When will the conference take place?

The conference is scheduled to run from mid-August, offering three days of engagement on arts, culture, and policies.

Where is the conference located?

The conference will be held in Oulu, FIN, providing a specific regional context for discussions on marginality.

What is the primary focus of this conference?

The conference focuses on "LIVING ON THE EDGE. Arts, culture and policies in and of the margins," examining cultural dynamics in peripheral contexts.

LIVING ON THE EDGE. Arts, culture and policies in and of the margins (13th NCCPR 2027)

Name: LIVING ON THE EDGE. Arts, culture and policies in and of the margins (13th NCCPR 2027)
Start: 2027-08-18T00:00:00Z
End: 2027-08-20T00:00:00Z
Location: Oulu

Aug 18–20, 2027Oulu, FinlandIn-person

Registration open

The thirteenth Nordic Conference on Cultural Policy Research (NCCPR), themed "LIVING ON THE EDGE. Arts, culture and policies in and of the margins," is scheduled to take place in Oulu, Finland. This event, occurring from mid-August, focuses on the critical examination of cultural policies and artistic expressions originating from or pertaining to marginalized contexts. It aims to foster dialogue and research on how arts and culture operate within and define the 'edges' of society, considering both geographical and conceptual margins. The conference provides a platform for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to explore the multifaceted relationship between cultural production, policy frameworks, and societal peripheries. Participants will delve into discussions that illuminate the unique challenges and opportunities present in these marginal spaces, contributing to a deeper understanding of their impact on broader cultural landscapes.

Committees & topics

Topics
Arts, Culture and Policies in and of the Margins · Nordic Cultural Policy Research · Cultural Administrations and the Governance of the Arts · Formal Art Institutions and Their Publics · Politically Prominent Trends in Cultural Policy · Cultural Life Outside Focal Points · Cultural Policy in the Northern Regions · Culture and the Development of Regions

Why it matters

Understanding the dynamics of arts, culture, and policy in marginal contexts is crucial for several reasons. Firstly, it highlights the often-overlooked contributions and perspectives that emerge from these areas, enriching the global cultural discourse. These contributions can challenge dominant narratives and offer alternative models for cultural development and engagement. Secondly, examining policies in these settings reveals how governance structures either support or hinder cultural expression and community development, offering valuable insights for more inclusive policymaking.

Furthermore, the conference's focus on 'living on the edge' directly addresses issues of equity and representation within the cultural sector. It encourages an exploration of how cultural policies can be adapted to better serve diverse populations and regions, particularly those that may be geographically isolated or socio-economically disadvantaged. This includes considering the role of cultural institutions and practices in fostering resilience and identity in communities facing various forms of marginalization.

From a diplomatic perspective, the insights gained from such discussions can inform strategies for cultural exchange and international cooperation. By recognizing and valuing cultural expressions from the margins, nations can build stronger, more nuanced relationships, fostering mutual understanding and respect. This approach aligns with principles of cultural diplomacy that seek to leverage soft power through diverse cultural engagement.

How to prepare

Delegates preparing for this conference should focus their research on the intersection of cultural policy and marginality, particularly within the Nordic context, but also drawing parallels from other regions. A robust understanding of various theoretical frameworks related to cultural studies, policy analysis, and social justice will be beneficial. It is advisable to explore case studies of artistic movements or cultural initiatives that have emerged from or specifically address marginalized communities.

Consideration should be given to the specific challenges faced by cultural practitioners and policymakers in regions that are geographically or socio-economically peripheral. This includes examining funding models, access to resources, and the impact of national or international policies on local cultural ecosystems. Delegates might also benefit from reviewing literature on Hidden Stakeholders and Engagement Strategies to understand how to effectively involve and represent voices from the margins.

For those interested in policy development, an analysis of existing cultural policies in countries like FIN, NOR, SWE, DNK, and ISL, with a focus on their provisions for regional or minority cultures, would be highly relevant. Preparing to discuss potential policy innovations that could better support cultural development in 'edge' communities, drawing on lessons from diverse international contexts, will be key to productive engagement.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 5 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Finland

As the host nation, FIN is likely to present research on cultural policies addressing its own peripheral regions and indigenous populations, emphasizing national strategies for cultural equity.

