The Gift of Art: Helsinki brings art safely to people’s doorsteps and invites the world to follow with the help of a new open source application
Photo: Saara Autere / Events Helsinki
The Art Gift concept and web application allow art festivals and culture venues everywhere to quickly produce intimate city performances at scale.
Helsinki, a forerunner in digital development and new technologies, is home to many urban innovations, and the city’s art festivals are no exception. Traditionally, the summer in Helsinki has culminated in Helsinki Festival, the largest multi-arts festival in the Nordics. This year the festival could not safely convene large audiences, but a new shorter weekend event, Helsinki Fest, will safely bring art to courtyards and streets across the city on 21-23.8.2020.
In the run-up to Helsinki Fest anyone could order an Art Gift to a friend or a loved one – a short five-minute performance of music, dance, circus or poetry, safely delivered in front of the recipients’ house or under their balcony. Three hundred gifts were immediately booked online and delivered by 20 artists in early August. The gifts touched the hearts and minds of people all around the city.
Art Gifts could be ordered online, free of charge, through an application specifically developed for the occasion. The festival paid selected artists a fee per day in exchange for about eight Art Gifts to be performed around a particular Helsinki district
To encourage other cities and festivals to do the same, Helsinki Fest is now sharing the concept and open sourcing the web application.
“From the very beginning we created Art Gifts as an open source project. This is our gift to our colleagues working on arts and events in cities around the world,” says Artistic Director, Marko Ahtisaari. “We are delighted that the Art Gifts were so well received in Helsinki. Developing such a concept and application for just one week in one city is a big effort. By now sharing the concept and code, we hope to encourage our peers everywhere to present Art Gifts with local artists, and to further develop the system.”
The open source web application enables both the booking and confirmation of Art Gifts, thus simplifying the production process considerably. The application shows available gift times and creates routes for the performing artists. The concept and application were developed by the Helsinki Festival team in collaboration with Counterpoint. The application can be easily customised to different cities, performances and visual styles. This makes it possible to implement the concept quickly saving expensive effort in design, development and production. Additional information, photos, videos, and links to GitHub can be found at helsinkifest.fi/artgifts
Helsinki, crowned as the most innovative region in the EU by the European Commission in 2019, is at the forefront of utilizing digital innovation to create democratic and sustainable solutions for people to experience all Helsinki has to offer. Helsinki has been developing Virtual Helsinki, a digital twin of the Helsinki City centre, created in high-quality 3D for VR in partnership with Zoan. Virtual Helsinki was used in spring 2020, when big gatherings were prohibited, as a platform for traditional May Day celebrations when over 700 000 people participated in the May Day concert. Virtual Helsinki is a unique platform to host different types of events from art, music, city landmarks and attractions to business to business events and international conferences.
“The impacts of Covid-19 have been especially severe for art, culture and events. The pandemic has created conditions where it has been necessary to reimagine the way culture is made and experienced,” says Mari Männistö, the Cultural Director of the City of Helsinki. “The Art Gift concept together with the open source application are a brilliant example of how we can solve problems by combining artistic and technological competence. In this case, how to offer safe physical performances at scale while offering artists work opportunities in these trying times.”
Helsinki Fest 21–23 August 2020. Additional information, photos and video material on Art Gifts helsinkifest.fi/artgifts
For more information, please contact:
Laura Gottleben
Communications Manager
Helsinki Events Foundation
laura.gottleben@eventshelsinki.fi
tel.+358 50 468 7243
Jukka Jänönen
Communications Manager
City of Helsinki
jukka.janonen@hel.fi
tel. +358 400 127 147
Helsinki Fest is an event produced by Helsinki Events Foundation. The aim of the foundation is to develop Helsinki into an ever more functional and attractive city for events.
Helsinki Festival is the largest arts festival in the Nordic countries, organised annually in late summer. Founded in 1968, the festival’s aim is to make art accessible for all. The programme line-up features music, sound art, dance as well as a range of urban events.
Marko Ahtisaari (b. 1969) was named Artistic Director of Helsinki Festival in August 2018 and is responsible for the artistic planning of the festival until 2023. Ahtisaari is an internationally accomplished creative executive and entrepreneur. Ahtisaari returned to Helsinki from Boston, USA, where he was CEO and co-founder of Sync Project. Previously he was a Director’s Fellow at the MIT Media Lab and Executive Vice President of Design at Nokia. Ahtisaari has Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts and Master of Philosophy degrees from Columbia University in New York where he studied philosophy, music and economics.
Virtual Helsinki, the Helsinki’s digital twin is the result of a long-term strategic view into how the city uses its data, and the culmination of a two-year partnership with VR studio Zoan. Virtual Helsinki Day, 12.6.2020, is the latest event to take place in Virtual Helsinki, following the unprecedented success of the virtual May Day concert which saw over 700,000 people tune into the virtual gig with Finnish rap stars JVG, totalling over 1.4million views by the end of the weekend. In addition to the Virtual Helsinki Day event, the Virtual Helsinki initiative has recreated experiences of the city’s most famous landmarks through virtual reality to provide an opportunity for Helsinki to be experienced without the dependence on carbon intensive travel.
Helsinki Marketing is a company owned by the City of Helsinki. It is responsible for operative city marketing and business partnerships for Helsinki. Helsinki Marketing interacts with local residents, visitors, decision-makers and experts.
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