STRATEGY OF THE TURKU MUSIC FESTIVAL FOUNDATION 2019–2029

BACKGROUND

Established in 1960, the Turku Music Festival is Finland’s oldest continuously running music festival. While the Festival’s main focus is on classical music, it also embraces other areas of music and culture. The 65th edition of the Festival was held in summer 2024. Today, the Festival is run by the Turku Music Festival Foundation, set up by the City of Turku in 1989.

The City of Turku will be celebrating its venerable 800th anniversary in 2029, and this provides a goal for operational and financial policy.

PURPOSE

The by-laws of the Turku Music Festival Foundation stipulate that the purpose of the Foundation is to offer musical performances at a high level of quality and with a wide range of variety, besides promoting active engagement in and awareness of music. To this end, the Foundation organises the Turku Music Festival annually and further organises concerts, educational events and other arts events related to music.

OPERATING POTENTIAL

The Turku Music Festival is a nationally and internationally known and appreciated event. The Festival has a dedicated regular audience, who actively follow events on the culture and music scene.

The headline funding provider and most prominent interest group of the Foundation is the City of Turku. Under the stated vision of the city, Turku invites everyone to engage in meaningful experiences, work, pioneering efforts and sustainable growth – to enjoy the best time of their life. The Turku Music Festival also builds on the goals of the City of Turku Cultural Spearhead Project and culture promise to promote Turku as an attractive destination for international cultural tourism. The City has made substantial investments in culture in the interests of attaining these goals.

Moreover, the Turku Music Festival has been designated one of the 16 most significant festivals in Finland by the Ministry of Education and Culture, and as such is the recipient of an annual discretionary grant from the Ministry. It is a stated aim in the cultural policy strategy of the Ministry, which extends to 2025, to improve resources for artistic work and other creative work and to diversify production and distribution in this field. Active engagement in culture has increased, and differentials between population groups in their level of such engagement have decreased. Culture in Finland rests on a solid and sustainable foundation.

In addition to grants from the City and the central government, the Festival generates income from ticket sales, grants from private foundations, corporate partnerships, production services and other miscellaneous revenue. New ways of operating and new partnerships are constantly being sought to augment these.

The vision and strategic goals of the City of Turku on the one hand and the strategic aims of the Ministry of Education and Culture on the other form an excellent basis for the work of the Foundation. They also obligate the Foundation to set ambitious long-term goals and to manage its operations and finances responsibly.

Gaining grants from private foundations requires projects that are of a high quality and distinction and also align with the strategic expectations of these funding providers. This must be taken into account in project planning and on grant applications.

The Managing Director of the Foundation is accountable to the Board of Directors for the overall planning, quality and finances of the Foundation’s operations and also for its success in the long term. The Artistic Director of the Festival brings an individual vision and network of connections to the programme planning of the Festival in order to make it as interesting as possible for performers and audiences alike. The Foundation has a small organisation and thus relies largely on the networks and partnerships that it has established. One of the Foundation’s key partners is the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra. The Foundation has also entered into a strategic partnership agreement with the Turku City Theatre in respect of its role in the Fuuga music centre, which is scheduled to open in 2026. The concept here is for the Foundation to put on classical music and opera projects of international interest, thus reinforcing the cultural tourism potential of Turku in general and of Fuuga in particular.

The timetables of the leading performers and visitors of the Festival are basically locked in two to three years in advance, meaning that the Festival must have a long enough planning horizon and engage in an active exploration of options and opportunities.

Because decisions on engaging artists must be made so far in advance, it is vital to have a multiannual agreement with the headline funding provider, i.e. the City of Turku, and a long-standing working relationship with the Ministry of Education and Culture.

VISION

It is the vision of the Turku Music Festival Foundation that the Turku Music Festival is the highest-quality classical music festival in Finland, with an individual, nationally and internationally recognised profile, and that the Festival reinforces the attractiveness and status of Turku as a European city of culture.

VALUES

Recognising that classical music and art have intrinsic value is important for the Music Festival Foundation, being one of the basic tenets of its operations.

The Foundation strives in all its operations to attain the highest possible artistic quality and customer-oriented and audience-friendly practices while maintaining financial balance.

The Foundation also relies, as applicable, on the principles of good governance, accessibility and sustainable development adopted by the City of Turku and by the Ministry of Education and Culture. Nature values, corporate social responsibility and sustainable development are becoming increasingly important as operational guidelines. The Foundation has been awarded an Ekokompassi certificate and continues to follow the Sustainable Travel Finland pathway.

The Foundation follows the strategy of the City of Turku and promotes community, equality and non-discrimination in its operations.

The digitalisation megatrend is being duly noted and actively incorporated into the Foundation’s operations.

The Foundation aims, for its part, to promote the positive impacts of the creative arts for the national economy and for the physical and mental wellbeing of the population. Culture is a component of mental crisis resiliency.

The Foundation notes emphatically that active engagement in music and culture contributes to wellbeing and encourages interest in and support for culture.

FUTURE

There is a desire to boost the status of Turku as a dynamic hub for art music and visiting artists and as an interesting partner for the music industry. This is an approach both challenging and interesting for the Festival, and one which the Festival intends to continue to embrace. It is estimated that the potential for this approach will improve considerably with the historically generous investments made in culture by the City of Turku and, particularly, with the inauguration of the new music centre, Fuuga.

It is our aim that established leading names and emerging talent in art music, the agents representing them and other cultural organisations will continue to view the Festival as a well-liked and reliable partner and will prioritise performances at the Turku Music Festival over other events.

In order to achieve this, the Managing Director and Artistic Director must be able to invest in building and maintaining international networks. Both this and the execution of the Festival itself at a high level of quality require that the management has a competent professional support staff. However, the aim here is not to substantially increase the size of the organisation but instead to focus on increasing the Festival’s range of partnerships and cooperation.

The goal is for the regional audience of the Festival to continue to feel at home at Festival events, but because the audience base in the region is limited, growth must be sought beyond the Turku catchment area. Attracting new audiences from further afield will further improve the recognition and profile of the Festival, but in order to attract new audiences, the Festival must have something to offer that is of exceptionally high quality and unique in Finland.

The Foundation will rely increasingly on customer feedback and market surveys in evaluating projects. Data collected from customers and analyses of audience potential will form a more important part of overall consideration when making decisions on projects that have great potential artistic and financial impact.

Beyond high-quality artistic content, the overall customer experience is becoming increasingly important in attracting audiences from outside the region, whether individuals or groups. Here, too, the Foundation is well placed, being able to draw on the tourism and catering services already existing in historic Turku. Improvement of public transport connections to the city will further benefit the Foundation.

Pursuing corporate partnerships will improve our visibility and expand our funding base, but this requires us to be able to provide experiences catering to customer needs in a highly competitive environment. A viable partnership strategy and new service designs are vital. In the future, it will be feasible for the Foundation to be able to design and deliver comprehensive visitor packages, expanding beyond the Festival concerts themselves.