Call for Proposals for presentations and sessions
Relations and interaction of cultural policies
The Society for Cultural Policy Research in Finland invites researchers, students, cultural professionals and policymakers to the XIII Finnish Conference on Cultural Policy Research, taking place in Seinäjoki on 8–9 April 2027. Organised in collaboration with the Seinäjoki unit of the University of the Arts Helsinki, the conference explores the societal relations and interactions of cultural policy. The conference provides a forum for examining existing and possible relationships of arts and culture, as well as their wider societal significance and impact. The local operating environments and collaborative networks of Seinäjoki offer concrete examples of the different dimensions of interaction, creating a setting for gathering and forging new connections around arts, culture, and research.
Cultural policy takes shape through the interaction of diverse actors. Local, regional, national, international, and planetary contexts influence how art and culture relate to broader society and how their impact is shaped by these relationships. Different localities and regional cultural policy contexts produce diverse ways of understanding and implementing cultural policy. At the same time, cultural policy crosses administrative and sectoral boundaries and connects with fields such as business, wellbeing, regional development, and civil society.
In an era shaped by the polycrisis and calling for radical sustainability transformations, attention must also be paid to the ecology and materiality of the relations of cultural policy. Art and cultural actors interact with situated and material environments, technologies, infrastructures, nature, and non-human actors. These relationships influence the sustainability of communities, practices, policies, and ways of thinking, among other things.
Cultural policy, constituted through and as relations, involves continuous negotiation and the capacity to live amid change. Conflicts, tensions, and contradictions also emerge at the intersections of art, culture, and wider society. It is therefore important to critically examine the kinds of relationships that cultural policy practices foster, generate, or constrain.
The implementation of Finland’s Cultural Policy Report and its translation into practice at different levels provide a timely example of how national cultural policy steering and the relationships that shape it take form. This process offers an opportunity to explore how national objectives are translated into local practices, as well as how local approaches, innovations, and needs resonate beyond their immediate contexts and influence wider developments. At the international level, the role of culture in the framework following the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development provides an example of a relevant and timely discussion.
Cultural policy relations are historically formed and continually evolving. Recognising layered temporalities, for example in heritage policy, is connected to the kinds of interaction we seek to foster in the present and the futures that are pursued through cultural policy.
The Finnish Conference on Cultural Policy Research invites participants to explore the relationships that cultural policy builds between different levels, actors, places, and periods, as well as the relationships that shape cultural policy itself. How do these relationships take form at the intersections of arts and culture, wider society, and material and ecological environments? What new forms of agency and collaboration, or ways of addressing conflict, are needed in changing contexts?
Propose a Panel or Individual Paper
We welcome proposals for both individual papers and sessions. Proposals may be theoretical or empirical and may address cultural policy from either research-based or practice-oriented perspectives.
Papers and panels may address, for example, the following themes:
- Agency, hierarchies, and power in cultural policy
- Cultural policy as relations and negotiation
- Interactions and interdependencies within the cultural sector and cultural practices
- Diverse, cross-disciplinary, and cross-sectoral forms of collaboration
- The impact of arts and culture at different levels
- Situated relations and diverse localities as contexts for interaction
- The role of art and culture in urban and regional development and policy
- Heritage policy as relations and interaction
- Art, culture, and cultural policy in shaping relations within ecological sustainability transformations
- Multispecies relations in cultural policy and practice
- New materialist and posthumanist perspectives on cultural policy relations
- The roles, possibilities, and challenges of culture in times of polycrisis
- Systems and network theories as approaches to artistic and cultural activity and policy
We equally welcome proposals that approach the conference theme from other perspectives.
Panel proposals should be 250–300 words long and include the panel title, topic, chair(s), proposed presenters, and the topics of their papers. Panels may be conducted in Finnish, Swedish or English. Each panel accommodates 3–4 papers. Proposals may also be submitted when not all presenters have yet been confirmed.
Individual paper proposals should be 250–300 words long and include the paper title, topic, and the presenter’s contact details. Papers may be presented in Finnish, Swedish or English.
The submission period for panel and paper proposals is 21 October–30 November 2026. Please send your proposal by email to kulttuuripolitiikan.t.seura@gmail.com.
All presenters are encouraged to develop their conference papers into articles and submit their manuscripts for consideration for publication in the Yearbook of Cultural Policy Research: https://journal.fi/kultpol
The XIII Finnish Conference on Cultural Policy Research, taking place on 8–9 April 2027, is organised by the Society for Cultural Policy Research in Finland in collaboration with the Seinäjoki unit of the University of the Arts Helsinki. The conference venue is the Kalevan Navetta Art and Cultural Centre in Seinäjoki.
Article workshop for early-career researchers
The Finnish Cultural Policy Research Yearbook is organising an article workshop as part of the Finnish Cultural Policy Research Conference in Seinäjoki on 7 April 2027. The workshop is aimed at doctoral and early-career researchers working on cultural policy or related fields and offers an opportunity to develop a research article or dissertation chapter and receive expert feedback on work-in-progress manuscripts. Participants can apply by submitting an abstract of up to 300 words describing their research topic, question, data and methods. The workshop will be held in Finnish, but abstracts may be submitted in Finnish, Swedish or English.