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. The working grants of individuals are primarily awarded for one year (26,000€) or six months (13,000€). The Fund grants no multiyear grants. The minimum grant sum is 2,000€.

In the January 2022 round of applications the Fund awarded a total of 1,260,000 euros .

The Uusimaa Regional Fund does not fund scientific research and does not award working grants exceeding one calendar year.

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 supports the following fields of art: architecture, cinema, literature (incl. non-fiction), visual arts, children's culture, dramatic arts (theatre, dance, and circus), games, musical art, design, art handicrafts, and art photography

In addition, the Fund supports local culture work, including for example, recording tradition and displaying it, histories of local communities and associations, projects directed towards local cultural and natural environment, and exhibitions, events, etc. connected to such subject matter.

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:

• Heikki von Hertzen Fund
• Marjo Kaarina Hetemäki Fund
• Suomen Lehtiyhtymä (Finland Newspaper Group) Donor Fund

Grant Guidance

Grant-related enquiries may be directed to Fund Officer Leena Tammivuori and Secretary Anu Aaltonen. 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.