Openness and Community for the Art World
Globe Art Point ry received a grant of EUR 240,000 for its initiative entitled GAP LAB & GAP INFO, Living Lab and Databank for New Finnish Art and Culture, in February 2018.
The largest grant awarded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation in 2018, totalling EUR 240,000, was given to Globe Art Point.
Globe Art Point is an association established in late 2016 for the purpose of promoting increased openness in the field of arts and culture in Finland. It supports opportunities for non-Finnish artists to collaborate with their Finnish counterparts and with local art institutions. The Globe Art Point (GAP) work space in Helsinki organises advisory services, workshops, lectures, discussions and stakeholder encounters. It can also be used by artists and teams for work and meetings.
“The goal is to enhance mutual understanding and collaboration between artists from various backgrounds, the public, and art institutions.”
GAP LAB & GAP INFO, Living Lab and Databank for New Finnish Art and Culture is an initiative intended to foster the diversification of the Finnish arts and culture field in line with the country’s rapid internationalisation. The initiative consists of two parts, of which the first, GAP LAB, will result in projects within performing and visual arts. The products will be shown to the public as elements of the partnering art institutions’ own programmes.
The second part, GAP INFO, is aimed at improving the openness and accessibility of the arts field for artists of non-Finnish origin.
“The goal is to enhance mutual understanding and collaboration between artists from various backgrounds, the public, and art institutions,” explains the association’s Managing Director, Tomi Purovaara.
“We will compile an online Artists’ Welcome Package, which will help non-Finnish artists successfully navigate their chosen career paths.”
GAP INFO will collect and disseminate information in English on operators, processes, legislation and funding related to the Finnish field of arts and culture.
“We will compile an online Artists’ Welcome Package, which will help non-Finnish artists successfully navigate their chosen career paths,” Purovaara says.
The Artists’ Welcome Program produced within GAP LAB, on the other hand, will comprise workshops, guidance and art institution visits, in order to deepen the information gained from the welcome package.
“GAP LAB is a collaborative endeavour, in which a team of curators will select projects to be implemented from proposals received through an open application system. The curator team and the artistic productions will include both non-Finnish and Finnish participants, and the curator team will also welcome representatives from various minority communities,” remarks Purovaara.
The initiative was devised by two employees of Globe Art Point together with a board consisting of seven non-Finnish artists, as well as some outside experts. The projects included in the initiative will be carried out by GAP LAB’s work teams in collaboration with staff from selected art institutions. The latter will include theatres, galleries, museums and festivals, among others.
The association is headquartered on Malminkatu in Kamppi, Helsinki, and the GAP LAB work space will be rented somewhere in the Helsinki region. Although the initiative is designed for Finland, during 2018 Globe Art Point will work on building a Nordic network of partners, with whom the outcomes and best practices of the initiative can be refined and disseminated.
“We are also planning a next phase, involving the establishment of a European network,” says Purovaara, describing the association’s ambitions.
