Culture scholarships
Culture scholarships
Every year, the Sten A Olsson Foundation awards culture scholarships in several artistic disciplines such as performing arts - music, dance, theatre, circus - visual arts, literature and film.
Culture scholarships 2026
David Radok
The Sten A Olsson Foundation’s Honorary Scholarship recipient for 2026, David Radok, made his debut as an opera director at Stora Teatern in Gothenburg in 1980. During the nearly 40 years that David Radok has worked in Gothenburg, his distinctive and artistically accomplished productions have played a significant part in establishing the city on the international opera scene. As a director, he has a rare ability to create multidimensional performing arts in which music, text, set design, lighting and ensemble work together as interconnected elements.
All my preparation and detailed directing notes are intended to give me the freedom to remain open during rehearsals. To feel secure enough to allow myself to be surprised and inspired by what happens in the moment.
Feline Andersson
Despite being at an early stage in her career, singer and musical theatre performer Feline Andersson has already made a strong impression. With her commanding stage presence and expressive voice, she has captivated audiences at the Göteborg Opera both as the witch Elphaba in the musical Wicked and in the demanding leading role of Kim in Miss Saigon. It was a role she had dreamed of playing ever since she first saw the musical at the age of thirteen in her hometown of Malmö.
What I want is to tell a story. I want to reach people and move them, to make them feel something, even when it is painful and difficult.
Tarik Kiswanson
Tarik Kiswanson’s artistic practice spans sculpture, drawing, video, sound and writing. The way his art takes form is not confined to a given medium or a literal explanation. Rather, it emerges through contact and interaction with its surroundings: through the specific conditions of physical spaces and the people who move through them, but also through the mental spaces and fields of thought that open up in these encounters. His art is in a constant state of transformation, while remaining rooted in his personal history and experiences of the world.
For me, the studio is not a physical space, but a state of mind.
Simon
Ljungman
Guitarist, singer, songwriter, arranger, bandleader and choir director. And everything in between. Musical polymath Simon Ljungman defies easy categorisation. His many roles now also include Artistic Development Director at Vara Concert Hall, a position he took up in November 2025. Many associate him with Håkan Hellström’s band, where he is bandleader and guitarist, or with Augustifamiljen, the house band on the television quiz show På spåret for ten years.
For me, music and play have always been closely connected. I like how the English word ‘play’ captures both.
Lydia Sandgren
To say that author and psychologist Lydia Sandgren made a major breakthrough with her debut novel Samlade verk would almost be an understatement. The nearly 700-page novel, partly set in 1980s Gothenburg, quickly found a wide readership and was awarded the August Prize in 2020. Her second novel, the equally substantial Artens överlevnad, was published in 2025. Once again, Gothenburg provides a setting, primarily in the 1970s, while the narrative moves back and forth in time and place, interweaving the city with contemporary Rome.
I see the novel as the perfect vessel for all that is ambiguous and multifaceted, nuanced and complex.
182 successful culture scholars
Once a year, the Sten A Olsson Foundation for Research and Culture awards three to six exceptional talents in the arts & culture sector – stage and screen acting, music, dance, pictorial arts, art handicraft, sculpture, literature, and circus performance art, to name a few. 182 individuals have been awarded since it was instated in 1996, providing them with the means to evolve as cultural practitioners. They represent Sweden’s top tier in the arts & culture sphere, and many have achieved international acclaim.
The Foundation selects candidates; it is not possible to apply for this scholarship.
