15.9.2025, 9:30 – 15:00

Location: KYMP-talo Auditorium, Työpajankatu 8, 00580 Helsinki

Dreaming Suburbs Seminar
Mutual Infrastructures: Culture Supporting Cities, Cities Supporting Culture

How do cultural spaces sustain the life of cities—and how can cities ensure the sustainability of cultural spaces?
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About the Seminar
Dreaming Suburbs (2024–2026) is an international collaboration at the intersection of art, activism, and urban planning. Co-funded by the EU Creative Europe programme, the project brings together Konsthall C, Konstfrämjandet Stockholm, Museum of Impossible Forms, Til Vægs, and FEMMA Planning.
Grounded in local neighbourhoods, Dreaming Suburbs challenges segregation policies and explores how art can act as a critical and generative force in shaping more just and sustainable urban futures. Through residencies, seminars, an exhibition, a festival, and a publication, the initiative connects artists, urbanists, activists, and residents to reimagine the social and spatial dynamics of our cities.
Its opening seminar, ‍, considers the reciprocal relationship between cultural spaces and urban development in contexts shaped by segregation and renewal. Cultural organisations situated in neighbourhoods often work at the frontline of social cohesion: they counter stigmatising narratives, nurture community resilience, and create infrastructures for dialogue and collective imagination that urban planning alone cannot provide.
Cities hold responsibility for ensuring that these spaces are not displaced or instrumentalised, but supported through sustainable policies, secure infrastructures, and long-term recognition of their civic role. By bringing together cultural practitioners, residents, and urban policymakers, the seminar asks how we might build mutual infrastructures of care and accountability—so that both cities and cultural spaces can contribute to more just, equitable, and sustainable urban futures.
Speakers include Marie Finsten Jensen & Søren-Emil Schütt (AKK Almene Kunstklubber / Common Art Clubs, Denmark), Will Bradley (Kunsthall Oslo, Norway), and Ulrika Flink (Konstfrämjandet Stockholm, Sweden), Ahmed Al-Nawas, Sonya Lindfors, and H Ouramo, with additional participants to be announced.
The seminar is curated by Giovanna Esposito Yussif – Museum of Impossible Forms and supported by the EU Creative Europe programme, Creative Europe national co-financing from the Finnish National Agency for Education (EDUFI), and the City of Helsinki’s Urban Environment Division.
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Programme
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9:30
Open doors + coffee/tea and snacks
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10:00–12:00
Welcoming words and introduction
Giovanna Esposito Yussif, artistic director of Museum of Impossible Forms
Presentations
AKK – Almene Kunstklubber (Common Art Clubs)
Talk with founders and leaders: Marie Finsten Jensen & Søren-Emil Schütt (Online)
Kunsthall Oslo
Talk with founder and director: Will Bradley
Ulrika Flink
Talk with curator and artistic director of Konstfrämjandet Stockholm
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12:00–13:00
Lunch break
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13:00–15:00
Panel and conversation
Culture Supporting Cities, Cities Supporting Culture
Featuring Ahmed Al-Nawas, Will Bradley, Ulrika Flink, Sonya Lindfors, and H Ouramo, with additional participants to be announced. Moderated by Wisam Elfadl & Giovanna Esposito Yussif.

KYMP-talo auditorium is an accessible venue.
The language for the seminar will be English.

More information on the speakers at www.impossibleforms.org/event-posts/mutual-infrastructures