Culture, though many of the subsidies have been “outsourced” in the meantime to kultur|lx – Arts Council Luxembourg in order to reduce and better organise funding channels. The ministry of Culture can also provide a specific support in the context of artistic career development and research related to artistic realizations in the form of a grant to support artistic creation, development and retraining.
Apart from the social and fiscal measures as developed in chapters 4.1.3 and 4.1.4, other indirect measures and structural actions have been put in place by the ministry of Culture to support artistic creation, such as:
- Commissioning of musical works[2]
- Acquisition of works by Luxembourg artists or artists living/working in Luxembourg for the art collection of the ministry of Culture.
The works in this collection are made available for the artistic layout of ministries and government administrations, as well as for loans to cultural institutions.
- Provision of the Bourglinster Annexes, workshops for emerging national and international artists
- « Kunst am Bau » – 1% of the total cost of a building constructed by the State or by municipalities or public establishments, financed or subsidised to a significant extent by the State, must be allocated to the acquisition of artistic works (see point 4.2.4)
Neistart Lëtzebuerg: as part of the package of support measures in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ministry of Culture introduced several new measures as of May 2020 to boost culture and artistic creation in Luxembourg.
Some of the State cultural institutes or other public cultural structures also propose specific support programmes (mainly grants, project support and artist residencies) benefitting different sectors, in particular the National Audiovisual Centre (CNA), the National Institute for Architectural heritage (INPA), the Rockhal’s Rocklab, the Centre culturel de rencontre neimënster etc.
Two public funds also play an important role in the cultural and creative domain:
- The Fonds Culturel National FOCUNA “has as its mission to receive, manage and use allocations and donations from public and private sources for the promotion of the arts and sciences and the conservation, restoration and appropriate use of the national historical and cultural heritage, both immovable and movable”.
- In terms of audiovisual, the Film Fund/Fonds national de soutien à la production audiovisuelle proposes one main financial incentive for film productions: the so called National Audiovisual Production Support (AFS) is a “selective scheme which provides discretionary loans to producers to finance development and scriptwriting, distribution and production/coproduction for fiction, animation, documentaries, short films, transmedia and XR projects, repayable from the finished work’s receipts. Applications are evaluated by a selection committee based on cultural, social and economic criteria.”[3]
Important support schemes for culture are also provided by the Œuvre nationale de Secours Grande-Duchesse Charlotte, a public body which offers different types of aid, either project funding aid for organisations wishing to finance or co-finance a specific project, or start-up funding aid for artists and cultural actors who intend to carry out a project of obvious interest to the public. With the culture and creation prize fund, the work also finances competitions, residencies, professional training courses or grants.
[1] https://mc.gouvernement.lu/fr/Domaines.html
[2] Rapport d’activité 2020 (2021) Ministère de la Culture, p.40-44
[3] http://www.filmfund.lu/film-fund-luxembourg/financial-incentives-for-film-productions
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