2021

Luonila, Mervi; Renko, Vappu; Jakonen, Olli; Karttunen, Sari; Kanerva, Anna

The COVID-19 pandemic and the efforts to manage the crisis have widely struck the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs). This chapter examines crisis management in Finnish cultural policy. We focus on the implemented anti-COVID measures, namely the data collection efforts and emergency funding in relation to CCIs in Finland in 2020. The focus is on nominal state cultural policies and the accountable ministry, but it widens towards other government sectors that have handled CCI matters during the pandemic. This initial examination firstly indicates that COVID crisis management has reawakened corporatist tendencies in Finnish cultural policies. The relationship between the gathered evidence and the designed policy instruments is ambiguous and flavoured by industry pressures. Second, the pandemic situation has raised awareness of the essential role of creative industries as part of cultural production networks and exposed their unfinished status in Finnish cultural policies. The crisis funding has been channelled to a wider section of the CCIs than is usual in Finnish cultural policies. Respectively, new pressure organizations have been established to represent live music and event industries. At this point it is, however, far too early to foresee the full effects of the pandemic in the Finnish cultural policy system.