Appointments|Aleksi Malmberg, who will start work in London at the beginning of March, wants to discover the still unused potential of international cooperation.
Finland The director of the British and Irish Institute has been appointed Aleksi Malmberg. He will take over the position at the beginning of March from the Helsinki City Orchestra, whose director he has worked for seven years, i.e. from the beginning of 2018. Before that, he has also worked as the director of the Benelux Institute of Finland, the program manager of the Helsinki Festival Weeks and the executive director of the Our Festival.
The British and Irish Institute of Finland is one of Finland’s seventeen cultural and scientific institutes located in different parts of the world. Their task is to create international connections for Finland with the help of art, culture and science.
The activities of the British and Irish Institute of Finland are financed by the Ministry of Education and Culture, but it is a private foundation-based organization.
“We live in such a time of the world, where intensifying international cooperation, dialogue and making art visible even more strongly in societies is essential”, Aleksi Malmberg comments on his future job.
“Britain and Ireland are both much larger islands globally, and also in a very interesting way between Europe and the United States. I see that Finland is also an island of its own, although not concretely in so many other ways, and because of that, the cooperation and connection between these three countries is one that I want to further strengthen.”
Yet he believes that untapped opportunities can be found in cooperation between creative industries, Finland’s own network of institutes and similar actors in other countries.
“All in all, the influence and importance of the Finnish institute network is bigger than is often seen. It has a potential that has not yet been noticed, in terms of supporting the work of artists but also more broadly for social development, employment, international export, country image and strengthening of creative industries in Finland.”
Malmberg’s directorship at the British and Irish Institute is four years. His predecessor Jaakko Nousiainen takes over as director of the Finnish Japan Institute.