By Johanna Lemola

The big theme of the City of Helsinki Cultural Office is to bring culture to all Helsinki residents to make Helsinki a better city.

Helsinki’s Cultural Director Stuba Nikula outlines the city’s many strengths in culture: “Helsinki is home to a long list of national and municipal cultural institutions, a strong independent cultural sector and, increasingly, very strong citizen activity in culture. As a result, Helsinki is Finland’s foremost city of culture.”

Nevertheless, Nikula wants to reshuffle many aspects of Helsinki’s cultural scene. He wants to correct the unbalance created by the national cultural institutions – largely the Töölö Bay cultural concentration – and to take culture to areas of the city where culture has been scarce so far.
His ultimate goal at the helm of the City of Helsinki Cultural Office is straightforward: “We want to make Helsinki a better city on new lines, and we’re ready to move. I’m not afraid to step on the springboard myself, and our office has many more people who feel the same.”

New winds blow at the Cultural Office

Helsinki Art Museum is about to take 100 public artworks to the Helsinki suburb of Jakomäki, an area not known for culture. This is part of a bigger effort to recruit established cultural institutions to move out of their four walls to neighbourhoods. The many other recruits include the Finnish National Theatre, which tours suburbs, and the Helsinki Pop & Jazz Conservatory, which organizes band workshops around the city.

“The idea is to make cultural institutions do active local work,” Nikula says. The Cultural Office seeks to energize those areas where people show little cultural interest. “Offering increases consumption, and we intend to feed cultural activity in these areas.”

Nikula points out that there are very many culturally active areas in Helsinki. “Just check out the Restaurant Day map of pop-up restaurants to see where the most active people live.” Restaurant Day is the hugely popular citizen-initiated event when anyone can open a one-day “restaurant”.

Multi- and inter-cultural Helsinki

How do the new winds in cultural Helsinki involve Helsinki’s multi-cultural population?

“First, we should distinguish between multi-cultural and inter-cultural – whether we are talking about fostering aspects of people’s original cultures, or about blending cultures. The higher the quality criteria of a cultural programme, the more multi-cultural we are. But the further we move from high culture towards popular culture and closer to neighbourhoods, the further we move into an inter-cultural world. Inter-culturalism fosters tolerance, and this is what the Cultural Office seeks to accomplish. For example, one important aspect of popular culture is food, which plays an important role in the Office’s programmes.”

On a mission to support the independent cultural sector

The City of Helsinki Cultural Office’s responsibilities are divided into two main areas: production of cultural programmes at eight venues, and support for culture with subsidies, grants and prizes.

“In general, cultural activities happen at three levels: established institutions, the independent cultural sector, and citizen activity. Our support goes to the independent sector,” Nikula explains. The actors of the independent sector are varied and include, for example, contemporary circus, which has risen to astonishing levels in Helsinki thanks to City support.

What the Cultural Office does not support financially is citizen activity. This activity has, however, increased tremendously in Helsinki. “Helsinki is at the top of the world in citizen activity,” Nikula confirms, citing Restaurant Day, Cleaning Day and several local urban festivals as examples. “Citizens have changed from customers of cultural services to producers of them. There is a tremendous amount of energy flowing in Helsinki. This is a new situation that we have to address in the City administration.”

“Culture is a very broad concept for us,” Nikula continues philosophically. “Culture for us is activity that stands firmly on three pillars, producing three things: wellbeing, citizenship and prosperity.”

Call for dynamism

Nikula’s personal ambition as Cultural Director is to challenge the lifecycle aspect of culture.

“The traditional idea of culture is that it should be permanent. This is a strange idea to me as a former festival producer. Culture seen as permanent is stifling. We need dynamism!”

Nikula calls for similar dynamism on cultural scenes to that found in business life, where few things are permanent. He is attracted to momentary and fleeting qualities in culture – qualities best manifest in one-time events.

In the same breath, he acknowledges the difficulty of bringing new dynamism to the Helsinki cultural scene in the City’s current budgetary framework of zero growth in expenditure. “We’d have to give up something,” he admits. 

The role of Cultural Director

Nikula started his professional career as the producer of the Tuska open-air metal festival held annually in Helsinki. Tuska was followed by the Cable Factory cultural centre, where he was Managing Director to 2013 (but casually described his role as the janitor to Helsinki-info in 2012). He has come a long way.

“I’m now at a vantage point from where I look at a very broad sector in Helsinki. Above all, I would like to see myself as a ‘traffic controller’ – one that regulates flows of movement and directs the flows into the right channels.”

Where the proposed Guggenheim museum stands on Helsinki’s cultural scene

The Guggenheim Foundation has proposed a new Guggenheim art museum to be built and developed in Helsinki. The proposal has been highly controversial, met with applause by some and with opposition by others.

Helsinki Cultural Director Stuba Nikula has largely stayed out of the discussion but points out the one-dimensional nature of the project. “The opposition to Guggenheim Helsinki stems from the fact that the project stands on only one pillar – the economic one,” he says, not diminishing the value of the project as such. He is full of appreciation for the efforts of the Helsinki economic development sector to bring new prosperity to Helsinki.

Nikula continues on the definition of culture, which is reflected in the Guggenheim controversy: “The discussion about Guggenheim Helsinki reflects on the split of culture into two separate dimensions: the economic dimension, and the social dimension. These two dimensions are in many ways like night and day, although both are called culture.”

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Advancing a city where culture is a citizen right

The mission of the City of Helsinki Cultural Office is to promote art, culture and creativity. The Cultural Office develops a culturally rich and diverse Helsinki region where everybody has the right for culture, and it envisions Helsinki as a unique centre of creativity and culture as well as an internationally attractive cultural pioneer in the Baltic Sea region.

In 2014 the City of Helsinki Cultural Office distributes 17 million euro as operating subsidies and grants. They go to art and cultural institutions and schools, art groups, cultural communities and artists.

This year the Cultural Office organizes 1,450 performances, 1,100 art courses and 105 exhibitions at its eight venues. The programmes reach a total audience of 190,000 including 11,000 children and young people.

The Cultural Office runs three cultural centres in the city centre, all with their individual profiles: Annantalo focuses on children, Caisa organizes multicultural programmes, and Savoy Theatre is a stage for guest performances specializing in world music. Espa Stage is a summer venue in the Esplanade Park offering free performances.

Northern, western and eastern Helsinki are served by four cultural centres: Malmitalo (northeast), Kanneltalo (west), Stoa (east) and Vuosaari House (east). They organize and host varied cultural programmes, including concerts, dance, theatre, exhibitions, cinema, contemporary circus and children’s cultural events.

In addition to the above, exhibitions are organized by artists on the Harakka Island in summer and at the Villa Eläintarha residence for foreign artists.

The Cultural Office also rents venues for a wide variety of cultural events.

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