Uusimaa Grants

Eligible Applicants

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.

In 2024, the Fund will award a total of 2,500,000 euros in working and expenditure grants.

Applying for a Grant

You may apply for a grant on the Online Application Service and provide a reference on the Online Reference Service. All applications and references must be submitted to the online service before 4 pm local Finnish time (EET) on the deadline date. Applications and references submitted in any other way will not be considered. The applicants should familiarise themselves carefully with the application guidelines and make sure they have appended all requested attachments in their application. More information on the January round of applications can be found here.

Grant Focus Areas

The Uusimaa Regional Fund awards grants for artistic work in all fields of art, art projects, events and cultural events, as well as for cultural heritage and local culture (= local community work).

The Uusimaa Regional Fund does not fund scientific research and does not award working grants exceeding one calendar year. Working grants for individuals are mainly awarded on a full-year (EUR 30,000) or half-year (EUR 15,000) basis. The minimum grant is EUR 2,000.

Regional Fund Special Purpose Grants

Spearhead Projects

Spearhead projects requiring larger-than-usual funding will receive a minimum of 40,000 euros in the form of one or two grants. Such projects require fresh or exceptional points of view, content, quality, or design.

Local Culture Projects

A grant may be applied, for example, for projects focusing on local culture of the region and cultural heritage projects, such as documenting cultural heritage, showcasing of cultural environment, promoting urban and neighbourhood culture, and histories of local communities and societies, exhibitions, and events. Local Culture Projects grants may also be related to multi-location or independent-of-place local heritage projects, for home region may be taken to mean a natural environment, a built-up environment, social and mental environment, as well as a virtual home region, which a person themselves finds meaningful. Scientific research into a local culture is not considered a local culture project. Note that applicants for the local culture projects grants must choose the field of science or art that their work most closely relates to.

Art Together

The Uusimaa Fund, instead of the Art for Everyone special purpose grants, is awarding Art Together special purpose grants with the following criteria:

The aim of this form of support is to increase the well-being, becoming visible by their own volition, and the participation of minorities, those in need of special support or care, or people otherwise living in socially vulnerable contexts, through means of ethically sustainable and dialogic art and culture. The values of this form of support are social and cultural equality and inclusion.

The work, project, or event may be carried out by means of different forms of art and as cooperation between experts in the field of wellbeing, for example in local cultural or care communities, or among a special group.

Projects that receive this funding must display:

• dialogic cooperation between the artist and participant group
• that participants' own voices are heard and
• that the aims of the project grow out of needs defined by the participants themselves

The art participants are faced on an equal footing, as active co-creators and co-experiencers of art

The applicant must elaborate in their application:

• their knowledge of the participant group
• the values and social significance of the project, and
• how inclusion is carried out in practice.

In addition, the applicant must detail working methods, with the help of which both the participants' psychological safety and the opportunity to co-authorship are realised during the process as fully as possible.

In case of care institution projects, an initial commitment from the project partners including their contact information and a plan regarding the cooperation of the applicant and the staff is required.

Donor Funds

The grants are awarded from a general fund and those donor funds open for application in the next round:

• Harri Hakala Fund
• Heikki von Hertzen Fund
• Veera Kaartola Fund
• Kauko Kammonen Fund
• Joonas Kokkonen Fund
• Markku Salonen Fund
• Suomen Lehtiyhtymä (Finland Newspaper Group) Donor Fund

Grant Guidance

Grant-related enquiries may be directed to Fund Officer Päivi Venäläinen and Secretary Anniina Majanlahti-Binaku. Please contact the Fund primarily by phone.

Grant Decisions

The grant decisions are made by an administrative committee consisting of regional experts from various fields. If necessary, outside experts can be called upon to evaluate applications. The grant decisions of the January round of applications in 2024 will be announced on May 23rd. Both favourable and unfavourable grant decisions will be sent to grant applicants by email approximately two weeks before that. The 2024 grants can be withdrawn from 22 May 2024.

If you need the logo of the Uusimaa Fund for your website, newsletter, social media or brochures, you can download it from the link below. If you share information about your grant on social media, we would be especially appreciate it if you use the tags #kulttuurirahastontuella or #skr2024 (grant year).

Download the logos