Checkpoint Helsingin Tukiyhdistys ry

Jeanne van Heeswijk: ’Not Yet’ – research for a public art project realized in Helsinki 2019–2020.

Our cities are experiencing sudden and rapid growth. As they evolve, there is a major shift in their racial, social and economic demographics. Changes like these inevitably lead to shifts in political priorities determining the distribution of resources for community-based and social service organizations and initiatives. There is an immediate and imperative need for working within these realms to strengthen our networks, build organizational capacity, and secure additional resources. It has become necessary to fortify political influence and insure social justice for all is the foundation for all cities, including within the arts, and to made this a key priority for our futures. In our rapidly changing cities we must train ourselves to work collectively to imagine a future with complexity and care, both militant and empathic. How to collectively shape the places we live and engage in deep cultural exchanges among different communities? How to get bring equality as central to decision-making and for it to be a basis of influence and responsibility within municipal processes of design, regulation, city planning, and policy making? These political questions are at the core of how people can live in the city. In Helsinki, Jeanne will instigate and co-create a curriculum of “community learnings” through research, collaboration and public gatherings, culminating in texts, practice-based workshops and producing performative objects and scenarios.