The Multicultural Centre is a municipal foundation engaged in research, education and cultural activities. The ambitions and goals of the centre is to study and promote a society where diversity is reflected in Sweden’s national self-image and where migration is a natural part of the Swedish cultural heritage.
The research profile is multidisciplinary with an emphasis on an ethnographic approach, and the aim is to be a forum and a meeting place for research and artistic expressions focusing on migration as well as on social and cultural diversities of various kinds.
The Multicultural Centre’s exhibitions offer a forum that enables people from different backgrounds to meet and exchange ideas in open and inclusive climate. Various forms of artistic expressions are used, including, culture and science; and the goal is to enable visitors to touch on topics in their daily lives from different aspects.
The Multicultural Centre is a foundation located in and owned by the municipality of Botkyrka which was founded in 1987. The decision was based on a cultural and historical commitment and conviction that contemporary immigration to Sweden is equally as important as the historical emigration from Sweden. The desire is to actively promote a favourable social climate and to increase knowledge about the new conditions of Swedish society and Swedish institutions that follow in the wake of migration and globalization, in the form of research, documentation and exhibits and archives. Botkyrka can in this regard be compared to a seismograph which detects changes in a society that subsequently becomes relevant later on at a national level. The issue of cultural diversity, which in the 1980s was largely focusedupono Botkyrka and a few other metropolitan areas, is today relavent to the whole of Sweden.
The Multicultural Centre’s basic subsidies come from the municipality of Botkyrka, the Stockholm County Council (Culture and Education) and the Swedish Arts Council, supplemented by revenues from education and research, property rentals for conferences, a museum shop, café and restaurant operations and a publishing house.
