Today’s big topic: Turmoil in powerful foundation: Theater professionals lash out at new member
A controversy has erupted over one of the members serving on the Project Support Committee for Performing Arts under the Danish Arts Foundation, which is based in this building on H.C. Andersens Boulevard in Copenhagen.
What’s happening?
More than 130 million DKK.
That is how much the Danish Arts Foundation will distribute this year in public support for theater and performing arts around the country – funding that, for many players, can be decisive in whether they can bring their projects to life.
But controversy has erupted around one of the members appointed to help decide which projects receive public support.
In January, the Danish Actors’ Association and the Danish Artist Association wrote a letter to the Minister of Culture Jakob Engel-Schmidt (M). In it, the unions relayed concerns that the artist and choreographer Nønne Mai Svanholm, who runs the company Svalholm in Aarhus, had been appointed to serve on the Project Support Committee for Performing Arts through 2029.
Several of their members and people in the performing-arts community say the appointment is problematic because they have previously experienced issues with what they describe as a poor working environment under Nønne Mai Svanholm’s leadership. They have approached the unions because they do not trust that she can carry out the role on the project support committee in »an ethically responsible way«. And because they fear that future applications to the arts foundation will not be handled neutrally – or that ideas could be copied.
Why it matters!
At the Danish Arts Foundation, the Project Support Committee for Performing Arts consists of five members, two of whom are appointed by the sitting culture minister.
In his response to the unions, Jakob Engel-Schmidt (M) wrote that, up to the appointment at the end of 2025, he had not been aware of objectionable working conditions under Nønne Mai Svanholm. The minister wrote that he expects the unions to bring a case against her if there are grounds to do so.
It would be »problematic to change appointments on the basis of cases that have not been brought or tested«, Jakob Engel-Schmidt wrote in the February letter, which Politiken obtained through a public-records request.
Despite the inquiries and complaints the unions have forwarded to the minister, neither the Danish Actors’ Association nor the Danish Artist Association has filed a formal case against Nønne Mai Svanholm.
»People want anonymity, and none of our members are ready to pursue a case«, said Jakob Fauerby, vice chair of the Danish Actors’ Association.
Still curious? Read the full article here.
In other news
– The extremes of both demand and supply have collided in Copenhagen’s housing market
In April last year, the average price of an 80-square-meter owner-occupied apartment in Copenhagen was 4.8 million kroner. The trend makes clear just how quickly prices are rising in Copenhagen’s housing market, says Birgit Daetz, a housing economist at Boligsiden. A year later, the price is 6 million. An increase of 100,000 kroner a month. Sharply rising prices are also very much in evidence in Aarhus, though on a smaller scale. In the municipality of Aarhus, the price of an owner-occupied apartment rose 18.8 percent in April, comparing sale prices with the same month last year. That puts the average 80-square-meter apartment at 3.7 million kroner – an increase of 600,000 kroner in a year.From March to April alone, sale prices for summer houses rose by 2.8 percent.
– There is excitement over new international trains, but travel agencies are grappling with red tape
»We’re pleasantly surprised«, passengers said on board, as the Czech ambassador, Jiri Ellinger, spoke before departure about bringing the Czech Republic and Denmark closer together, and DSB’s head of customer relations, Charlotte Kjærulff, talked about »the adventure that awaits just a few hours away«. But planning the Prague route has been a messy process, according to three rail travel agencies, which also say they are facing major challenges with DSB’s new Talgo trains. In November 2025, the company put Talgo trains into service on the popular route to Hamburg. But the first six months have been marked by teething troubles, and passengers have described trains with very low or very high temperatures in the compartments, no power in the outlets and most of all major delays.
– Charlottenlund doctors found guilty of aggravated fraud
Without so much as a flicker of expression, the general practitioners Teit Reuther and Jonas Hertz of Charlottenlund Lægehus listened Tuesday as the judge in Lyngby delivered the verdict: Guilty. The two, former owners of the clinic on Jægersborg Allé, a 4.8-kilometer drive from the Lyngby courthouse, were found by a unanimous panel of lay judges to have committed aggravated computer fraud for more than four years. The court placed particular weight on the fact that the fraud was carried out jointly and systematically over several years, and that the two owner-physicians held positions of trust and exploited the trust-based billing system used by general practitioners and the regions. Both received suspended one-year prison sentences on the condition that they complete 200 hours of community service. The judge said that, under normal circumstances, the city court would have imposed unconditional prison terms on the two doctors. But the case has dragged on for so long that it has worked in the defendants’ favor.
Talk of town: Who’s lying? Officers, police leaders and the National Audit Office battle over the truth in scandal case
At a news conference on Monday, the state auditors presented the National Audit Office’s scathing criticism of the police for failing to investigate cases.
Imagine you’re a police officer in Denmark and you’ve just gotten wind of a suspect who’s conning retirees out of their savings. You’re itching to investigate – until your supervisor tells you you’re not allowed to look the case up in the police IT systems.
Why not? Because it might turn out the suspect has swindled other Danes in other police districts. And then all those cases would land on your desk, too. Better, then, to shelve the case and close it while it’s still small.
This isn’t a hypothetical. It’s a lived reality for several Danish investigators. It is one of countless distress calls from officers that the National Audit Office published Monday in two reports that paint a picture of a Danish police force in deep crisis.
On that very point, the National Audit Office raises doubts about how the police present reality. A recurring criticism is that many reports are opened as so-called “investigation cases,” rather than as formal cases. As a result, they do not appear in police statistics, the National Audit Office writes:
»The consequence is that data from the police, including briefings to Parliament, underestimate the scope of financial crime«, the National Audit Office writes.
According to one of the reports, around 2,000 rape cases have also been opened as so-called investigation cases and therefore do not appear in responses to Parliament.
But the police have no interest in hiding the scale of crime from oliticians. That is what Henriette Rosenborg Larsen, police director in Southeast Jutland Police, said. She pointed to the fact that each police district is allocated funding each year based on a special distribution formula, the so-called RAM model.
»And among the factors in that distribution is the number of Penal Code reports, so it would be pretty unwise, as a police director, to forgo resources because you ordered people to open investigation cases. There’s nothing to it«, she said.
Read the full article here.
This newsletter features stories originally published in Danish. AI was used to shorten and translate the articles into English, after which a member of the editorial staff reviewed and refined the content.