Søk ikke om prosjekttilskudd fra samme tilskuddsgiver i flere år på rad. Det gir bare organisasjonen et dårlig rykte å bli stamkunde. Fordi det som regel er flere søknader enn tilskuddsgiveren kan imøtekomme kommer søknaden med all sannsynlighet til å få avslag det tredje eller fjerde året.
(Don’t apply for project funding from the same funding partner for several years in a row. The organisation will get a bad reputation if it’s becoming a “regular customer”. As there are more applicants than grants the application will most likely be turned down the third or fourth year.)
Quote from guidelines on writing project applications by Nordisk kulturfond.
What kind of nonsense is this?
To me this is an excellent example of a attitude towards culture that is completely void of any kind of political and strategic long-term thinking. If an organisation have been able to build experience and knowledge by doing good work on projects for some years one should rather try to further build on that and encourage further development rather than thinking in terms of “fairness” and euqal distribution of grant money just for the sake of it. How is society expecting the art society to develop and mature if long term work is not encouraged?
The recent financial difficulties of Electrohype not being able to secure sufficient funding for future work illustrates the problem. Having develloped gradually into the organisation it is (or was) now collaborating in an excellent way with a major institution as Malmökonsthall being internationally recognized for the significance and importance of their work and reaching out to a big audience (the Electrohype 2004 biennale had 35.000 visitors) this could have become one of the major new media festivals of Europe in the next five years. Instead the municipality of Malmölet it slip into the sand.
