voitteko auttaa? [Finnish Cultural Policy]

[jnthn]

Hello,

Apologies for my lack of language skills.

I'm a Master's student from the UK, completing a course in Culture and Creativity. My specialist interest is comics and comics production.

Following this article, this Finnish policy document and this Finnish Arts Council document I need some information on Finnish cultural policy, cultural exports and comics - specifically related to any programmes run by the Government to encourage artists / publishers of comics, and any data that may have been collected as a result.

If you know of any information that you feel may be useful (in Finnish or English) please post here. If you feel you may be able to help further then please email or private message me here.

Thank you!
J.

Below is a translation of the above using Google Translate. This service does a good job for Finnish to English. English to Finnish, however, I fear is not so good.

Hei,

Anteeksi minun kielitaidon puute.

Olen maisterin opiskelija UK loppuun kurssin kulttuuriin ja luovuuteen, olen asiantuntija korko on sarjakuvista ja sarjakuvien tuotanto.

Tämän artiklan mukaan tämä poliittinen asiakirja, ja tämä Suomen taidetoimikunta asiakirja Tarvitsen tietoa Suomen kulttuuripolitiikka, kulttuuriviennin ja sarjakuvat - erityisesti liity mitään ohjelmista, joita hallitus edistää taiteilijoiden / julkaisijoita sarjakuvat, ja kaikki tiedot, jotka voivat olla kerätty seurauksena.

Jos tiedät kaikki tiedot, jotka mielestäsi voi olla hyötyä (suomeksi tai Englanti) lähetä tästä. Jos sinusta tuntuu, ehkä auttaa muita niin lähetä sähköpostia tai yksityinen viesti minut tänne.

Kiitos!
J.

[[kivi]]

If you know of any information that you feel may be useful (in Finnish or English) please post here. If you feel you may be able to help further then please email or private message me here.

Hi,

could you perhaps define more exactly what you'd like to know? Your question seems to demand such a wide answer that it's quite impossible to clear in such a small space as in a letter or this answer space.

What I'd guess you'd like to know is "how is the Finnish comics export financed" and the answer to that is "mostly by grants, given either from individual cultural funds or by Ministry of Education".

There's also an evergrowing network, a grapevine, of small independent publishers who trade comics and also might trade art and artists. Quite a few Finnish small press publications carry English or French translations in sub-marginals.

Some Finnish artists work for international publishing houses, but as we don't have a tradition of literary agents, a large scale syndication has not emerged yet.

You may continue to place your questions in English, since most Finns speak at least adequate practical English, while our own native language is very hard to master and a big problem to translation robots such as Babelfish or GoogleTranslate.

All the best,

Kivi

[Mara]

First one must understand that the Finnish comic scene is quite small. One can easily count the professional cartoonists here (who actually make a living out of it) by one hand. That is because there aren't enough publishers who can afford to pay the artist enough for the work he/she has done. And the Finnish language area is too small. There aren't enough buyers to support the artist. So most people who make comics here put their focus on graphic design or illustration, since they are more viable career options. Comics are mostly a hobby.

However, there has been some movement towards the French markets. A few dozen albums have been translated to French, and they have got a good reception over there. An example of this is Ville Tietäväinen's Linnut ja meret ('The birds and the seas'), which has been published by Delcourt. Some artists have also worked for French publishing houses, such as Dargaud. A comic artist Ville Ranta made an album, Célébritiz for them with a Frenchman Lewis Trondheim.

There has not yet been a smash hit Finnish comic that will be translated to other languages. But we are waiting...  I hope I didn't write too much bulls***t in here. I hope that the experts here can cry out if something I wrote is totally wrong...