Information about professional artists in Finland is now available as a concise fact booklet

Foundational data from the first registry research on Finland’s artist community has been published today as a fact booklet. The fact booklet contains information regarding the number of professional artists in Finland, their places of residence, and median incomes for the review year of 2019.

The purpose of the Center for Cultural Policy Research Cupore’s research project “As an Artist in Finland”, is to gather diverse information about the professional artist community across various fields of art. The research material comprises Statistics Finland’s registry data that covers the entire population (FOLK data). Data about professional artists has been delimited using four criteria, and supplemented with registries from the Arts Promotion Centre Finland (Taike), industry organizations, and grant foundations.

The first round of registry research was based on the year 2019. At that time, the research data encompassed 17 295 professional artists, who were distributed across six major art fields. Some artists work within multiple art domains.

The research data indicates that professional artists are concentrated in the Uusimaa region, primarily in Helsinki. In 2019, 48 percent of the artists in the “As an Artist in Finland” dataset lived in Helsinki, and 63 percent resided in the wider Uusimaa region.

During the review year, the median disposable income of artists was €26,126, and the mean was €29,255. The median disposable income was highest in the field of literature and lowest in the field of visual arts. Male artists had a higher median disposable income than female artists in all art fields except music.

The next round of registry research will focus on data gathered for the year 2024. The goal is to enhance data collection in the future by involving more collaborative partners among industry organizations and grant foundations.

“In order to strengthen the operational conditions and working circumstances of artists, it’s crucial to know whom we refer to when we are discussing professional artists. In all Nordic countries development work is being carried out concurrently, and at the EU level a task force has developed a recent report on how the working conditions for artists and creative creators can be strengthened across the 27 member states,” says senior researcher Maria Hirvi-Ijäs.

The “As an Artist in Finland” research has been conducted by the Cultural Policy Research Center Cupore in collaboration with the Arts Promotion Centre Finland, the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, and Statistics Finland. The fact booklet is available for reading in PDF format on Cupore’s website:

Hirvi-Ijäs, Maria, Renko, Vappu, Leppänen, Aino, Lahtinen, Emmi & Sokka, Sakarias (2023). As an Artist in Finland. Fact Booklet 6. Center for Cultural Policy Research Cupore.

Further information:

Senior Researcher Maria Hirvi-Ijäs, maria.hirvi-ijas@cupore.fi, tel. +358 50 463 5575

Read more about research As an artist in Finland on Cupore’s website.