Places We Meet - Art in Public Spaces
Art programme
Developed for Stavanger Municipality by Koffi & Højgaard, Stavanger 2025-2027
Places We Meet – Art in Public Spaces is Stavanger Municipality’s most ambitious public art initiative to date. The project is part of the Stavanger 2025 jubilee year, marking the 900th anniversary of the city, the cathedral, and the diocese. It is an opportunity to highlight the role of art in society and urban development – as a way of existing in, seeing, and understanding the world. In this project, art will take form – not only as physical works, but as explorations, movements, encounters, and stories in the public spaces we all share. This art programme has been developed by us, the art consultants Ida Højgaard Thjømøe and Pauline Koffi Vandet, and outlines the framework for how the art programme and its various art projects will be developed and implemented. It is rooted in Stavanger Municipality’s long-term work with public art and builds on the preliminary project Art in Public Spaces 2025. The plan has been developed in close dialogue with the Art Committee, and in meetings with artists, professionals, and municipal representatives.
The art programme Places We Meet – Art in Public Spaces is exactly about that: Working with art in the city’s shared outdoor spaces. When we reference public spaces, we mean the open, accessible areas in the city such as parks, paths, streets, beaches, squares, and plazas. These are places where people move, pause, meet, or simply pass through – alone or together. They hold memories, routines, and a sense of belonging. As artistic material, public spaces offer both resistance and possibilities because they are already in use, because they are changing, and because they can be reinterpreted.
The art programme consists of a series of permanent and temporary art projects, a programme for professionals, and an art engagement program. It will take place from 2025 to 2027 in the Våland district – a neighborhood characterized by green areas, historical layers, and unexpected transitions between neighborhoods, landscapes, and infrastructure.
Working with art in public spaces is complex. Each art project must relate to both the physical and social conditions of the site, and to an audience that has not chosen the art but still encounters it. The art projects presented in this art plan attempt to embrace this complexity and should be seen as parts of a shifting whole, where past, present, and future are constantly interacting.
There is no single answer to how art affects us and our surroundings. Still, we dare to believe that the art in Places We Meet – Art in Public Spaces can create new connections, questions, curiosity and experiences. That it can open new ways of being in the city’s spaces and leave traces – physically, sensorially, and socially.
Thematic and curatorial framework
Artistic objectives
Three overarching goals have been defined for all the art projects within the program:
To create diverse types of art projects involving local, national, and international artists.
To develop art projects that invite collaboration with local communities, art institutions, and the independent art and cultural sector.
To foster projects that promote unity, dialogue, and shared experiences – and that leave clear and lasting impressions in Stavanger.
These objectives have emerged through meetings with local practicing artists, the work on the preliminary project, and our ongoing dialogue with the Art Committee. We believe it is valuable to experiment with new and varied artistic formats and to invite a range of voices from both the art field and other disciplines. This, we believe, will contribute to a diversity
of expressions and experiences that both resonate with and challenge Stavanger’s various contexts and communities.
To realize this, we have chosen to organize the art programme into several parallel art projects, each with different durations and approaches:
Two permanent art projects; The Axis and The Culvert
Four temporary art projects; Vålandsskogen, Film Programme Transitt, 24 Hours of Art and Community Project
A professional art seminar and course
A mediation and art engagement programme
By working with both permanent and temporary art projects, we aim to reach different audiences and create both enduring traces and fleeting, meaningful experiences.
The permanent projects can contribute to long-term identity-building and become part of residents’ everyday lives. The temporary projects can respond to the present moment, allowing for experimentation and immediate engagement. The art projects can enhance the experience of, and connect with, their surroundings – while also being sensitive to ecological values and current uses of the spaces.
For the art program to achieve its goals, the art projects should be meaningful to the people of Stavanger. To succeed, the art projects must emerge from an understanding of local needs and the people who use these places.
A central vision for the art program is to create spaces for artistic contributions that embrace complexity and presence and that can continue to generate new meaning over time. Furthermore, the art program should leave lasting traces. These traces may take many forms:
As physical objects and interventions that become part of people’s daily lives
As sensory experiences that leave impressions on the body
As new relationships and communities
As structural and social changes
What these have in common is art as a driving force – and the idea that artistic processes can open new ways of working and being together.
You will find all the projects for this art programme here on our website with further information.