Library patronage has fallen over the past 15 years, according to a report published today. The events sector suffered from the interest rate pandemic, but jobs were already being lost before that.
Young people in particular are using libraries less and less, according to the Civilisation Review published today, Thursday. It is the first publication by the Ministry of Education and Culture (OKM) to look at developments in its administrative sector over the past decades.
The change in library patronage has occurred over the last 15 years. The share of borrowers in the population fell to half a third by the early 2020s.
Reading is also changing. The amount of time per day spent on it has decreased, especially for men.
The use of libraries will probably continue to decrease in the future, and the extensive library system seems to remain a historical intermediate stage in Finland. It was built in the 1960s.
The employment and economic importance of the cultural sector have also decreased during the last decade.
The change is largely related to the clear decrease in employment in the press and printing industry, but it can also be seen, for example, in the organization of cultural events. Employment in the sector was halved between 2008 and 2020. The event industry was significantly affected by the corona pandemic, but employment in the industry fell by more than a third even before the crisis since 2008.
Despite the decrease in employment, the number of artists seems to have increased. It can be seen in the increase in the number of members of professional organizations in the field. Most of the artists are freelancers.
Funding is stagnating
Art and culture are financed in Finland by the state, municipalities and private foundations. Kulta, the guardian of culture and art, aims to increase the culture budget to 1% of the state’s budget expenditures. The state’s culture budget has been around 0.8–0.9 percent for a long time.
The state has also financed art and culture from gambling winnings. In the 2010s, the amount was half of the entire state’s cultural budget. Now, the activity that was previously funded from betting profits is being transferred directly to the state budget funding.
The funding level of artist grants for freelance artists, awarded by the Center for the Promotion of the Arts (Taike), has remained fairly stable over the past ten years. On the other hand, the funding granted for artistic work has weakened slightly. It includes, among other things, the state award and \”library grants\” intended for writers.
The level of financing is about a quarter lower than in the period before the recession of the 1990s.