Join an adventure led by miniature guidebooks, create unique neighbourhood souvenirs, fall in love with an urban field of flowers, encounter art at the supermarket or get your groove on at the corner library!
The Artist as Neighbour project urges you to examine the residential city suburbs as experiential districts with unique qualities and neighbourhood communities – as individual villages within the city. Neighbourhoods such as Varissuo, the most multicultural suburb in Finland, Hirvensalo, the seaside beauty, Jyrkkälä, with the alphabet buildings, and Pansio, the district by the docks, will all reveal their true nature through artistic collaboration.
Local and international artists will highlight Turku and its neighbourhoods in a playful, creative and insightful manner. Throughout the year, you can run into Jouna Karsi’s miniature figurines in the supermarket or stumble upon locations fixed by an Art Janitor. Free Miniature Guidebooks will be published on Valentine’s Day to help people discover city neighbourhoods. The month of May will be filled with daily events and during the autumn Turku will engage in an artistic dialogue with Cologne, Turku's German twin city.
The Turku Cultural Services Office is running the project.
Programme for all ages throughout 2011.
Some of the highlights:
- 14 February: Publication of Miniature Guidebooks. Take a trip to visit Turku neighbourhoods.
- 1–31 May: Artist as Neighbour month, 30+1 days of workshops, events and artworks. Programme highlights include Susanna Peijari’s game Suburban Memory, Flora Metamorphicae’s field of ceramic flowers, neighbourhood bicycle trips, Instant Souvenir workshops and library clubs in local libraries.
- 24 August–11 September: The Dialogue Cities urban art event creates an artistic dialogue between the twin cities Turku and Cologne on the streets, in working places and at the Gallery Maaret Finnberg.
