Time hasn’t been the easiest recently for those dedicated to anti-racism in Oulu. It hasn’t been the easiest for artists and people of culture, especially independent freelancers, and for people working in mental health sector, with systemic financial cuts and not a lot of positive perspectives. Passion and commitment to humanistic values and willingness for change – a combo forming peaceful activism, in other words, – remained the main driving force for those operating within these fields.

One can’t pay the bills with only passion, however. And tiredness kicks in sooner or later. So what was the force nurturing the passion?

For TaideTurvapaikka, it has been refugees, one of the most passionate-for-life people in the world. Time has been especially tough for them, as they had to flee from more conflicts and persecutions than ever, resist even more hate and live alongside more complex traumas than before. It is the refugees who have been inspiring artists and those working within cultural well-being sector with their resilience, courage and stamina.

TaideTurvapaikka is a project connecting Oulu based artists and refugees through art and cultural well-being site-specific workshops and events. It also focuses on exploring artistic methods in the context of mental health, and on artistic research about isolation and humanness.

Most of TaideTurvapaikka art workshops and events have been taking place in Oulu Refugee reception centre (Oulun vastaanottokeskus) in Heikinharju. Back in the day, they say, it used to be a mental health asylum. I would say that the vibes are still there.

I first saw this place after war criminals attacked Ukraine and people had to flee, and many fled to Finland. The police was processing the documents right on the spot, and I got inside the reception centre accompanying my friend who had just arrived from Ukraine. The corridors were long, the colours were faded, the soundscape was cold white noise. It all felt empty, exposing a visitor directly to the traumas related to having had to flee.

After that experience, unexpectedly for myself, I wanted to come back to this place, and fill it with some cheer – or rather a glimpse of normal life. That is exactly what is missing in any refugee reception centre, and I know it well. I had spent two years in refugee reception centres of Finland before I received political asylum, and this experience contributed to my PTSD. Art had always helped during that experience, and art had been something almost completely unaccessible for refugees. I wanted to bring art back here – not just to these people and this place, but also to the younger, depressed version of me – through community-based artistic practices bringing asylum seekers, currently residing in Heikinharju, together with local artists.

That is how TaideTurvapaikka started in May 2023 – as my pilot project on Oulu 2026 Cultural experience guides course. I found myself in a company of talented, big-hearted artists, who have been passionate to pull through all the challenges of being underpaid and underappreciated, and make art with people. Many of my classmates, as well as friends, all supported the piloting of the project as volunteers. We have been active ever since, combining artistic research, cultural well-being activities and site-specific community art making.

In 2023 TaideTurvapaikka connected up to 200 refugees and asylum seekers with ten artists for fifteen art and cultural well-being workshops. During 2024, new artists joined in, and new artistic methods were implemented in TaideTurvapaikka; nineteen artists and several artistic volunteers created over twenty workshops and events, interacting with over a hundred refugees of different ages and backgrounds.

Two photo exhibitions dedicated to Oulu were installed in the main lobby of the refugee reception centre. The lobby is one of the most important places in the reception centre for a newcomer: this is where you usually arrive after you have requested asylum at the airport police. The lobby used to have two screens – one warning about insects and snakes, the other broadcasting news, mainly from the war zones. Thanks to the contributions of artists and technical support from the reception centre staff, the screen with the snakes and insects warnings was intervened by beautiful photo slide-shows.

We also had a Juhannus art festival with several workshops. The working group of 2024 included artists Inkeri Jäntti, Minna Kangasmaa, Tuomo Kangasmaa, JP Manninen, Yanski Sova, Johanna Riepula, Tuija Tervaskanto, Anniina Haapalainen, Anna Asplund, Annikka Kujala, Harri Kononen, Holly Connolly, Elina Tähtelä, Silja Tuovinen, Hanie Hadizadeh, Hamed Jalili, Ola Odedeyi, Anna-Kaisa Kettunen, Kajetan Zelech-Alatarvas, Anthony Rice-Perttunen, and myself.

The project has had the joy of collaboration with the Cheerful House – Hyvän mielen talo, Red Cross, Art Hub Pikisaari, Dammisaaren Rapumaja by Dodo ry, Zestii and Popopet. At the time of writing, we are also plotting new things with new awesome folks and organisations.

Our activities have been very diverse: dance and yoga, music and sound art, visual art with different painting techniques, photography, design and handicrafts, cooking, expressive and intuitive art, installation and environmental art, forest trips. And whatnot. For all this, TaideTurvapaikka working group received small project support from the City of Oulu. And while writing this text, we received a confirmation of even a larger support grant for 2025, for which we are very thankful.

