FinnEKVIT was established in 1993 to promote Finnish research on European cultural and media policies.

It is a small expert organisation with a membership of a dozen university professors, researchers and experts and managers from the Finnish cultural life and media. Its members are frequently engaged by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture and other cultural policy decision-making bodies as experts in national and international contexts.

In recent years FinnEKVIT has steadily expanded its activities and now increasingly participates in the implementation of joint European research projects. Its management and members have special expertise in cultural and media statistics, in cultural policy and cultural labour market studies and scenario construction and in evaluating auditing and designing governance and management systems.

It has co-operated with the ERICarts Institute in several European projects including "Pyramids or Pillars" "Creative Europe", "Culture-Gates". It is at present designing a new combined Internet-site and cultural policy portal that will open new hypertextual channels between cultural policy R&D and the users of its results. It should be added that the secretary general of ECULT Prof. Heiskanen has been engaged as an expert in culture industry issues since the 1980s by UNESCO and the Council of Europe.

FinnEKVIT is currently re-organising its activities. The new organisation will be structured according to Leadership Groups under a Head of Research and Documentation.

Its legal form is a voluntary association registered under Finnish law and it is also registered for non-profit business activities.