Under the third section of Finland’s Local Government Act on Cultural Activities, municipalities are responsible for organizing cultural activities. To fulfill this responsibility, municipalities must provide opportunities for targeted art and cultural education across various forms and fields of art and culture. The field of art and cultural education is diverse, encompassing children’s cultural centers, basic arts education institutions, adult education centers, museums, cultural heritage sites, theaters, and a broad network of freelance professionals. In this article, I focus on children’s cultural operators.
According to the definition by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, children’s culture refers to art, cultural, and cultural heritage education aimed at children and young people, as well as the offering of art and cultural heritage and the art and culture produced by children and young people themselves. Children’s culture includes experiencing art and culture and learning knowledge and skills. Children’s cultural activities are intended for those under 18 years of age
Children’s Cultural Centers as Municipal Resources
Children’s cultural centers across Finland provide equitable and accessible art and cultural services for children and young people, including open family activities, workshops during early childhood education and school days, and various events, workshops, and exhibitions.
The Association of Children’s Culture in Finland is a national organization, an expert and an advocate in the field of children’s culture. In collaboration with municipalities and children’s cultural operators, the Association and children’s cultural centers support the development of cultural education programs in early childhood education and basic education, as well as organize open family activities, exhibitions, and art education workshops.
The Association’s member organizations are united by quality factors and shared values: child-centeredness, art, quality, and equality. Quality is a demanding aspect of art and culture for children and young people, requiring continuous nurturing. Network operators must constantly renew and develop themselves through training.
Cultural participation strengthened through children’s culture is an investment in children’s ability to act as equals in various communities and society throughout their lives.
A Skilled Network of Children’s Cultural Professionals
Finland has a broad and skilled network of children’s cultural professionals who produce art and cultural services for and with children and young people. The cultural offerings and related financial investments for children and young people vary between municipalities.
The network of children’s cultural operators, consisting of members of the Association of Children’s Culture in Finland, has been active since 2003, when the Ministry of Education (now the Ministry of Education and Culture) prioritized children’s culture and published the Children’s Cultural Policy Program. The program aimed to support the cultural education tasks of homes and other institutions, with municipalities seen as key players in promoting children’s culture. Today, in 2026, the Association’s network includes 37 members and over 65 associate members, forming a comprehensive national network of professionals. Members include municipalities, associations, and cooperatives. Some operate in fixed facilities, others regionally, and some as mobile units in areas where children’s cultural services are not otherwise available. Based on data from 34 members, the Association’s full members had over 2.6 million customer contacts in 2024, of which 1,817,072 were children. Members organized activities in 80 % of Finnish municipalities.
Upholding Quality in Children’s Culture
Children’s cultural operators provide services where many children encounter environments and people outside their families for the first time. This task emphasizes professional and child-centered expertise. Quality is one way to examine how children’s cultural operators fulfill their responsibility for our shared treasure: culture, cultural heritage, and children’s participation in art and society.
We develop professionally produced, high-quality, and sustainable services that are easily accessible to every child and young person as equal and complete individuals, regardless of their need for support.
Quality is a value whose attributes we can embody and express through actions, language, and encounters. While defining quality exhaustively is an elusive task, we can describe, develop, and evaluate its elements—and share this knowledge with an ever-growing community of cultural operators—through practical examples, such as those in the Quality Manual for Children’s Art and Culture. Knowledge is shared wealth.
The Quality Manual for Children’s Art and Culture is a unifying document for the Association’s operators, to which our network is committed. The manual includes definitions and metrics of quality that help all professionals in children’s and youth culture reflect on and examine the realization of quality in their work. Quality is assessed from the perspectives of art and culture, child-centeredness, professionalism, equality, sustainable development, and collaboration. The manual is also well-suited for developing quality work beyond children’s cultural operators and can serve as a criteria framework for various municipal development projects.
Art educators and children’s cultural professionals also bear the responsibility of ensuring that children and young people see the aesthetic and beautiful dimensions of human life, even when shocking events in the world or their own communities demand attention. Through art and culture, beauty can be expressed and created, and beauty is closely related to goodness, peace, and hope. Because of this, children are not overwhelmed by sorrow.
Cultural Education Plans Complete the Law on Municipal Cultural Activities
An effective way to promote children’s and young people’s opportunities to participate in art and culture is through cultural education plans, which systematically integrate local cultural operators and curriculum objectives. These plans typically cover preschool through ninth grade.
A cultural education plan outlines how cultural, art, and cultural heritage education is implemented as part of teaching. It is based on the municipality’s own cultural offerings and heritage, as well as the independent activities of children and young people. Such plans may be called, for example, a cultural education plan, cultural path, cultural steps, or cultural route.
A well-functioning cultural education plan ensures that all children and young people in a city, region or area experience art and become familiar with local art institutions and cultural heritage as part of their early childhood education and school days. This is also an efficient use of municipal and art sector resources.
Children’s cultural centers and operators have promoted the implementation of cultural education plans for years. Over the past few years, the Association for Children’s Culture in Finland has advanced these plans in municipalities through a development project funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture and a grant from the Finnish parliament. The results have been excellent: the number of cultural education plans in Finland has grown from 114 to 235 through the project.
Children’s cultural professionals have played a key role as municipal consultants in this development project. During the project, cultural education plans have not only increased in number but also expanded from basic education to early childhood education and upper secondary level. Several member organizations of the Association have been involved in the collaboration, including the Mobile Children’s Cultural Center of Uulu, the Traveling Children’s Cultural Center Kattila, and the Concert Center.
Regional equality and equal participation opportunities are further enhanced by Taidetestaajat (Art Testers), Finland’s largest and only national cultural education program, which takes all of Finland’s eighth graders to experience and evaluate art twice a school year. With a 100% participation rate, Taidetestaajat is the only program that reaches every young person in this age group across all Finnish municipalities. The program covers the costs of tickets and transportation to theaters, art museums, or symphony orchestra concerts—something that 90% of schools and municipalities cannot afford on their own. After their visits, young Art Testers evaluate their experiences, influencing the production of contemporary and youth-relevant art in the future.
From the municipalities’ perspective, the foundation-funded Taidetestaajat program can be seen as an additional resource for their own activities. At best, a local cultural education plan and art testing create a cohesive whole for children and young people.
Municipalities should view allocating financial resources to cultural education plans as building future audiences and cultural capital. Maintaining, implementing, and developing cultural education plans are core tasks of municipal cultural services.
The author of the article: Aleksi Valta, Executive Director, Association of Children’s Culture in Finland
This text is part of the publication “Municipalities as Organizers and Enablers of Cultural Activities in a Tightening Economic Situation”, produced by KAKS – Local Government Development Foundation and edited by Taina Laitinen. The full publication in Finnish is available here.
