More Street Art in Helsinki
More Street Art in Helsinki is a project that I started with the street art group G-REX that uses street art to eliven the streets of Helsinki. The main goal of the project is to make large murals wherever in the city there is the biggest need for them. The project aims to raise the profile of legal, high-quality and world class mural art in Finland and offer alternatives for the commercial imagery in the urban space.
In the years 1998-2008 the city of Helsinki had zero tolerance policy for graffitis, which is why there hasn’t been a very strong street art culture in the city. In recent years the policies about street art have become more positive. We want to be a part of making progress with street art in Finland and show how many positive influences it can have.
In the summer of 2016 the project ran a contest called More Street Art For Your Hoods, where people could suggest places in Helsinki for new street art. Three winning locations were chosen, two of which are located in the neighbourhood of Kannelmäki and one in Roihuvuori. In September Maikki Rantala painted a participatory street art piece in Kannelmäki, on the wall of a building located at Trumpettitie 2. To Roihuvuori, at the address Prinssintie 4 we received a piece from the polish street artist Otecki. The third mural by Milu Correch will be painted on the wall of an elderly care home in the summer of 2017.
Through More Street Art In Helsinki anyone can now order street art to their own wall. The project will find the right artist for the location, deal with all the practical arrangements and take care of the necessary bureaucracy. We currently working on a model together with the city of Helsinki, which aims to make the acquiring of street art easier and decrease the unnecessary bureaucracy related to it.
In 2017 we created on the basis of the More Street Art in Helsinki -project a new association Helsinki Urban Art, which expands this activity and brings even more art and more versatile forms of art into the urban space.
