This chapter characterises Danish youth policies related to creativity and culture.

Denmark has a long and firm tradition of ensuring that children, young people, and their families have access to a wide range of high-quality cultural experiences.

Children and young people should have the opportunity to see and make use of high-quality art and culture in their everyday lives, and on their own terms. This is a focal point in Danish cultural policy.

Both the public sector and civil society provide cultural activities to young people outside of the school. The state and the municipalities co-finance a number of cultural activities for youth (e.g., music schools), and the state and municipalities fund non-governmental organisations, for instance, sports and scouts organisations providing cultural activities for young people.

In order to ensure freedom of expression in art and culture, grants to artists are given with no political strings attached. That is, independence and the arms-length principle are fundamentals of Danish cultural policy. The arms-length principle implies that neither politicians nor the Ministry of Culture are involved in specific subsidy allocation. The ministry’s role is to act as an architect of the national cultural policy and, in collaboration with the Danish parliament, to set the objectives and create the structures that form the basis of cultural policy in Denmark.

The task of awarding public support to the creative arts is, to a high degree, entrusted to independent institutions, councils, and committees whose members have competencies within the individual art forms. The Danish Arts Foundation and the Danish Film Institute are important bodies and institutions in this area.