Toimintakertomus | Verksamhetsberättelse | Annual Report

English summary
The Cultural Office is an administrative body of the City
of Helsinki, established to foster an encouraging
atmosphere and a climate suitable for producing and
experiencing art and culture in Helsinki.
Concentrating and
cooperating help in
times of scarcity
Amidst the clangour of arms, the muses fall silent, as
the Romans used to say. To modernise this and put it
less dramatically: in hard times, hard values hold sway in
administration. In the debate on the city budget, the
importance of culture has not been accentuated. Very
few candidates in the parliamentary elections this spring
chose culture as a campaign theme. Culture is a vitamin:
it is only noticed if it is missing (Paavo Jännes).
Helsinki Cultural Office is a small administrative division
of the city, accounting for about one per cent of the
municipal budget. In many respects the Cultural Office is
safeguard particularly art education for children and young
people, regional interactive cultural work, promoting
multiculturalism and retaining international visits in the
programme. Among the higher-profile recipients of support
are the Helsinki Festival, the Asia in Helsinki Festival, the
Doc.Point documentary festival, the Love and Anarchy
film festival, the Baltic Circle theatre event, the Etnosoi!
festival and the Moving in November dance festival.
Compared with operating grants to institutions of art,
personal grants to artists are marginal. However, as it is
impossible to increase significantly the sum of these, the
Committee, to raise the level of individual grants, has
made a radical decision: each year, grants will be shared
out to only three branches of the arts. The first in line in
2002 were modern dance, light music and media arts.
Alongside focus, the other key word is cooperation. The
paradigm of management by results overemphasised
In times of financial stringency, every sphere of administration
looks into the mirror. In addition to reassessing
priorities, the in-house organisation is reviewed and support
is given for the staff’s ability to bear stress. Target-setting
and consciousness of the significance of the work
were enhanced on the level both of the Cultural Office and
of the units using the Balanced Scorecard methods. The
Management Board has held training sessions of its own,
and a two-day seminar plus a follow-up day about on-thejob
welfare was held for the staff.
The Cultural Office specified its internal administration
by placing the planning of services for the Swedishspeaking
population and the management of Nordic
cooperation in the hands of the development unit.
Methods of monitoring for the use of grants and the
results obtained with them have been improved. Another
sign of streamlining was the removal of the International
Cultural Centre Caisa from two addresses to one, where
the premises are more spacious. Johanna Lindstedt, who
has returned from serving abroad, took over the management
of the Annantalo Arts Centre.
In 2002 the Cultural Office was at its maximum physical
extent. At the turn of the year the centre gave up the
White Hall, its share of the Kurkimäki Community Centre,
and the café in the Lasipalatsi building in order to effect
savings on rent.
Artist in Residence
The three-year agreement on the mutual exchange of artists
between the cities of Helsinki and Brussels and the
Finnish Cultural Institute for Benelux expired at the end of
the year. An exhibition of photography and media art by
three artists from Brussels and three from Helsinki was
staged at the White Hall in December and at the Maison
de l’Art Actuel des Chartreux in Brussels in November.
The Cultural Office operated actively in the following
international networks:
■ Aerowaves
■ ASSITEJ
■ EUnetArt
■ Eurocities
■ European Drama Encounters (Edered)
■ European Forum for Arts and Heritage
■ European Network of Cultural Centres (ENCC)
■ Informal European Theatre Meeting (IETM)
■ International Society for Education through Art (InSEA)
■ Réseau Art Nouveau Network
■ Trans Dance Europe 2000
Cultural Office premises
one of a kind. It has more of an international interface
than any other branch of Helsinki’s municipal administration.
In the international networks of the culture sector,
Helsinki has come to be seen as an expert in taking the
initiative and as a high achiever in implementation. The
latest result is a project approved and financed by the European
Union, the aim of which is to undertake a two-year
comparative survey of quality and quantity in different
cities’ cultural policies.
territoriality, and this is not easily overcome. However, we
have experience – some older, some which we are pleased
to say has accrued in recent years – of cooperation in the
fields of art education and public education with such parties
as the education department, Helsinki City Museum,
the youth work department, and certain theatres and art
colleges. The tangible programme includes cultural courses
for pupils in the upper classes of secondary schools, which
offer cultural cards facilitating access to events and
Yrjö Larmola, Cultural Director
International Networking
Nordic cooperation
Since 1 March 2002, the coordination of Nordic cultural
collaboration has been in the hands of Marie-Louise
REGIONAL CULTURAL CENTRES
Kanneltalo, Malmitalo and Stoa are lively cultural centres
making important contributions to their districts. In addition
to a Cultural Office they have facilities such as a city library,
a workers’ institute and a youth office. Very different
cultural centres are linked by a common interest: that
of prducing a high-quality, affordable programme for their
local residents.
International cooperation is on two levels. We learn from
each others’ way of doing things and we constantly receive
information on offerings and events. In the networks, the
city is represented by officials; during the year under review,
the committee familiarised itself with selection
criteria for support to art institutions, interactive houses of
the arts, multicultural theatre, libraries and an opera
maintained mainly with bought-in services in Amsterdam
and Rotterdam.
Helsinki City Board requires administrative sectors to
focus on their core functions. The Cultural Office’s
activities are comprised of financial support for culture,
providing arts venues and events, and art education. As it
focuses its increasingly scanty financing and plans its
activities, the Cultural and Library Committee seeks to
programme calendars.
The Annantalo Arts Centre has developed a distinctive,
varied programme of art education for a decade and a half,
and this has been made available at the other regional
cultural centres for some years. Similarly, now that the International
Cultural Centre Caisa has received new
premises, forms of working are being developed for
cooperation by people from different cultural backgrounds
and for the integration of newcomers. These ideas are also
expected to spread into wider use. Culture does not patent
its achievements in the realm of ideas.
One area of development is to reach out to those at risk
of exclusion, encouraging them to become users of the
cultural offerings. Partners have been found for this, but
the work is still in its early days.
Blåfield. She has attended various meetings held by the
Nordic capital cities as the representative of Helsinki
Cultural Office. An important sphere of her work has
been to provide information and advisory services
related to grants, scholarships and possibilities for
cooperation.
In the autumn a series of conferences on Nordic cultural policy
began in Oslo. This is based on a broad-spectrum research
project carried out 1998 - 2002, one of the financial backers of
which was the Nordic Cultural Fund. Seminars specific to
particular countries are held on the basis of analyses and
reports, at which the cultural policy of each country is examined
and topical national research projects are presented. The
planning for the Helsinki conference in 2003 was started in
cooperation with the Nordic Institute in Finland.
Kanneltalo
Kanneltalo is the Cultural Centre of Western Helsinki. Its
programme strongly features music and children’s culture.
Kanneltalo was ten years old in August. The anniversary
was marked with a special week-long programme, the
planning and implementation of which were performed by
the Cultural Office as well as the building’s other administrative
committees. The festival week reached its climax
with a concert by Mari Palo, Seeli Toivio and eight cellists.
The range of concerts was diverse. The programme
embraced classical music, ethno and jazz as well as several
cross-genre assemblies. The Kamari 21 series of chamber
music performances continued with success. The series
included performances by artists such as Cecilia Zilliacus
and Bengt-Åke Lund (Sweden), Pekka and Jaakko
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