KUOPIO
The Culture Workshop Konepaja, located in a historical railway property in a district near by the city centre of Kuopio, offered a unique environment for the local people to create, organise and take part in arts, local democracy and ecological urban change making.
The Kuopio pilot promoted participation, civic action and local democracy as well as ecological change-making at the Culture Workshop Konepaja. The pilot site is a former, unused train workshop space. The ANTI Festival worked with a group of local people – the Konepaja Community – since September 2022 to co-design the pilot space and its activities. Since March 2024 ANTI Festival coordinated and facilitated the activities taking place at Konepaja which are taking form in three clusters:
1) activities curated by ANTI Festival, 2) activities designed and organised by the Konepaja Community, freelance artists and creatives, and activists, and 3) activities organised by local companies and cultural associations or collectives; which is organised partly through sub-renting the space.
The Starting Point
Konepaja is an exciting historical industrial property that has inspired artists and creatives in Kuopio for decades. It is an unused property that was built for the use of the state railway company. The first buildings at the property were built in 1932 and used to be a working place for dozens of people, until the railway company closed its activities there in 2002. Since that the spaces have been used for small industry and woodwork education, and most local people have rejected the area.
The spaces of Konepaja have been used for single events by ANTI Festival and other cultural organisers over the past 10 years but a major part of the property remains empty. At the same time, the artists, creatives and urban activists in Kuopio are lacking working spaces, venues and dedicated spaces for citizen-led cultural activity.
Konepaja is located in the middle of the rapidly changing neighbourhood of Männistö-Itkonniemi, which will be under development of infrastructure, public transport, and housing over the next 20 years. However, the Konepaja property currently has no urban plan, and its future is unclear.
The Approach
A Piece of Space: 106 Assembly, created by the artist Tea Andreoletti and the Konepaja Community © Akseli Muraja
“Konepaja Culture Workshop is a home for arts, urban culture and civic democracy!”
The Kuopio pilot was set to bring together the two challenges in the city; the lack of working spaces and venues for artists, creatives and urban activists, and an inspiring space standing empty near by the city centre. Through the project pilot, the ANTI Festival aimed to fill the main building of Konepaja with arts and urban culture and make it a home for local democracy.
The ANTI Festival rented a 336 m2 indoor space and a yard of 400 m2 for the use of the pilot activity. The space is suitable for performing artists’ rehearsals, workshops and other smaller gatherings as well as for bigger events. Our aim was to make the Culture Workshop Konepaja a shared community space rather than only a venue for artistic activities, and that truly happened.
Our strategy was to facilitate different types of activities; in addition to the artistic interventions curated by the ANTI Festival, we encouraged and supported activities designed and organised by the Konepaja Community, freelance artists and creatives, and activists. We also promoted activities organised by local companies, cultural associations and collectives.
Key Moments & Decisions
The Konepaja space had been activated by the ANTI Festival with single artistic projects and events for some years before the project started. When we organised the first co-design workshop for the local community in autumn 2022, the invitation to come and plan the future of Konepaja gathered more participants than we expected. It was clear that this particular space interests and inspires local people enormously. The pilot space is located in the middle of the rapidly changing neighbourhood. The upcoming development plans of the area also inspired us to focus on this particular neighborhood.
The curatorial strategy of facilitating three types of activities, that supported each other in the pilot space, was developed in the spring 2023, after a few co-design workshops with the community. We listened to the needs of the community and bridged them with our artistic mission and the aims of the Future DiverCities 2 project.
A Piece of Space: 106 Assembly, created by the artist Tea Andreoletti and the Konepaja Community. © Akseli Muraja
Challenges
Spheres of Care, created by Wauhaus & Alisa Talja. © Akseli Muraja
“How to satisfy the community with the temporary when they are grieving for a permanent space?”
The property owner never had and still doesn’t have a solid future plan for the property, for which the rental agreement wasn’t ready in an ideal timeframe. We negotiated with them on the long-term use for 1,5 years before we signed the agreement.
We worked with the local coalition over the series of workshops in 2022 and 2023, and through weekly meetings in 2024 before we found the right rhythm for their gatherings. The co-design workshops were facilitated by the FEMMA Planning, an urban planning collective focused on participatory processes. Finally, in the year 2025 all elements were working as they were supposed to at the Culture Workshop Konepaja. The community gathered once a month and in addition came together in the series of year-round workshops leading to the artistic highlight of the pilot, A Piece of Space: 106 Hours Assembly conceptualised and directed by the artist Tea Andreoletti.
As Kuopio is lacking a grass-root level culture space, one of our challenges was to manage the expectations of the community. The Future DiverCities 2 pilots were planned to take over empty spaces temporarily. How to satisfy the community with the temporary when they are grieving for a permanent space?
Qualitative Impact
The Culture Workshop Konepaja created visibility to the need of cultural spaces and venues in Kuopio and pointed out the potential of the former railway property. It participated in the public discussion on this topic and offered a temporary resting place for the artists and creatives who have been fighting for the working spaces for decades. The City of Kuopio co-funded the Future DiverCities 2 project but was not ready to contribute to the continuation plan that the ANTI Festival and the community had prepared for Konepaja. In any case, the pilot definitely forced the local decision makers, city officers and politicians to listen to the needs of the artists and other citizens.
Konepaja also gathered the fragmented field of movements working for social and environmental justice in the city. It brought together artists and creatives as well as urban, environmental and human rights activists. It became common to people coming from different backgrounds, and a home to the local democracy movement in Kuopio.
The Konepaja community members became advocates for more sustainable and participatory urban planning, greener city, more working spaces for local artists, and for more citizen-lead urban culture in Kuopio.
First co-design workshop in 2022 & A Community gathering © Akseli Muraja
Key Lessons & Insights
People in the yard of Konepaja & Festival Club © Akseli Muraja
Managing bigger forces:
No structural support from the City of Kuopio.
The property owner’s aims didn’t match with our aims.
The Finnish bureaucracy and restrictions.
Managing expectations of the community:
It’s important to communicate realistic resources to the community from the beginning. As Kuopio is lacking cultural spaces, the community expected an equipped and highly functional venue from the ANTI Festival – yet the aims and budget of the Future DiverCities 2 project were targeting temporary use and community facilitation through artistic interventions.
Hosting a community in a space is more important than the physical space:
The space of Konepaja has been a huge inspiration to many local people but in the end of the pilot, we see again that the people matter more than the walls.
Legacy: Looking 10 years ahead
After participating in the project pilot at the Culture Workshop Konepaja, the local community members now have tools to organise themselves for similar civic action, to share skills and knowledge, and even to run a grass-root level cultural space. We can all now see that such a cultural space is possible for our city too, yet we didn’t succeed in sustaining its future and the use of empty spaces in Finland and Kuopio is generally very bureaucratic and restricted. The Cultural Workshop Konepaja is closed but the Konepaja community continues its activity through monthly meetings and organising events in other spaces and contexts of the city, such as during the annual ANTI Festival. Our aim is that, in 10 years time, the City of Kuopio would have opened a similar space with better infrastructure and even more possibilities.
A Piece of Space: 106 Assembly, created by the artist Tea Andreoletti and the Konepaja Community © Akseli Muraja