The writer proposed a grant to two writers with whom he had been camping

“Here I am questioning my own stupidity that I have made Insta-stories, on the basis of which complaints can be made.”

This is what the long-time writer who evaluated the grants intended for writers in 2022 of Taike, the Art Promotion Center under the Ministry of Education and Culture, says Pauliina Old House for STT. The evaluators gave statements about the grant recipients to Taike’s management, which processed the applications. In addition to Vanhatalo, the applications were read by another evaluator.

Vanhatalo proposed the 12,000-euro working grant that two other writers were applying for, which they also received. The previous fall, Vanhatalo had published stories on his Instagram account a few months before the grant search, in which he had said that he was spending time with these writers at, among other things, the summer cottage and at his home.

A writer without a working grant Ida Pimenoff paid attention to updates. He sent Taike a rectification request, in which he demanded that Taike take a stand on the possible hindrance of decision-making and correct the error that occurred. However, he does not blame Old House.

“This has been a difficult and painful thing for me, I really didn’t want to personify this,” Pimenoff told STT.

Taike rejected Pimenoff’s rectification claim. After this, he appealed to the Helsinki Administrative Court, which decided in March that Vanhatalo was prohibited, even though the two writers cannot be considered his close friends. According to the decision, Pimenoff’s decision must be overturned and Taike’s case must be dealt with again.

Administrative law according to the decision, Taike justifies the use of writers as evaluators by the fact that they have knowledge of literature and actors in the literary field.

“Of course, there are situations where disability can remain unclear. We make approximately 15,000 decisions on grants per year. However, we have a very precise way of working in which way obstacles are brought up in advance”, said the head of supporting the arts of Taike to STT Henri Terho.

Do Taike’s decisions stand up to critical scrutiny?

“Over the course of a decade, we have had some rare individual cases where a procedural error related to disability has been found afterwards,” says Terho.

Pimenoff emphasizes that he was never of the opinion that the scholarship should have been awarded to him. Instead, it was about the fact that a disabled evaluator participated in the evaluation of all literature grant applications in that round.

Taike appealed the administrative court’s decision to the Supreme Administrative Court, which decided in October that it would not grant permission to appeal. The administrative court’s decision on obstruction therefore remained in force. According to Terho, Taike stands behind the evaluation of Vanhatalo.

“Of course, now that another interpretation of obstruction has been made from the point of view of administrative law, we have to think about and examine our own practices.”

Old house feels that he acted according to Taike’s instructions.

“The fact that there are friends among the applicants is generally seen as a difficult thing, but if someone is a friend, that cannot be a reason not to support the application.”

According to Vanhatalo, the solution to the retention issues would be a larger group of evaluators.

“Peer evaluation is on a very sustainable basis when a collective group such as the art commission participates in it.”