About WALLSTREET

We connect people and place through the power of public art. WALLSTREET is about when artists and neighbors create places of significance and meaning. We aim to be the most interesting festival for modern public art in Europe.

About

WALLSTREET is a global concept for art exhibitions in our common urban spaces. Through the creation of works of art with a variety of expressions, WALLSTREET contributes to the attractiveness and identity of places. WALLSTREET sheds light on the importance and place of art and culture in a changing urban environment, thereby contributing to positive urban and societal development.

For WALLSTREET, the soul and meaning of the place is important. The local anchoring and the contact with those who live and work in the place are central to sustainable development. WALLSTREET stands for neighborhoods together with professional artists and creators in small ways giving new life to their own places, in order to contribute to a better world in large ways. This applies to the soul of the place as well as the physical environment of the place.

WALLSTREET is created to be applied in different places around the world.

Participation and art bind people together, create pride and provide a sense of connection. When we can deeply reflect ourselves in a place, we feel at home and care about it. We nurture and are careful about the local environment we ourselves have helped to create. What we touch often touches us.

Places have great importance and impact. Art and architecture are powerful communication. Those who live and work in a place know it best, and live their lives in the stories that characterize the place. The ability to influence one’s immediate environment is linked to well-being and health.

Certain areas are also singled out by the outside world as “vulnerable” or “unsafe”. That stamp may have been added without the residents of the area having had to give their opinion on the matter and they are, on the contrary, proud of their area. How can art take advantage of that pride and highlight it? How can art, and the dialogue about places and areas, make more people feel involved and more contacts are made between residents, businesses and associations?

Another issue is the climate, where the need for people’s behavioral change is great. Simply relating intellectually to a global crisis usually does not change our established habits until the crisis comes right to our own neighborhood. Art works with emotional intelligence, and can help us understand and feel the global challenges on a deeper level and more quickly come to an insight and desire for change.

Art binds people together, and when we see ourselves in a context as a collective, the will to change our behavior can increase. When we see that we are all connected and interconnected, the desire to do what is good for everyone increases. What we do to each other, we also do to ourselves.

WALLSTREET Stockholm 2022

WALLSTREET Stockholm took place June-August in 2022 and gave the Stockholm region a total of over 100 new temporary and permanent works of art. Distinctive for this edition of the festival was the clear environmental thinking with recycled art that was both bought and rented by artists from all over Europe and the innovative concept of miniature art. The sculpture path between Sickla strandpark and Skanstullsbron was the result of an open call (Stockholm CALLING), and is described by many as the most successful part of the festival, which can be repeated through interaction between more municipalities in the future.

Here you can see all the artworks created during the 2022 festival in the form of a digital coffee table book. It is also available in physical form and can be purchased at self cost price SEK 555. Link to a digital book from WALLSTREET Stockholm 2022.

A total of over 100 young adults (ages 16-18) participated in WALLSTREET Youth and had a go at being artists under the guidance of professional artists. This type of effort normalizes and clarifies the artist profession, which can work for increased creativity and innovative power going forward, where art and the artists’ position in society are moved forward for an overall more holistic approach to our various challenges.

Transparency, anchoring and communication have been important watchwords during the festival. There has been some media coverage, such as a full spread in one of the leading news papers in Sweden Dagen Industri om konsten som viktig parameter i samhällsbygget. The art itself has mainly had a strong effect in silence – face to face with individual citizens – which has also been reflected in social media where citizens themselves have initiated debates about various works of art.

If we look at the response in the industry as well as among citizens in general, there is an overwhelming majority of very positive notes. We have of course also received some criticism and complaints, which were mainly about provocative works of art that citizens expressed to “feel bad about” (Exiled Tree + The end is near) and these works were also subjected to vandalism.

A success factor was that the festival’s platform this time was an external non-profit organization, which prevented the polarized political debates with personal attacks that colored Wallstreet Neck 2019.

WALLSTREET Nacka 2019

In the fall of 2019, Nacka municipality held the Stockholm region's first festival for public art. A total of 20 new objects were added, of which 17 were murals and three sculptures. In addition to Nacka municipality, 18 co-financed external partners participated in the project. Half of the participating artists came from Sweden, half from 10 different countries in the world. The distribution between women and men was 50/50.

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FILM / WALLSTREET Nacka - before and after. Evaluations show that the residents of Nacka are very satisfied with the result.

In connection with the implementation of WALLSTREET Nacka 2019, there was media reporting on criticism that Nacka municipality would have controlled the artists in a way that indicates that the principle of “arm’s length distance” would not be respected.

The media reporting has been misleading. Nacka municipality, which was then the organizer, drew up internal steering documents early in the process when the festival was planned. These control documents were internal to the municipality and were part of the decision-making basis when the operational project management was to be procured. The media chose to report on this guidance document as if it were an instruction to the artists. That reporting was incorrect.

The artists were not controlled, neither by codes, politicians nor civil servants. This is confirmed by the artists themselves as well as by the procured operative project management. (1)

Wall Street Stockholm 2022 has taken with it the lessons learned from WALLSTREET Nacka 2019, above all regarding the importance of placing great importance and resources at an early stage on clear communication about how the festival will guarantee that the principle of arm’s length distance is respected. This communication forms an important part of the work that is financed via the participation fee, the so-called “Ticket”.

Sources
  • SVT Stockholm 10 September 2019 where the artist Nelson Cekis who participated in WALLSTREET  Nacka says: “No, no one told me what to do.” SVT filmed Nelson directly on location in Nacka when he was painting.
  • Evaluation done via email where the artists answer questions. Most give the festival a rating of 8-10 out of a possible 10 and express themselves as very satisfied. It is documented in emails from the artists and reported in the public project report Nacka’s project manager wrote.
  • Feedback from the art consultants/operational project managers who handled all contact with the artists (Kollektivet Livet).
  • Ocular observation/inspection: The works that the artists made in WALLSTREET Nacka are completely in line with their previous productions, i.e. they did not do anything different or change their artistic expression for WALLSTREET Nacka.