Cultural and Creative Sectors Guarantee Facility

In 2019, a Swedish bank established a guarantee facility for the cultural and creative sectors under a cross-sectoral part of the EU's Creative Europe programme. Responsibility for the programme lies with the Ministry of Culture. It is the first EU investment instrument with such a wide scope in the cultural sector. It has the same objectives as the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), which runs the Investment Plan for Europe: to increase lending to SMEs in the cultural sector to enable them to scale up their operations. The guarantee facility is aimed directly at the cultural sector, providing the opportunity to offer loans at reasonable rates of interest. The possibility for the cultural sector to obtain bank loans for its operations has been a major problem for a long time.
The cultural and creative industries consist of companies with cultural creation or creative processes as their business concept or raw material. Sweden is at the forefront of these industries both internationally and nationally. There is currently no precise definition of which activities are included in the "cultural and creative industries". The Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth usually specifies the following industries: architecture, computer games, design, film, photography, art, cultural heritage, literature, media and marketing communication, fashion, music, performing arts, crafts and experience-based learning. But in the light of digital developments in particular, this list is not exhaustive.