In 2024, TaideTurvapaikka did feel as a safer space for processing the series of terrible racism-based knife attacks in Oulu. Doing weird creative things together in the refugee reception centre, we all managed to laugh. It is amazing how it works, how the pains and confusions convert into the harmony of laughter, when you feel safe to express yourself.

Of course, also other emotions have been experienced during TaideTurvapaikka workshops. Sometimes we have witnessed a trauma opening up and tears coming down – making way for a smile which always comes at some point after that. At times isolation and apathy took over within the centre, and the number of participants decreased.

However, sincere and pure laughter and melodies of friendly chats remained the most common soundscape of TaideTurvapaikka workshops. They were heard also by those residents who preferred to stay alone, not joining in. They still knew that we were there for them, and they knew we respected their choice.

The concept of TaideTurvapaikka has been sort of pop-up since the beginning. This is because we do not wish to add any more pressure on asylum seekers, who are overloaded with things that they are obligated (and forced) to do more than anyone else. The other important concept has been that there were never ”failures of attending”. We have always agreed with participating artists that we might be working with forty people, or four or just one, and if nobody comes, we can have a good conversation about the site, isolation and belonging – and do some art anyhow. Somebody always came, though, and we have had workshops with one person, some with over fifty people, and anywhere in between.

The discussions with artists, both the informal preliminary ones and the ones capturing reflections on how it all went (which later turned into interviews), have always been fascinating to me. These talks are explorations on humanity and humanness, on the essence of making art and, in general, on big issues that are not quite in shape today worldwide. The question of how laughter, joy and hugs emerge through creativity within dark painful contexts, has kept permeating our conversations. As have the reflections about the site: a refugee reception centre is literally a ghetto of broken hearts.

This laughter we have been hearing, in spite of that, also seems to be the soundscape of peace in the time of war – some kind of limbo space that refugees and artists have managed to create together: it does not exist, really, but it feels very real during a workshop. A refugee reception centre is also a temporal limbo: the past is gone, the future is uncertain, and the now is confusing.

In his work Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason French philosopher Michel Foucault (on whom I have done some research during my university years) describes a beautiful thing. The society is poisoned by a paradigm of domination and obedience. While trying to isolate the ”mad”, society actually saves them from this pattern of domination and obedience – saves them from itself. The locked down community becomes the safekeeper of freedom.

Heikinharju reception centre is located in a building formerly used as a mental health hospital. This makes it even more tempting to draw an analogy and see the residents of refugee reception centre as keepers of peace. It is not an utopia, of course – there can be conflicts and passive aggression between the residents, as in any other community. Furthermore, this analogy might not be obvious for those making observations from inside the reception centre: observers’ own traumas distract from making this kind of insights, especially when amplified by stigmatisation and racism.

But still, even with life happening, refugee reception centre is a model of a peaceful coexistence. The refugees who pulled themselves out of the hells of war, persecution and violence, saved themselves from becoming inhuman. There is just no other way in the refugee reception centre, you just must leave behind the thought that something is worth a war.

The effect that the gloomy corridors of the reception centre have is thus more powerful than that created in the neat, festive interiors of the United Nations. It is the space right next to oblivion, last shelter of peace. If you are here, you are not dead. There should be no wars, because nobody deserves such a limbo.

This is why, even though we often do not have a common language, refugees and asylum seekers are much more convincing to me than any diplomat in the Security Council. They know: the war will never be the answer. Peace is inevitable, and it is the resilient and creative who help carry the faith in peace. And if they stop, peace is inevitable anyway, just without humans. And art will, we hope, remain to tell the story of how we humans messed it all up.

Kindness dies more or less slowly on any side of conflicts, if they do not stop.

In Cat´s Cradle Kurt Vonnegut describes a fun activity of a hero on the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. He is collecting bugs into a jar and makes them fight by shaking the jar.

As artists have been supporting refugees in healing the traumas, so have the refugees, keepers of peace, been supporting artists and all those in the sector of cultural well-being in maintaining their passion for action.

The peace of it is based on remembering that the lack of governmental support is not a purpose to fight, and the grant system is not a sports competition. The vulnerable state of art, culture, social and health scenes, all bleeding from horrible governmental cuts, is a trigger to unite against ones who are shaking the jar. It is a trigger to make everything safer for all.