Please don't cut off the branch the Fenno-Swedish cultural field sits on!
The management of Arcada University of Applied Sciences announced on the 12th of June 2025 its decision to phase out the training of cultural managers over the next three to four years due to the state's requirement to save 1.4 million euros. Arcada University of Applied Sciences will in the near future apply for permission from the government to discontinue the training of cultural managers. If granted, the only Swedish-language programme for cultural managers in Finland will cease to exist. Arcada's change negotiations concluded (Arcada.fi)18 personer sägs upp på Arcada (HBL.fi) & Arcadas omställningsförhandlingar avslutade – tre utbildningar försvinner (Yle.fi)
The closure of the programme would be a severe blow to the Fenno-Swedish cultural sector. The often invisible work of cultural producers is the glue that holds the cultural field together. Cultural managers are the ones who acquire and report on funding, they handle the budget management of cultural projects, time management, contact with the authorities, contract negotiations and salary payments, and take care of all the practical arrangements related to different projects. The presence of a cultural manager in a project or group simply allows the other members of the working group, be they visual artists, musicians, directors, actors, technicians, audience workers or marketers, to concentrate on doing their own jobs.
Many of the graduates of the cultural management programme go on to take up leading positions in society, where they continue the work of developing structures that further strengthen the arts and culture field in Finland. A closure of the Swedish-language programme in cultural management at Arcada will therefore weaken the future conditions for a diverse field of art and culture, and in particular affect the Fenno-Swedish part of the field. In the long run, this will lead to the continued decline of the Swedish language in Finland.
The Cultural Management programme is rooted in a course founded in the 1980s at the Finns folk high school in Espoo. The education programme for cultural secretaries was a response to the law on the obligation of all municipalities to offer art and culture to all their residents. Since then, the programme has operated under Sydväst University of Applied Sciences, Novia University of Applied Sciences and, from the 1st of January in 2013 until today, Arcada University of Applied Sciences.
During the more than 40 years that the cultural management education has existed in Swedish in Finland, the programme has provided students with a basic toolkit to work professionally in the cultural field. This includes tools for both the public and private sectors as well as the third sector, for example, administration, education, children's and youth culture and social services. The conditions for this education have been created by the programme's unique combination of teaching, supervision and support, and extended periods of work experience. This practice has been applied and adapted to meet the current needs of a changing society and cultural field. Furthermore, it has served as the basis for the unique student-field contact through which students contribute to the development of the field by questioning, challenging and adding new knowledge, for example by carrying out applied research in the form of theses.
We appeal to all members of the government who share President Stubb's view of the role of art and culture as crucial to national security (Svenska Yle, 14.6.2025) not to give Arcada University of Applied Sciences permission to close down the cultural management programme. Please don't cut off the branch the Fenno-Swedish cultural field sits on!
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Kulturproducentstudenter r.f. Contact the author of the petition