The Culture Kids programme has been active in 2023, and soon, we will have 17,000 kids in the programme. This past year, our culture sponsors arranged 761 events around the city, providing theatre and music experiences for babies and toddlers, as well as introductions to food culture and our cultural heritage. Children born in 2020 or after and living in Helsinki receive an invitation to at least two events organised by their own cultural sponsors every year until they start school.
“The amount children enrolled in the programme, and their parents, speak volumes about how the Culture Kids programme has established its position as a part of the daily lives of families with children. What also this view is the significant volume of positive feedback we get from the sponsor events. The parents give our activities a score of 4.62, on a scale of one to five”, says Helsinki City Culture and Leisure Division deputy executive director, Kirsti Laine-Hendolin.
Getting kids to read and be active
Children born in 2024 will have the Helsinki City library and sports services as their sponsors.
“The library provides its charges and their families with a variety of art and culture experiences, which bolster the child-adult interaction. We naturally want to support children to read from a young age, and we support families to read together”, says specialised librarian Minna Rimpilä from the City library.
“Next spring, we will start sponsor activities with an engaging event with elements of theatre, that plays around with interaction and encounters through various animal characters. These bilingual events will be centred around books for the family’s youngest, such as Mira Mallius’ Pikku tirriäinen and Annika Sandelin’s Säg hej. The sponsor events will be held at the Itäkeskus, Malmi and Kannelmäki libraries as well as at Helsinki Central Library Oodi. In the autumn of 2024, the event programme will grow in size and extend to the Töölö, Pasila, Oulunkylä, Viikki and Herttoniemi libraries”, Rimpilä continues.
The sports services are also glad and proud of the new sponsor activities. Their goal is to make sure the children enjoy sports as soon as possible.
“It is important for a child’s development and wellbeing to engage in physical activity, with research to back this up. Daily physical activity is as important for a child as sleep and healthy nutrition. An active child is a happy child, and what you learn when you’re young stays with you forever”, says sports services senior coordinator Saana Saarikivi.
The sports services’ sponsor events are produced by OSIRIS theatre’s Loiske Ensemble, who specialise in dance and music shows for babies and small children.
“Next year, we will be producing dance and music shows for the smallest Culture Kids. The shows are planned from the get-go for a baby’s experience, and our goal is to create gentle experiences for the senses that are good, shared moments for a baby and their adult. There are no spoken lines in the shows, which means you don’t need to know Finnish to enjoy them”, says OSIRIS theatre director Riikka Siirala.
In 2024, the City is organising 900 events for Culture Kids that will be free of charge and tailored for the development stage of the child. Children born in or after 2020 who live in Helsinki can be registered as Culture Kids for cultural events at https://kummilapset.hel.fi/(Link leads to external service).
Children born in 2023 will continue to be sponsored by the Museum of Finnish Architecture, the Design Museum, the Helsinki City Museum, the Finnish National Museum, the Society for Cultural Heritage Education of Finland and Science Museum Liekki (formerly the University Museum of Helsinki). The sponsors of children born in 2022 are Dance House Helsinki, Cirko – Center for New Circus, Dance Theatre Hurjaruuth, the Theatre Museum, the Finnish Museum of Photography, and the Hotel and Restaurant Museum. The following theatres act as the Culture Kids sponsors of children born in 2021: Helsinki City Theatre, Puppet Theatre Sampo, Theatre ILMI Ö., Svenska Teatern and Q-teatteri. The Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra is the Cultural Kids sponsor of children born in 2020.
The Culture Kids service is administered by the City of Helsinki Culture and Leisure Division and supported by the Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation.
