The grants are intended to be in addition to other income from reviews, that is, supplements to ordinary fees.

The deadline for applications is 3 p.m. on Friday, 3 May 2024.

Please use the Fritt Ord Foundation’s ordinary application form in the applications centre. It is important that the application be labelled “Kritikerstipend” (Grant for Critics) in the title field on the application form.

A profession under pressure
Critical reviews of literature, art and culture in the media are being subjected to pressure for several reasons. Parallel to the exceptionally high and, in several areas, rising level of cultural creation and interest in culture in Norway, we see that criticism is stagnating or dwindling over time.
Critical reviews in the public sphere must be further strengthened in order to equip the citizenry to reflect on the vast diversity of cultural expressions. The Fritt Ord Foundation would like to help stimulate and enhance critical reviews as an indispensable aspect of Norwegian journalism. Good criticism communicates and engages; it rests on expertise and is knowledge-oriented, thus strengthening the general public and society-at-large.

Development and revitalisation
At the same time, criticism as a genre needs to be developed and revitalised to reach more media users. Traditional individual reviews of one-off cultural expressions must be supplemented by critical comments, more detailed reviews – and other types of fresh, genre-promoting criticism.
The grants will be awarded to freelance critics whose work targets the Norwegian public and uses Norwegian as their working language. They are earmarked for freelancers and independent writers who have publication agreements. We invite applications from critics who earn their living by writing for independent media that comply with the Code of Ethics for Norwegian Editors and other media’s ethical and professional guidelines. Critics published in daily and weekly media will receive the highest priority.
The grants will be awarded for a period of one year. It is possible to apply several times, but there is no automatic renewal.

Application requirements
Applications for grants for critics should include a 2–3-page description of your planned activities as a critic from August 2024 to August 2025. What do you plan to give priority to this year? What doors would a grant open for you? How would you spend it? What are your thoughts about presenting and possibly revitalising the genres of criticism in which you work?
Smaller parts of the grants can be used for travel and skills development initiatives, but they are primarily intended to support critics’ opportunities to earn a living from their reviews, specifically by publishing high-quality critical journalism.
Attach a brief confirmation from the editorial board(s) with which you are affiliated through your publication agreement, including your current level of remuneration and the trend in fees in recent years.

Please note that the grants are intended to be in addition to other income from reviews, and that the fact that you receive a grant cannot be used to reduce your current level of remuneration. Please include a brief report on your overall general income situation in the application.
The list of recipients will be announced in mid-June.

Other programmes to promote critical reviews
The grants will be awarded directly to 10 critics. However, the Fritt Ord Foundation also plans to promote critical reviews in other ways as well. We would like to draw attention to the following possibility:
Daily and weekly media and the critics who write for them can apply for project support for specific critical review projects under the call for applications for "Norwegian Journalism”. There are six ordinary deadlines for applications for this scheme each year. See the call for proposals for more information.

See the Norwegian story for overview over previous grant holders, 2015-2023.