Role in topic

FIN has a vested interest in showcasing its approaches to cultural policy, particularly concerning its northern regions and Sámi culture, which often exist at geographical and cultural margins. The conference in Oulu provides an opportunity to share and learn from international perspectives on these issues.

Norway

NOR will likely contribute perspectives on cultural policy in its vast, sparsely populated areas and the role of arts in fostering community and identity in these regions.

Role in topic

With its extensive coastline and northern territories, NOR has significant experience in developing cultural policies that cater to communities living on the geographical edge. Its contributions could highlight strategies for supporting cultural infrastructure and artistic practice in remote areas.

Sweden

SWE is expected to offer insights into cultural policies aimed at integrating diverse cultural expressions and supporting marginalized groups within its broader societal framework.

Role in topic

SWE's approach to cultural policy often emphasizes inclusivity and diversity. The nation can contribute valuable perspectives on how policies are designed to support cultural initiatives from various marginalized groups, both geographically and socially, within a national context.

Denmark

DNK may focus on the role of cultural institutions in urban and rural settings, and how policy supports cultural participation across different societal segments.

Role in topic

While often perceived as more centralized, DNK still grapples with issues of cultural access and participation in its smaller towns and islands. Its perspective could shed light on how national cultural policies aim to bridge gaps and ensure cultural offerings reach all citizens, including those in less central locations.

Iceland

ISL will likely share experiences on fostering a vibrant cultural scene in a small, isolated nation, and the impact of global cultural flows on local artistic practices.

Role in topic

As an island nation, ISL inherently operates at a geographical margin. Its cultural policies are often geared towards preserving unique national heritage while engaging with international trends, offering a distinct perspective on cultural resilience and adaptation in a peripheral context.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Arts, Culture and Policies in and of the Margins

The question of how cultural policy addresses 'the margins' has evolved from earlier 20th-century debates over cultural democracy and access into a broader contemporary inquiry about whose practices, languages and aesthetics count as legitimate culture. Postwar European welfare states built cultural policy around national institutions and canonical art forms, but from the 1970s onward, movements for minority rights, Indigenous recognition, regional autonomy and grassroots cultural participation pushed governments to broaden their definitions. UNESCO's 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions formalised an international norm that peripheral, minority and non-commercial expressions deserve protection. In practice, however, margins remain structurally underfunded and underrepresented. Cultural budgets continue to concentrate on capital-city institutions, established disciplines and export-oriented creative industries. Researchers have documented persistent gaps in access for rural communities, ethnic and linguistic minorities, disabled artists, migrants and informal cultural producers. Debates now centre on whether 'mainstreaming' marginal voices into existing institutions truly redistributes cultural power or merely incorporates them on dominant terms. The current policy frontier concerns intersectional approaches that combine geography, identity and economic precarity, as well as the role of digital platforms in either amplifying or extracting from marginal cultural production. Nordic states, with their comparatively generous cultural budgets and strong regional policy traditions, have become a key laboratory for these questions.

Key players

Nordic Cultural Policy Research

Nordic cultural policy research emerged as a distinct field in the 1970s and 1980s, coinciding with the institutionalisation of cultural ministries and arts councils across Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. The Nordic model treated culture as a welfare good, financed publicly through arm's-length councils and underpinned by goals of accessibility, quality and artistic freedom. Comparative research traditions developed around shared institutions such as the Nordic Council of Ministers and the Nordic Journal of Cultural Policy Research, founded in 1994. Over the past two decades, the field has grappled with the marketisation of culture, the rise of creative-industries discourse imported from the UK, and shifting political coalitions that have alternately expanded and contracted cultural budgets. Researchers have tracked how 'cultural value', 'impact' and 'instrumentality' have reshaped funding criteria, and how migration, digitalisation and regional decline complicate the universalist assumptions of the original Nordic model. The current research agenda focuses on the durability of the Nordic model under fiscal pressure, the recognition of Sámi and other minority cultures, and the methodological challenge of studying cultural life beyond capitals and flagship institutions. The 13th NCCPR's theme of 'living on the edge' situates these inquiries within a wider European debate about peripheries.

