Every year, the Cultural Board of Umeå Municipality awards the cultural scholarship to two cultural practitioners, but as the pandemic has hit these industries hard, the board has this year awarded four cultural practitioners the scholarship. One of these recipients is the artist Nathalie Lidqvist.

Nathalie, congratulations! How does it feel to receive this scholarship?

It feels very honourable and I was very proud. I think it's powerful and important that there are organisations that really care about culture in general and see the individual cultural practitioners," says Nathalie.

How did you get the scholarship?

Friends and acquaintances nominated me for the scholarship. Then Robert from the Culture Committee called when I was at Willy's buying lunch and told me that they wanted to give me the scholarship.

The Travel & Culture Scholarship is for 15000 SEK. What will you do with your money?

It should go to the music. I'm producing a new album and the scholarship will be very valuable in offering decent pay to the people I work with.

You have just released new music. Is there anything more exciting going on in your business?

I'm releasing a single this spring/early summer. We've been recording and soon it will be mixed. Then I also have some gigs during the summer, it'll be a lot of fun.

Listen to Nathalie Lidqvist's latest song "Hela tiden" here:

Nathalie has developed her business with support from eXpression Umeå and participated in the eXpress programme in autumn 2020.

Travel and cultural scholarship

This year's fellows are director Yuliya Antonova, musician Nathalie Lidqvist, choreographer, dancer and teacher Emelie Boman and filmmaker and film teacher Anna Brodin.

Each year, the Cultural Committee awards two travel and cultural scholarships in the fields of visual arts, theatre, dance, film, photography, music and literature. Each scholarship is worth SEK 15 000. You are welcome to nominate artists you think are worthy of a scholarship.
Read more here