Once again, the Finnish cultural sector will face severe cuts in 2025. According to the latest information from the Ministry of Education and Culture, the total public investment in arts and culture is expected to be around 535 million euros, which is 20 million euros less than in 2024.
According to the Ministry, “most of the decrease, EUR 17,4 million, is due to savings made in line with the Government Programme in discretionary government grants awarded by the Ministry of Education and Culture.”
A EUR 5.1 million cutback will be made in grants awarded by the Ministry of Education and Culture for national communities in the field of art and culture, investments in cultural facilities, promotion of film, audiovisual culture and creative content, international cooperation, and intercultural dialogue.
These cuts will significantly impact all arts and culture services, especially NGOs and associations like Kulttuurikeskus Ninho ry, whose projects, events, and free access programs heavily rely on these grants.
Therefore, Ninho joins and invites families and allies to join the campaign “Sakset seis! / Cut the cuts!”, organized by artists and the public at large in support of the arts and culture. The platform, which manages a Facebook group with 15,700 members, has launched a campaign to collect signatures against the budget cuts.
The Great Culture Petition will collect signatures until December 4. The signatures will be delivered to the Finnish Government on December 5, accompanied by a demonstration, which we hope will be massive.
Back in April 2024, this platform, followed by many associations and organizations, organized a major protest against the cuts. The demonstration took over the streets of central Helsinki, with hundreds of people. Back then, members of Kulttuurikeskus Ninho already supported the protest.
You can read the manifesto at the end of this article and sign the petition here!
How will the Government’s cuts affect the children’s cultural sector?
While many organizations have talked about the impact of budget cuts on the cultural sector, few have explained how it will affect children’s culture specifically.
The only organization that has provided some figures is Suomen lastenkulttuurikeskusten liitto (the Association of Finnish Children’s Cultural Centres), of which we are members, along with 36 other children’s cultural centers.
The Association has reported that cuts in the Ministry of Education’s general subsidies for children’s culture (5% less for operators and festivals compared to 2023) will directly affect over 50,000 children, who will miss out on quality artistic and cultural experiences.
These cuts will particularly impact children in the most vulnerable positions, whose cultural rights are already less fulfilled than others.
Here are some consequences of the cuts for the children’s culture sector.
1. Less funding to continue developing projects and programs:
Since we started in 2016, Kulttuurikeskus Ninho has been able to develop its projects mainly thanks to small grants that ensure payment to artists, the annual contributions from our members, and the valuable time of our volunteers.
Ninho doesn’t just produce Kolibrí Festivaali. Thanks to the efforts of our core team, board, interns, and volunteers, as well as the artists we can hire with these grants, we also run lots of other programs and events like PICNIC, LUKUPESÄ, Day of the Dead – Family Day, multilingual storytelling marathons, Reading Together, Learning Together, and our new project Kabooks!
For example, due to the cuts, organizations that provide significant grants to Ninho, like TAIKE, will see their budget reduced by 4.9 million euros (18% compared to 2024). Naturally, this will directly affect our ability to produce these programs.
2. Many families will lose access to free cultural activities
Access to and enjoyment of art and culture is not a luxury or a privilege, but a fundamental right for everyone from early childhood, as stated in the Finnish Constitution. That’s why one of Ninho’s main goals is to offer free, high-quality cultural activities for children and their families, as well as fair working conditions for those in the children’s cultural sector.
The democratization of access to art and culture, along with fair working conditions, will be compromised by the cuts. Less state funding for quality children’s art and culture means less children’s art and culture overall, and fewer free access activities in particular. This will affect many low-income families and indicates a shift away from the national government’s primary role in ensuring cultural rights for all.
As a result, Ninho believes that access to and enjoyment of this right will become a privilege for a few.
As our colleague and producer, Laura Gazzotti, reminds us:
“Behind these decisions, there is a misunderstanding that culture is a privilege of a few, a pastime, and that the state’s role in access, participation, and active creation in the art and culture sector is secondary.”
Laura Gazzotti.
3. Fewer jobs and opportunities for cultural professionals:
When an NGO produces free events, sometimes it can be hard to translate this work into euros. But what we can measure is how it translates into jobs.
Did you know that over the 13 editions of Kolibrí Festivaali, and through the people we’ve hired over the years to manage the day-to-day operations of the association, Kulttuurikeskus Ninho has provided work for over 350 cultural workers? These numbers will undoubtedly be affected in the future due to the cuts.
4. Less representation of minority heritage languages and cultures:
Let’s remember that Ninho was founded by Ibero-American migrants, and through our open calls, we’ve given a voice to migrant cultural professionals and those from cultural minorities in the country.
Thanks to these 350 hires, we not only generate economic wealth but also ensure greater presence for underrepresented voices in all areas, contributing to the professionalization of the Finnish children’s cultural sector.
5. Decrease in wellbeing and sense of belonging:
As we mentioned earlier, around 50,000 children might be excluded from the cultural sector, directly impacting their education and their perception of art and culture in general.
The reduction of subsidies for children’s culture will particularly affect those children who are in the most vulnerable positions and whose cultural rights are already less fulfilled than others. It’s no surprise that many of these children come from low-income families, which are often migrant families.
This, along with the decrease in activities in their heritage language, like those offered by Kulttuurikeskus Ninho, will further reduce their opportunities to engage in cultural activities related to their own culture or conducted in their heritage language.
These cuts will not only affect the wellbeing of these families and their children, but also compromise their sense of belonging, their inclusion in Finnish society, and their agency.
For the rights of children, the protection of cultural sector professionals, and the defense of culture, sign the petition against the Government’s cuts!
Read the Great Culture Petition, the Statement of Cut the cuts that Ninho supports!
The short-sighted and disproportionate cuts proposed by the Finnish Government are a threat to our fundamental rights to culture and wellbeing.
The arts and culture surround us wherever we are in some way or another. They may take the form of a performance, library, museum, exhibition, concert, TV series, film, book, dancing or singing. Our houses, furniture and clothes have been created by artists, who have also designed our household goods and our means of transport. The arts and culture are part of our lives in so many different ways that we cannot even imagine a world without them.
Culture affects us all, irrespective of our origins. It maintains our languages and our cultural heritage in all its diversity. Culture puts us in touch with the world and international ideas. Culture gives us pleasure, a sense of community and empathy, helps to solve the multiple problems of democracy and to build a future for our children and young people. Without culture, society becomes increasingly sick.
Culture is the source of our identity; it feeds technological innovations and economic growth. The arts and culture are also major exports. The arts and culture are major employers; the euros invested in them repay themselves many times over. It is wrong to clip the wings of a growing sector of the economy when we should be investing in it!
Culture accounts for only a very small percentage of Finland’s government spending. The proposed cuts in the funding for culture will endanger the development of our whole society. The Government’s proposed cuts are, as a percentage, vast and seriously at odds with the objectives of the Government programme. It is precisely thanks to the arts that Finland has achieved a bigger place for itself on the world map than its size would imply.
We have long trusted in the ability of the arts to connect and to give ourselves a voice and identity. If our culture atrophies, so will Finland as an independent state. We oppose the catastrophic cuts that threaten our right to culture. This is not the first time we Finns have collectively demonstrated our strength.
In 1899, a Great Petition was signed by more than half a million people determined to prove the burning desire of a small nation for independence and a culture of its own. Our culture is now being threatened by the mindless powers-that-be in our very own land.
We demand that the Finnish Government revoke its proposed cuts to the arts and culture and instead ensure their basic funding even in times of crisis!