Key players

Cultural Administrations and the Governance of the Arts

Modern cultural administration in the Nordic region traces back to the establishment of national arts councils in the postwar decades — Sweden's Kulturrådet, Norway's Norsk kulturråd (1965), Denmark's Statens Kunstfond, and analogous Finnish and Icelandic bodies. These arm's-length agencies were designed to insulate funding decisions from direct political interference while channelling state resources toward artistic excellence and broad public access. Over time, municipalities and counties became significant cultural funders in their own right, producing a layered governance system. From the 1990s, New Public Management reforms introduced performance indicators, strategic plans and outcome reporting into cultural administrations, prompting concern about bureaucratic burdens on artists and small organisations. More recently, administrations have been asked to deliver on diversity, climate, digital transition and regional equity goals simultaneously, raising questions about administrative capacity, expertise and legitimacy. Current debates examine how cultural bureaucracies actually make decisions at the margins: who sits on peer-review panels, how applications from peripheral regions and minority artists are evaluated, and whether digital application systems entrench or alleviate gatekeeping. Comparative work across Nordic administrations highlights both convergence on managerial templates and persistent national differences in arm's-length distance.

Key players

Formal Art Institutions and Their Publics

Formal art institutions — national museums, opera houses, theatres, concert halls and public galleries — were largely built in the 19th and 20th centuries as instruments of nation-building and bourgeois cultural formation. In the Nordic countries, they were later folded into welfare-state cultural policy with explicit mandates to serve the whole population. Institutions such as the Royal Danish Theatre, the Norwegian National Opera, the Finnish National Gallery and Sweden's Moderna Museet anchor national cultural identity and absorb a large share of public cultural spending. These institutions face overlapping pressures: ageing and socially narrow audiences, criticism over the representation of women, minorities and Indigenous peoples in collections and programming, contested provenance of objects acquired in colonial contexts, and post-pandemic shifts in attendance. Debates over repatriation — notably Sámi remains and cultural objects — have forced institutions to revisit their foundational assumptions. The current policy question is whether formal institutions can credibly act as agents for the margins, or whether their structural position inevitably reproduces dominant aesthetics. Reforms under discussion include participatory curation, devolved branches in peripheral regions, co-governance with minority communities, and explicit decolonisation strategies.

Key players

Politically Prominent Trends in Cultural Policy

Cultural policy is increasingly shaped by political trends that originate outside the cultural sector itself: populist contestation of public broadcasting and arts funding, security framings of disinformation and foreign influence, climate policy expectations on touring and infrastructure, and identity-politics debates over canon, language and representation. In several European states, right-leaning governments have cut or redirected cultural budgets, while others have used culture as a vehicle for nation-branding and soft power. In the Nordic region, recent years have seen friction over funding for institutions perceived as politically aligned, debates about the limits of artistic freedom in relation to religion and minority sensitivities, and disputes over public-service media mandates. The war in Ukraine has also reshaped cultural diplomacy, leading to suspensions of Russian state-linked cultural cooperation and renewed investment in Ukrainian cultural heritage protection. Researchers track how these politically prominent trends translate into concrete policy instruments — eligibility criteria, board appointments, performance indicators — and how cultural administrations defend professional autonomy under pressure. The risk is a politicisation that erodes the arm's-length tradition; the opportunity is a renewed public argument for culture's democratic role.

Key players

Cultural Life Outside Focal Points

Cultural participation research has consistently shown that audiences, infrastructures and public funding cluster in capital cities and a small number of regional centres. Yet a substantial share of cultural life — amateur choirs and bands, folk-music scenes, community theatre, local festivals, libraries, study circles and voluntary heritage associations — takes place far from these focal points. In the Nordic countries, the popular movement tradition (folkrörelser, folkeoplysning) historically integrated such activity into the welfare-state imaginary. Declining rural populations, school closures, and the consolidation of municipalities have weakened the institutional base for non-metropolitan cultural life. Digital platforms partly fill the gap but also concentrate attention on metropolitan and global content. Policy responses include touring schemes, regional cultural funds, mobile libraries, and support for cultural houses, but evaluation evidence on their effectiveness remains uneven. The research agenda asks how to measure cultural vitality beyond ticket sales and institutional attendance, how voluntary and informal cultural work intersects with professional provision, and how peripheral communities articulate their own cultural priorities rather than receiving them as a deficit to be remedied from the centre.

