Nordic Culture Point publishes history of the Nordic cultural institutions in Suomenlinna

Painting of the Nordic Culture Point's facilities on Suomenlinna.

Nordic cultural co-operation has a long history in Helsinki. In Art, Culture, and Cobblestones, playwright and long-standing senior official for Nordic co-operation on culture Marianne Möller gives her perspective on the development of the Nordic cultural institutions in Suomenlinna in relation to how the world and our societies have changed since the 1970s.

The work was commissioned by Nordic Culture Point and describes the various forms of the Nordic institutions, from Nordiskt konstcentrum from 1978 to 1996 and the Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art/NIFCA from 1997 to 2006, to Kulturkontakt Nord as the secretariat for the Nordic Council of Ministers’ funding programmes from 2007 to 2011 and the Nordic Institute in Finland/Nifin from 1997 to 2011. In 2021, Kulturkontakt Nord and Nifin were merged into the current Nordic Culture Point.

Through interviews and archive material, Möller shows the diversity of initiatives and results of Nordic co-operation on culture from a wider perspective. There are also interesting statistics from 2008 to 2019 on the grants applied for and awarded, and how much the countries’ culture scenes pocket from Nordic resources.

“Even behind each rejected application is an embryo for collaboration that only needs a little more funding to become a fully fledged project. The bottom-up perspective is important, as Nordic co-operation becomes concrete through the collaborations that are made and the contacts that are forged,” says Möller.

Art, Culture, and Cobblestones is lavishly illustrated with archive material and examples of exhibitions and publications produced by the institutions in Suomenlinna.

Art, Culture, and Cobblestones – a brief history of Nordic co-operation on culture and the cultural institutions in Suomenlinna since 1978