The Finnish National Gallery

A vision of future drivers of change in support of strategy work

The Finnish National Gallery is Finland’s largest art museum organisation and a national cultural institution. The Ateneum Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma and the Sinebrychoff Art Museum are the museums of the National Gallery. They are visited by more than 600 000 visitors each year. The National Gallery and Ellun Kanat worked together on a comprehensive analysis of the forces of change affecting the future of the National Gallery to support their strategy work.

The need for change

The National Gallery needed a new way of viewing changes in the operational environment in its strategy process. PEST analysis, adapted from PESTE analysis, was chosen as the tool in the analysis work carried out by Ellun Kanat. PESTE analysis is a strategic foresight tool that examines different drivers of change from political (P), economic (E), social (E), technological (T), and environmental (E) perspectives. The National Gallery had already conducted much work on sustainability issues, so the analysis was carried out using the PEST framework.

The National Gallery wanted the process to be dialogical and interactive. Ellun Kanat formulated the process so that, by working together, the views of the National Gallery’s own experts on the future could be interwoven strongly with the material prepared by experts at Ellun Kanat on the future in a joint workshop.

Vision

The analysis work coincided with the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, which meant a quick update on many of the drivers of change. The joint work between the National Gallery and Ellun Kanat highlighted the importance of global and political forces of change in relation to Finland as an operating environment for art and culture. Technological and social changes were also a particular focus of reflection. Although environmental changes were excluded from the analysis, the ecological crisis was apparent as an overarching theme across all forces of change.

The three horizons of the future help to make choices

The work resulted in a comprehensive analysis of the highly turbulent global situation, the various trends and phenomena that will impact the National Gallery and a more detailed briefing on how to prepare for changes in different timeframes. In order to make the analysis work easily utilisable in the further development of the strategy, Ellun Kanat prepared three horizon scenarios based on the analysis, which help outline the most critical drivers of change in the short, medium and long term.

“An institution such as the National Gallery is strongly linked to major societal upheavals. It is essential to understand how these forces of change affect our work. We were very impressed by the work of Ellun Kanat, and the in-depth analysis of the future took our strategy process to a whole new level.”

– Kimmo Levä, Director General, The National Gallery