In the January round, the Regional Funds give out grants to support arts and academia in their own regions. This time the round includes 16 funds, because the Uusimaa Fund only gives out grants every other year (January 2024 being the next time).

The Regional Funds award grants to applicants who live or were born in the region, as well as to academic or artistic work and diverse cultural projects taking place in the region.

Special-purpose grants common to all the Regional Funds include projects related to each region’s heritage, Art for Everyone grants and Spearhead Project grants. The additional EUR 1 million for cardiovascular research is open for applications from every region. Each region may also have its own special-purpose grants.

Support for research on cardiovascular diseases

In the January round, all Regional Funds are accepting applications for the joint additional EUR 1 million for research on cardiovascular disease. This additional funding is directed at various fields within medicine, but applications may include components related to specialist areas within cardiovascular research or closely related disciplines.

Besides research, applications may relate to funding for starting up research groups or completing projects, for example. Applicants can be individuals, teams or research consortia, and the funding can be spread over more than one year. Typically the “additional million” grants have totalled EUR 100,000–250,000 per project, but even bigger projects than that are welcome to apply. Applications are evaluated on medical grounds and on the basis of their national or international significance, without any need for a regional perspective.

Art for Everyone grants for long-term projects

The purpose of the Art for Everyone grant is to reach people who have difficulties accessing art. Potential sites for these projects include diverse institutions and assisted living residences.

The minimum sum for the Art for Everyone grants to be distributed from the January Round is EUR 10,000. The objective is that the funded projects will span a longer period, to maximise their impact. They may apply either to several audiences or to long-term work with one audience.

Special-purpose regional grants

Major grant for developing a more sustainable future

The South Karelia Regional Fund is providing funding totalling a maximum of EUR 100,000 for projects that combine art, science and technology and are linked to ecology, the circular economy or social resilience. 

Major grant for research on the energy sector

The South Savo Regional Fund is providing funding totalling a maximum of EUR 100,000 for research on the energy sector. The research subject may be the sustainable use of renewable natural resources, energy storage or other solutions related to security of supply, for example.

Speak Finnish Boldly!

The South Ostrobothnia Regional Fund has a Speak Finnish Boldly! grant in addition to its usual funding for artistic or academic work. The grant sum is EUR 3,000 and the applicant must undertake to improve their Finnish language skills during the grant period.

Planning Grant

Applications may be made to the Pirkanmaa Regional Fund for planning and developing a Spearhead or Major Project for the 2024 application round. The grant sum is EUR 2,500 and its purpose is to facilitate the planning and development of large-scale and extraordinarily demanding projects.

Further information

For more information on the Regional Funds’ grants, please refer to each Regional Fund’s subpage and to the regional information videos on the Cultural Foundation’s YouTube channel. 

There will be a joint grant information event for all the Regional Funds on Tuesday 31 January between 2pm and 4pm. More details will be available on the January Round’s web page close to the date.

Art for Everyone grants available for long-term projects 

Grant previously named ‘Art for Institutions’ is now ‘Art for everyone‘. The purpose of this form of funding is to increase the opportunities of people in need of care or support to experience high-quality art and in this manner promote cultural equality. Possible locales for implementing this kind of project include for example prisons, reception centres, child welfare institutions and sheltered homes. 

The minimum sum that can be applied for is EUR 10,000 in the January round. The purpose of the grant is that the projects will be long-termed and have therefore a real influence on the target group. 

The Uusimaa Fund will award grants every two years in the future 

The Uusimaa Fund will award a total of 1,260,000 euros in the January 2022 round of applications. As the competition for grants is especially tough in the Uusimaa area, the Administrative Council of the Uusimaa Fund has decided that in the future grants will be awarded every two years. Therefore, the next round after 2022 is in January 2024.  

The Fund awards grants for local culture work and projects, for artistic work, art projects, art events and cultural occasions of representatives from all fields of art, for cultural heritage, and for local culture.  

Special grants of the regional funds 

The regional funds award grants for special purposes every year. This year the South Ostrobothnia fund will award a new Speak Finnish Boldly! grant. The grant is awarded for scientists or artists to study Finnish language. The grant sum is EUR 3,000 and it is applied for as its own expenditure grant or as a part of a working grant with the same application.  

