As part of our storytelling practice we:
What role do local communities play in urban development amid market-driven forces? How can communities act as active agents in response to climate-driven extreme weather events? These are some of the questions explored in Grassroots City, a two-year research and art project focused on the role of local communities in socially and ecologically sustainable urban development.
As climate change forces cities to adapt to rising sea levels and extreme weather, it is essential for city dwellers to be central in shaping climate-resilient urban spaces. The project aims to spark discussion on the resources and resilience of local communities in a changing world, examining the history, present, and future of community-based urban development. It also addresses the challenges and opportunities created by today’s urban dynamics, including the financialisation and entrepreneurialisation of real estate markets. The project is funded by the Arts Promotion Center.
You can study the results of the project (in Finnish) via this link↗
As climate change forces cities to adapt to rising sea levels and extreme weather, it is essential for city dwellers to be central in shaping climate-resilient urban spaces. The project aims to spark discussion on the resources and resilience of local communities in a changing world, examining the history, present, and future of community-based urban development. It also addresses the challenges and opportunities created by today’s urban dynamics, including the financialisation and entrepreneurialisation of real estate markets. The project is funded by the Arts Promotion Center.
You can study the results of the project (in Finnish) via this link↗
Cité internationale des arts
The Grand [Ensemble] Tour is an art and research project developed during a residency at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris in the autumn of 2025.
Reimagining the traditional Grand Tour — once a journey to the ruins of antiquity — the project turns its attention to the Parisian grands ensembles: postwar housing complexes built primarily during Les Trente Glorieuses (1945–1975) as symbols of progress and housing for all, later burdened by neglect and stigma.
Because these neighbourhoods occupy a sensitive place in public discourse, we adopted drawing as our primary method. Many residents prefer not to be photographed, and drawing—slow, public, and conversational—invites curiosity and exchange. Rather than fleeting images, it demands time and presence, treating these postwar complexes as monuments in their own right.
The project was funded by the Finnish Culture Fund and the Arts Promotion Centre Finland and was done in collaboration with local organizations Accueil & Culture and Compagnons Bâtisseurs. Its culmination was a series of drawing workshops in Sarcelles, organised with dramaturg Elaheh Nouri. The work was exhibited at Cité internationale des arts in December 2025
Built between 1954 and 1976, Sarcelles is one of France’s most emblematic grands ensembles. By the early 1960s, however, Sarcelles had given its name to sarcellite, signifying the malaise of living in the large housing estates, becoming a media anti-model and a shorthand for the failures of large housing estates.
Today, Sarcelles — like many postwar districts — is undergoing large-scale renewal. Framed as social and environmental improvement, these processes often prioritise demolition over repair, with social housing disappearing faster than it is replaced.
Yet Sarcelles has always been more complex than its reputation allows. It remains a deeply diverse neighbourhood, where many families have lived for generations and dozens of languages and cultures coexist. Neighbours meet regularly, most visibly in the market that takes over the area several times a week. Against decades of stigma, Sarcelles’ identity continues to be shaped through everyday life, shared space, and collective presence. The drawing workshops sought to find and give form to these lived values of the neighbourhood.
Geography of Memories is an art and research project where together with local residents we gathered memories and the intangible values embedded in the neighborhood of Meri-Rastila. As the area undergoes significant changes due to urban renewal, major buildings—from schools to the local mall—are being demolished to make way for new constructions.
Through our approach, we aimed to inspire a new way of observing the built environment—not just through abstract maps and planners’ drawings, but through the personal significance places and spaces hold in people’s lives. The project invited us to engage with the history of map-making and reflect on the power that the lines drawn by architects carry. Even if the demolition driven by urban renewal cannot be halted, we can preserve the memories embedded in the built environment and the silent knowledge held by the area’s residents.
The results of the Geography of Memories project were exhibited at the cultural space Merirasti in August 2025. The site-specific exhibition drew on the form of the former chapel hall. On the wall, in the place traditionally occupied by the altarpiece, hung a memory map compiling residents’ recollections of Meri-Rastila, highlighting both past and present places of significance, including those that local people have fought to preserve.
The altar table was covered with fourteen stacks of A4 paper. The A4 format referenced the systems of standardisation that shape everyday life and seek to regulate human experience. These stacks symbolised the many surveys conducted about Meri-Rastila and formed the project’s final publication: a deconstructed book that reimagined what surveys of neighbourhood social life might look like.
The project is funded by the Alfred Kordelin Foundation and the City of Helsinki.