{"id":553,"date":"2025-04-23T11:41:25","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T08:41:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/capitals.uralic.org\/?page_id=553"},"modified":"2025-04-25T10:18:22","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T07:18:22","slug":"inception","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/capitals.uralic.org\/et\/about-us\/history\/inception\/","title":{"rendered":"Inception: 2011 – 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Inception: 2011 – 2013<\/h1>
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The idea of Finno-Ugric Capitals of Culture was born in 2011 in Estonia, at the time when Tallinn held the title of the European Capital of Culture.<\/h6>\n<\/div>
\nFrom the start, a key consideration was to offer to the Finno-Ugric world something that can improve life in local communities through cultural exchanges, place marketing and tourism development. As such, Finno-Ugric Capitals of Culture were meant to complement initiatives such as the World Congresses of Finno-Ugric Peoples that were not primarily aimed at communities. It was also understood that Finno-Ugric Capitals of Culture would not be national capitals, but could also be small towns and even villages \u2013 especially because this is where Finno-Ugric languages and cultural heritage are often at their most vibrant.

The first public discussion of Finno-Ugric Capitals of Culture was held on 13-14 October in Tallinn, at the 1st Finno-Ugric Branding Conference co-organised by the Estonian NGO U-Turn and the Youth Association of Finno-Ugric Peoples (MAFUN). The conference was attended by Finno-Ugric activists from Estonia, Finland, Hungary and the Russian Federation, who discussed how to strengthen Finno-Ugric identity and brand in our respective countries but also internationally.\n<\/div>
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\nParticipants of the 1st Finno-Ugric Branding Conference in Tallinn (14.10.2011)\n<\/div>\n<\/div>
\nOne concrete outcome of the conference was strong support for the idea of Finno-Ugric Capitals of Culture, which was viewed as an instrument for both raising visibility of Finno-Ugric peoples and languages, and supporting concrete Finno-Ugric communities that would hold the capital of culture title.

From then onwards, the idea of Finno-Ugric Capitals of Culture went into rapid development phase, and was primarily led by activists of MAFUN.

The initiative of Finno-Ugric Capitals of Culture was formally presented at the VI World Congress of Finno-Ugric Peoples in Si\u00f3fok (Hungary) and the first Statutes of the programme were adopted at the meeting of MAFUN in Khanty-Mansiysk (Russian Federation) in February 2013.\n<\/div>
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\nParticipants of the meeting of MAFUN in Khanty-Mansiysk where the Statutes of Finno-Ugric Capitals of Culture were adopted (5.2.2013)\n<\/div>\n<\/div>
\nThe competition for the first Finno-Ugric Capital of Culture resulted in 8 applications, from which 3 applicants were shortlisted: the village of Bygy (Udmurtia\/RF), the village of Obinitsa (Setomaa\/Estonia), and the village of Ve\u0161kelys (Karelia\/RF). Live presentations of shortlisted candidates were held at the Estonian Embassy in Moscow on 8 July.

The winner of the competition for the first Finno-Ugric Capital of Culture \u2013 Bygy -was announced at the conference of MAFUN in Helsinki in the summer of 2013, hosted by Friends of Kindred Peoples NGO. This is when the programme of Finno-Ugric Capitals of Culture truly took off.\n<\/div>
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\nHandover of the title of Finno-Ugric Capital of Culture 2014 to the Bygy delegation at the congress of MAFUN in Helsinki (8.8.2013)\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>
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\nBygy delegation with the symbol \u2013 Tsirk-bird \u2013 of Finno-Ugric Capitals of Culture\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>
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\n Next Step<\/span>

Takeoff: 2014- 2017<\/h4> <\/div>\n
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Inception: 2011 – 2013 The idea of Finno-Ugric Capitals of Culture was born in 2011 in Estonia, at the time when Tallinn held the title of the European Capital of Culture. From the start, a key consideration was to offer to the Finno-Ugric world something that can improve life in local communities through cultural exchanges, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":34,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_breakdance_hide_in_design_set":false,"_breakdance_tags":"","footnotes":""},"tags":[],"page-tags":[6],"class_list":["post-553","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","page-tags-history"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitals.uralic.org\/et\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitals.uralic.org\/et\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitals.uralic.org\/et\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitals.uralic.org\/et\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitals.uralic.org\/et\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/capitals.uralic.org\/et\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":715,"href":"https:\/\/capitals.uralic.org\/et\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/553\/revisions\/715"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitals.uralic.org\/et\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/34"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitals.uralic.org\/et\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitals.uralic.org\/et\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553"},{"taxonomy":"page-tags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitals.uralic.org\/et\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/page-tags?post=553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}