South Savo fund will award a maximum of EUR 100,000 grant for projects concerning forestry. The applications may deal with forestry from different points of view, for example forest ecology, climate change, forest or wood technology. 

The North Savo and the North Karelia funds will altogether award a maximum of 100,000 euro grant to a high-quality, multidisciplinary undertaking that includes parties from both regions. In the 2022 application round, the grant is aimed at human and social sciences. 

University compensations 

Following discussions with Universities Finland, UNIFI, (university council of rectors), the Cultural Foundation has from March 1 2022 terminated the contracts they entered into with the universities in 2014, on the basis of which, grant researchers have been able to pay compensation for their workspace and other basic resources to conduct research. Next spring, the university compensation is no longer meant to be paid from the Cultural Foundation grants. The aim is to still have the universities welcome grant recipients and offer them equal resources to conduct quality research. 

You can find more information from the regional funds’ pages or from the January Round of applications. 

In the January round of applications, the foundation’s 17 regional funds received more than ten thousand applications. The number grew particularly in the regions of Uusimaa, Pirkanmaa and Southwest Finland (Varsinais-Suomi).

– In Uusimaa, we received approximately 600 more applications for working grants than last year. The cultural field is experiencing difficulties overall, but the situation has been especially worrying for freelancers this spring, explains Jari Sokka, Chairman of the foundation’s Board of Trustees.

The board responded to these circumstances by releasing a third batch of additional funding worth EUR 2 million. It was channelled to freelance artists in the form of full-year and half-year grants awarded by the regional funds. So far, the Cultural Foundation’s support of the arts and academic disciplines in the ongoing financial period has totalled around EUR 50 million.

Wishes of donors are evident

This spring, the regional funds awarded 204 full-year and 291 half-year grants. There were 818 grants for the arts and 345 for academic disciplines. The grants went to nearly 200 different municipalities, and around 12% of applicants were successful.

– The regional funds’ opportunities for giving out grants depend on the donations they receive. For example, the South Ostrobothnia fund is now paying out over EUR 1.1 million, of which the Viljo Syrenius Fund accounts for as much as one fifth, says the foundation’s Secretary General, Antti Arjava.

The distribution of the regional funds’ grants varies significantly. In North Savo, nearly 50% of grants go to medical sciences, due to the stated aims of its donor funds, whereas in Kainuu, the arts make up over 70%. The Lapland Regional Fund strongly supports research on Arctic regions and the Sámi culture, while the focus of the North Karelia fund is on supporting young people’s academic postgraduate studies.

With the grants paid out this spring by the regional funds, the current value of the funding provided by the Finnish Cultural Foundation since 1939 has exceeded EUR 1 billion.

– Over 80 years ago, the Cultural Foundation’s assets were raised by elementary school children. Nearly 200,000 Finns, ranging from farmers and blue-collar workers to government officials, factory managers and professors, took part in the fundraising. Indisputably, that fundraising drive has had a major impact on Finnish academia and arts, throughout the country, Arjava states.

On the Road with the Finnish Cultural Foundation

This year, the Cultural Foundation’s regional funds will hold a joint virtual award ceremony. The premiere of “On the Road with the Finnish Cultural Foundation” will take place at 6 pm on 26 May. Invited are grantees from various years, representing every region. During the two-hour online ceremony, journalist Kimmo Ohtonen, some of the foundation’s grantees and other interesting guests will discuss regional heritage in our global world, as well as the secrets and power of creativity. For more information, please visit the On the Road with the Finnish Cultural Foundation web page.

The number of grant applications related to the arts grew significantly in the Foundation’s January round. The total number of applications received was 10,239 (compared to 9,549 last year), of which 7,539 related to the arts, i.e. 13% more than in the 2020 January round of applications. The biggest rise in the number of arts applications was in Uusimaa, with an increase of 600 applications or 30%. In Southwest Finland, the increase was 24 % and in Pirkanmaa, 21%.

