Diversity as a starting point for municipalities' art and culture activities in 2025

Culture for All Service has been awarded 185,000 euros to bring diversity and culture activities to municipalities on a national level. Let's move towards a more equitable society together.

“The national development task to be financed now is the third national development task to be implemented. It focuses on the challenge of cultural diversity in the cultural activities of municipalities. The task is thematically and functionally both important and topical and does not overlap with previous development tasks” says Minister of Science and Culture, Petri Honkonen, quoted in The Ministry of Education and Culture’s news release (12.12.2022).

The goal of the project Diversity as a starting point for municipalities' art and culture activities in 2025 is to respond to the need on the municipal side for increasing diversity and equality expertise by, among other things, offering training, consultancy and other support to cultural activities of the municipalities as well as art and culture professionals working in municipalities. The diversity agent network and cultural diversity and sustainable development dialogue cards developed by The Ministry of Education and Culture (OKM) and The Arts Promotion Centre Finland (Taike) are used throughout the project in the training and consulting activities.

Five main components of the project

Diversity training for municipal cultural workers
a.) Short online clinics on various themes for cultural actors in municipalities
b.) A longer diversity course, tailored for those working in municipal cultural activities
Use dialogue cards to strengthen the equality and inclusion within municipalities
Pilot the municipalities' accountability partnership program
Further train diversity agents and strengthen their network
Communication campaign

Diversity as a starting point for municipalities' art and culture activities in 2025 will provide inclusive and engaging programs on a national level and support diversity agents as well as train diversity officers.

All of our initiatives respond to the core questions of ‘Does this promote diversity, inclusion and equity in the art and culture sector?’ and ‘Does this move us towards dismantling structural racism and discovering our own implicit biases as well as within municipal authorities, regional councils, and governments?’ As we enter the collaboration from the perspective of wanting to actively listen, be empathetic, be critical, and honest, we hope to reach people on a personal level, which will then create a wave of positive change towards a more inclusive and equitable society where all people belong.

The project is implemented by the Culture for All Service. The project is financed by The Ministry of Education and Culture. The project runs from January 2023 to December 2024.

Collaborators

The Ministry of Education and Culture (OKM)
The Arts Promotion Centre Finland (Taike)
Globe Art Point association (G.A.P)
Oulu 2026
City of Espoo, Cultural unit

Diversity Agents & Dialogue Cards

Diversity Agents address a range of challenging and crucial issues such as structural racism, lack of equality and accessibility. As change makers and organizers, Diversity Agents offer ways to reflect, to develop tools, and to implement ways we can work towards a more equitable society.

During the years 2021–2022, OKM and Taike have jointly developed cultural diversity and sustainable development dialogue cards as part of the Cultural policy, immigrants and the promotion of cultural diversity working group. Dialogue cards, which will be published in the beginning of 2023 are physical cards, the purpose of which is to facilitate the opening of a conversation perceived as a big problem and abstract about what cultural diversity and sustainable development are, what kind of things, phenomena and concepts they consist of, how the different dimensions of sustainable development manifest themselves. For example, in the work community, what is the situation in relation to the values and strategies of the community, and how to act more broadly in different organizations in order to promote a sustainable and more equal society and world. The cards also come with a written guide and vocabulary for working on these topics.

Diversity as a starting point for municipalities' art and cultural activities 2025 provides municipalities with web-based inspiration clinics where dialogue cards are presented, different pedagogical methods are introduced as well as their possibility for participants to immediately put them into practice. Freedom of how one can apply it to their work and community is encouraged.

More information can be found here:

About Dialogue Cards (you will go to Taike.fi)

Press release of The Ministry of Education and Culture on the subsidies to develop municipalities (you will go OKM.fi)

Diversity Agents

Contact information