According to Kaarel Oja, Deputy Mayor of Tallinn, Tallinn’s cultural investment will increase next year due to large-scale developments. “We can essentially talk about a three-fold increase. The biggest undertaking is, of course, the Tallinn City Theatre, and renovation work will also be carried out at several branches of the City Museum, the Zoo, the Botanical Gardens and other institutions. The most important non-structural investment will be the development of a self-service system in Tallinn Central Library, which will mean a significant improvement in the service quality for readers and new possibilities for libraries in the coming years,” Oja added.
“One of the priorities is raising the salaries of cultural sector employers. We are pleased that after a few difficult years, the city’s cultural institutions will see an average 5 to 7 per cent increase in wages,” noted the Deputy Mayor.
€28.9 million allocated to the cultural sector in 2022
Tallinn will become a UNESCO City of Music in 2022, which will also bring significant additional funding to the music sector. A number of new initiatives and grants will be launched, with €300,000 earmarked for next year. Six thematic programmes will be implemented in line with the City of Music strategy, aiming to make music more accessible to all, to bring music to the urban landscape, to ensure better conditions for musicians and collectives, to strengthen the music industry, to encourage technological innovation and to link the development of the music sector to sustainable development objectives.
Total investment in the cultural sector is planned to reach €28.9 million in 2022, almost three times more than this year. The main part of this – €13.4 million – is related to the construction of the Tallinn City Theatre.
Two new exhibits will be in the spotlight at Tallinn Zoo next year – the exposition building of the tropical rainforest of Southeast Asia will be completed, and construction will start on a comprehensive exposition area called Tiger Valley, a habitat for the endangered Amur tiger.
Preparations for The Tall Ships Races, the 2024 sailing regatta in Tallinn, will also start next year. Tallinn continues to support the activities of the Song and Dance Festivals, including the unification of the subsidiary principles for the instructors and the start of preparations for the 13th Youth Song and Dance Festival in 2023. Support will continue to be provided to community organisations and civic associations organising public events, as well as to Tallinn’s flagship festivals: the film festival PÖFF, Jazzkaar and Tallinn Music Week.
At the Tallinn Botanical Garden, works will continue for the renovation of the outdoor exhibits – the alpinearium, the rosearium and the salicarium – and the adaptation of the old administrative building and conservatory into a visitor centre.
Tallinn City Museum’s branches will undergo a number of major renovations in 2022, the biggest of which will be the Children’s Museum Miiamilla’s new permanent exhibition and facade. In addition, the conservation of the Peter I House Museum building and the renewal of the exhibits will be launched, and the Kiek in de Kök Fortifications Museum will start designing an exhibit solution to meet the preservation requirements of the artefacts. The premises of the Mati Unt Museum will also be permanently acquired for the Tallinn Literary Centre.
At the Tallinn Central Library, the procurement of a complete self-service solution based on RFID technology will continue. In the coming years, self-service machines will be added to all library service units, and outdoor self-service kiosks will be planned for a library in each district. The implementation of self-service machines will require the library to equip more than 850,000 items with RFID stickers, starting next year. The installation of solar panels in city institutions are likely to include a number of branch libraries of Tallinn Central Library.
Further information about Tallinn is available at https://www.tallinn.ee/eng/.