Because the additional funding is directed specifically at full-year and half-year grants intended for giving artists peaceful time to work, applicants will not be prevented from receiving it if they have previously been granted short-term crisis grants by Arts Promotion Centre Finland, for example. The EUR 2 million will be distributed to the regional funds in proportion to the increases in number of arts applications. In practice, this means an increase of 50 full-year or 100 half-year grants for Uusimaa, for example.

– The world of culture continues to be punished by the coronavirus and freelancers are facing great difficulties. By directing our support specifically towards long-term academic and artistic work, we are supplementing other forms of funding that are available, explains the foundation’s chairman, Jari Sokka.

The January applications are currently being processed and applicants will mostly be informed of decisions during April.

Taking into account this new round, the Cultural Foundation will have provided EUR 4.5 million of extra funding for the arts due to the Covid-19 crisis. In spring 2020, EUR 0.5 million was distributed in additional grants via the regional funds, and the same amount as part of an additional funding package supported by the Ministry of Education and Culture and other foundations. In December 2020, the Cultural Foundation also granted EUR 1.5 million to non-institutional artistic communities. Overall, the Cultural Foundation’s support to the arts and academic disciplines in the ongoing financial period will total approximately EUR 50 million.

– The Cultural Foundation decided to grant additional aid for coronavirus-related difficulties, aimed primarily at freelancers in the arts but also available to organisations without separate application, explains Juhana Lassila, who is in charge of grants at the foundation. The additional funding was divided between the regional funds proportionately to the amounts they granted to the arts last year.

– We trusted that our regional funds would know how best to fund the arts in their areas in this difficult situation.

The numbers of applicants to the regional funds grew compared to the previous year. The funds received 6,686 applications from academic disciplines and 2,624 from the arts, and awarded 341 grants to academia and 839 to the arts. Grants were distributed to 175 municipalities around Finland. The proportion of applicants competing for the funds’ grants varied significantly between regions; where in Uusimaa the fund was only able to provide 3% of the funding applied for, in South Karelia, South Savo and Satakunta the corresponding figure was 15%.

The coronavirus situation also meant that the regional funds gave out a larger quantity of grants numerically, although were for smaller sums than usual. The regional funds granted more money than average to fund activities such as art exhibitions, whose share grew by 55% from the previous year. Full-year (12-month) grants numbered 165.

Some regional funds gave out over one million euros in funding, and they were the Varsinais-Suomi (EUR 1.4 million), South Ostrobothnia (EUR 1.1 million), Pirkanmaa and Uusimaa (EUR 1.3 million) and North Savo (EUR 1.0 million) Regional Funds. The smallest grant total was paid out by the Kainuu Regional Fund (EUR 276,000).  

Among the grants awarded by the regional funds are larger Spearhead Project grants, which total EUR 20,000–40,000 and are intended for projects with a broader impact within the region. In South Ostrobothnia, for example, the Vaasa City Theatre received a EUR 25,000 grant to start up an opera project together with other local operators, while in Päijät-Häme a EUR 20,000 grant will help facilitate the production of an anti-bullying TV series for young viewers.  

The Cultural Foundation has also taken the exceptional circumstances into account in its grant terms, accepting, without further notification, a 12-month extension to the use of grants for projects which have been affected by the pandemic. Similarly, organisers of cancelled events will be allowed to use grants they have received for similar events next year.

Regional Funds support artistic work and projects, while science grants are primarily intended for dissertations and post-doctoral research.

Organisations can apply for grants to carry out cultural projects.  Priority is given to applicants born or residing in the region, work carried out in the region, work relevant to the region and cultural projects that are particularly important to the region.

As a rule, the smallest grants amount to EUR 2,000. However, study grants may be smaller. The Regional Funds also have their own priorities, such as projects strengthening regional vitality and identity, community spirit and cultural activities for children and young people.

The applications for grants must be submitted electronically in accordance with the application instructions. The names of the grant recipients will be announced at the annual galas of the Regional Funds in spring. 

Only the applications that have been submitted to the Regional Funds through the electronic grant application system are considered.

You can find more information about the grants and grant applications here.