The quote is taken from the preface to the proposal for a new cultural policy in the City of Helsingør, which the Culture Committee has sent out for public comment. The deadline for submitting comments is today, April 14, 2030. Elsinore 2032 has just submitted the association’s response. Click the button to download the municipality’s proposal. You can read the consultation response below.
Elsinore, April 14, 2023
To the City of Helsingør
Center for Culture, Business, Politics, and Organization
Comments on the Proposed Culture Policy 2030
The Association Helsingør European Capital of Culture 2032 (commonly known as Elsinore 2032) has read Helsingør Municipality’s draft of the upcoming cultural policy with great interest. We would like to acknowledge the policy’s general call for collaboration with civil society and the business community, which is the very same guiding principle behind our own association.
The cultural life in Helsingør is rich, diverse, and ambitious, and it requires a policy that can both support and develop it. Since our association has a long-term focus—in fact, even longer than both the cultural policy and the municipality’s Vision 2030—we hereby submit our consultation response, which we hope will help set the direction for many years to come.
Commercial entities should be encouraged
Although a policy cannot and should not mention everyone, we believe that commercial and semi-commercial actors should be highlighted, and that it should be clearly stated how the cultural policy—which, after all, is designed to foster collaboration between the sectors—will specify how the municipality intends to support their activities.
Organizations such as Marienlyst Hotel, Album Bar, Karosserifabrikken, Café Divino, Hornbækhus, Soul Garden Festival, and Helsingør Chamber Opera have ambitious cultural programs that, through private initiative, contribute to Helsingør’s unique array of cultural offerings, thereby bringing vitality and revenue to the municipality. We believe these efforts should not only be recognized but also promoted.
We urge that the policy aim to establish formalized business partnerships with growth-promoting initiatives in the private cultural sector.
Integration and Diversity
We welcome the fact that residential areas are explicitly mentioned in the cultural policy. Furthermore, we believe that Helsingør’s ethnic and demographic diversity should be highlighted as an asset in the integration of all citizens into the local community. As a maritime city, Helsingør has developed a cosmopolitan profile over the years, and a policy that aims to be inclusive and for everyone must build on this.
We urge that diversity and ethnicity, as a natural part of the municipality’s cultural policy, be explicitly identified as a key priority area.
Culture as an Investment and Industry
We believe this opportunity should be used to explicitly emphasize the paradigm shift from the previous view of culture as a recreational support service to a genuine area in which the municipality invests. This means emphasizing that culture should not primarily be viewed as a cost, but as an investment—both in terms of concrete financial resources, in terms of branding value and revenue opportunities, and in terms of the fact that culture also creates jobs and revenue—not only in the tourism industry, but as an industry and sector in its own right.
As an association, we have already embraced the idea of fostering culture through funding sources other than municipal support. In this context, it must be made clearer what opportunities for collaboration between the municipality and private actors, associations, the business community, etc., are being sought. This will strengthen the ongoing development of Helsingør’s cultural life, regardless of developments in the municipality’s finances.
We urge that cultural and event grant programs be consistently framed as investments and that a concrete ROI index be developed in collaboration with stakeholders.
Cross-sectoral collaboration
To put it bluntly, the proposed new cultural policy is intended to address both the climate crisis and the pandemic of unhappiness. We agree with the intention that culture, in addition to having intrinsic value, should also help support other administrative areas—education, mental health and quality of life, business development, etc. As a natural extension of this, it naturally requires greater collaboration among the municipality’s own departments, since the budget for culture is the smallest of all municipal areas. The municipality must therefore establish administrative structures that develop its policies, strategies, and budgets across all sectors. To put it somewhat bluntly, culture must have a seat at the table and be able to actively participate in, for example, climate and welfare investments, if culture is to support and develop other administrative areas.
We call for the adoption of an interdisciplinary management approach designed to systematically promote the integration of culture into the fields of welfare, education, and climate policy.
European dimension
Cultural life in Helsingør has long had an international dimension, and we believe this should be given greater emphasis in the future. The proposed new cultural policy claims to be local, national, and international. By focusing efforts on the European perspective within the international dimension, we can envision many more opportunities for collaboration and sources of funding.
We urge the municipality to work toward promoting the European dimension—for example, by allocating resources to support both municipal and non-municipal cultural organizations in applying for EU funding or other international funding opportunities.
Elsinore 2032 looks forward to the implementation of the cultural policy and to future collaboration on Helsingør’s cultural life.
On behalf of the Board of Directors
Aslak Gottlieb, Chairman
Elsinore 2032 is working to ensure that Helsingør is awarded the title of European Capital of Culture in 2029, the next time it is Denmark’s turn, in 2032.
The association was founded in late 2021 and is open to individuals, organizations, and businesses.
As of early April 2023, the association has 60 individual members and the following organizations and companies:
- a-round
- The Housing Complex
- Chaplin
- DanBolig
- The International Folk High School
- Døssing & Partners
- Espergærde Music Association
- Frederiksborg County Newspaper
- Helsingør Dagblad
- Helsingør Commerce
- Helsingør Theater
- Kildehøj
- KNUD E. HANSEN
- Magnae Vitae
- Spar Nord
- Sport Direct – Elsinore
- Strejf Restaurant & Bar
- We bring all of Helsingør together
- The Shipyard Food Market
