The year-long cultural initiative Nordic Bridges 2022 was one of the Nordic Cooperation’s most ambitious international ventures to date as it connected artists, thinkers and innovators from the Nordic Region – Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland – with programming partners and professionals from all over Canada.
From January to December 2022, the initiative highlighted contemporary Nordic art and culture in a range of disciplines, including dance, theatre, circus and music, visual and digital arts, craft and design, literature, film, societal debates, journalism, and culinary arts.
Leading and curating Nordic Bridges was Harbourfront Centre, an international multidisciplinary arts and culture institution in Toronto. Curation was based on four key pillars: Artistic Innovation, Accessibility and Inclusion, Indigenous perspectives and Resilience and Sustainability – with an ambition of net-zero programming and zero-waste events.
Nordic artists and stakeholders collaborated with and performed alongside Canadian colleagues at festivals, arts institutions and museums across Canada, as well as on the road and met new audiences, formed new partnerships and developed new methods for the future. It engaged programming partners all over the country, and artists, groups and artistic companies from all Nordic countries.
The choice of Canada as destination for a Nordic Cultural Initiative was made by the Nordic Ministers for Culture in 2019 after an open call. Harbourfront Centre in Canada was selected based on their focus on artistic innovation, sustainability, and demonstrating how arts and culture can be integral building blocks in sustainable societies. In addition, the strong collaboration between Harbourfront Centre and the Nordic embassies in Ottawa played a pivotal role in securing Canada as the host of the next Nordic Cultural Initiative.
The initiative was originally planned for 2021, but was postponed to 2022 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Nordic Council of Ministers for Culture provided seed funding of DKK 5 million for the Nordic Bridges initiative. In addition, the Nordic Council of Ministers contributed funds to the Nordic-Canadian Fellowship for Environmental Journalism, a Nordic Talks series, and to enable the Nordic embassies in Ottawa to carry out a joint public diplomacy programme. Other funding came from Harbourfront Centre and their programming partners including in-kind, from Canadian and Nordic public and private funders, from the embassies, and ticket revenues. The initial seed funding from the Nordic Council of Ministers made a DKK 32 million programme possible.