Key players

Cultural Policy in the Northern Regions

The European High North — northern Norway, Sweden and Finland, together with adjacent Arctic territories — has long been treated as a periphery within national cultural policy, even as it is home to the Sámi, the only Indigenous people recognised within the EU, and to distinctive Kven, Tornedalian and Finnish minority cultures. The establishment of Sámi parliaments in Finland (1973/1996), Norway (1989) and Sweden (1993), along with the Nordic Sámi Convention process, gradually shifted northern cultural governance from assimilationist legacies toward recognition and self-determination. Northern cultural life today is shaped by resource extraction, climate change, militarisation following NATO enlargement, and tourism pressures, all of which interact with cultural heritage and contemporary artistic practice. Truth and reconciliation commissions in Norway (2023) and Finland have documented historical injustices against Sámi and Kven communities and recommended substantial cultural policy reforms, including language revitalisation and institutional restitution. Current debates focus on Indigenous data sovereignty, the role of southern-based institutions in representing northern realities, cross-border Sámi cultural cooperation, and how climate and security policies in the Arctic affect cultural infrastructure and mobility.

Key players

Culture and the Development of Regions

Regional development policy in Europe has increasingly treated culture as a strategic asset, drawing on EU Cohesion Policy, the European Capital of Culture programme (running since 1985) and OECD work on the cultural and creative sectors. The underlying argument is that cultural investment can support employment, place attractiveness, social cohesion and innovation in regions facing demographic decline or industrial transition. Nordic states, though outside (Norway, Iceland) or peripheral within (Finland, Sweden, Denmark) the EU's main cohesion flows, have developed their own regional cultural agreements and creative-industries strategies. Evidence on the developmental impact of cultural investment is mixed. Flagship events and cultural-led regeneration projects have sometimes produced lasting benefits but also displacement, short-lived booms and overstretched local budgets. Critical scholarship warns against instrumentalising culture purely for economic ends, arguing that intrinsic cultural value and democratic participation must remain central. The current agenda explores how to combine cultural and regional policy without subordinating one to the other: aligning cultural funding with just-transition strategies in former industrial regions, supporting creative ecosystems beyond capitals, and integrating Indigenous and minority cultural economies into regional development on their own terms.

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for LIVING ON THE EDGE. Arts, culture and policies in and of the margins (13th NCCPR 2027).

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Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Gender Dynamics Across Cultures

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Cross-Cultural Communication

Policy Brief Writing

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

The states in play, with the data that shapes their stance

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

By committee

Frequently asked questions

LIVING ON THE EDGE. Arts, culture and policies in and of the margins (13th NCCPR 2027)

Aug 18–20, 2027Oulu, FinlandIn-person

Registration open

Committees & topics

Topics
Arts, Culture and Policies in and of the Margins · Nordic Cultural Policy Research · Cultural Administrations and the Governance of the Arts · Formal Art Institutions and Their Publics · Politically Prominent Trends in Cultural Policy · Cultural Life Outside Focal Points · Cultural Policy in the Northern Regions · Culture and the Development of Regions

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 5 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Finland

As the host nation, FIN is likely to present research on cultural policies addressing its own peripheral regions and indigenous populations, emphasizing national strategies for cultural equity.

Role in topic

Norway

NOR will likely contribute perspectives on cultural policy in its vast, sparsely populated areas and the role of arts in fostering community and identity in these regions.

Role in topic

Sweden

SWE is expected to offer insights into cultural policies aimed at integrating diverse cultural expressions and supporting marginalized groups within its broader societal framework.

Role in topic

Denmark

DNK may focus on the role of cultural institutions in urban and rural settings, and how policy supports cultural participation across different societal segments.

Role in topic

Iceland

ISL will likely share experiences on fostering a vibrant cultural scene in a small, isolated nation, and the impact of global cultural flows on local artistic practices.

Role in topic