For the Basic Income scheme, you just had to demonstrate you had previously produced a form of art, within a certain time frame. I think for musicians, you had to have released something within the last two years, or performed publically. It was a reasonably loose criteria, from which they picked 2000 people at random.Any idea how were the artists picked?
I remember reading about 14-15 years ago that Lasse Marhaug (noise artist for over 30 years and sometime metaller) had gotten an artist's grant for a year - I think 30,000 was mentioned.
Marhaug was first Norwegian noise artist to release a record. I also heard some black metal musicians got Norwegian arts grants.
The Young Gods got a French government grant in the late 1980's for promoting the French language - despite being from Suisse.