About Kulturytring
Kulturytring is Norway’s largest and most important forum for art and cultural policy, organized by the Norwegian Cultural Forum (Norsk kulturforum – NOKU). The festival takes place every other year in Drammen, in collaboration with Drammen municipality and Buskerud County. First held in 2021 and continued in 2023 and 2025, Kulturytring is modeled on the political gathering Arendalsuka. The festival serves as a national arena for cultural policy debate while simultaneously presenting a wide-ranging artistic program.
With each edition, the festival has grown, both in number of delegates, organizers, and registered events, demonstrating the strong need for cultural policy arenas in Norway’s public life.
From the start, Kulturytring’s aim has been to make art and culture visible and central in policymaking at the local, regional, and national levels. Its objective is to strengthen the cultural sector by facilitating debate and diverse perspectives in an open and inclusive arena.
The first festival in 2021 was primarily digital due to Covid-19 regulations. Since then, Kulturytring has developed into a large-scale physical festival, gathering participants from across the Norwegian cultural sector and putting art and culture on the political agenda in the lead-up to national elections. The program combines political and professional debates, keynote speeches, panel discussions, and research presentations with an integrated artistic program of concerts, theatre, exhibitions, performances, and artist talks.
Over three days, politicians, cultural workers, researchers, artists, young talents, and the general public come together to highlight art, culture, and freedom of expression in the political debate. The next Kulturytring will take place in June 2027.
Background
A central purpose of Kulturytring is to strengthen cultural policy in Norway at the local, regional, and national levels. The festival is designed as a hub for developing and sharing knowledge, engaging with different perspectives, and building insight into issues that are vital for a diverse and sustainable cultural life.
Public debate is constantly opening new channels for expression, but it also risks creating echo chambers where views are only reinforced rather than challenged. Cultural policy in the Norwegian debate is no exception to this. As with other policy fields, cultural policy is far more complex than social media debates may suggest, where “the public” and “the cultural elite” are often positioned against each other. Kulturytring recognizes these tensions in the public debate as part of the bigger picture and seeks to bring them into open and constructive conversation.
About the Norwegian Cultural Forum | www.noku.no
The Norwegian Cultural Forum (NOKU), initiator of Kulturytring, is a membership and interest organization that brings together the cultural sector in municipalities and counties across Norway.
NOKU’s mission is to strengthen professional competence and to promote art and culture as vital contributors to social development and quality of life. Its goal is to unite the cultural sector in a shared conversation on art and culture, and to secure culture’s place as a key field of public policy.