Kuopio Art Museum is being developed by Australians

Kuopio Art Museum, which has broken visitor records, will in future focus its activities more on young people. In autumn 2025, the museum will open a completely new space to the public. The first big steps in planning the space will be taken when a group of more than 30 Australian students from the University of Canberra arrive in Kuopio. Australian students will design the functionality and visual appearance of the space together with students of music, dance and interior architecture from Savonia.

Museum director Anna Vilkuna says that even she does not yet know what will be done in the space or what it will look like. The international student partnership has a free hand to come up with ideas for the future of the space.

• “It’s quite inconceivable that what was meant to be a small-scale collaboration could end up bringing almost 40 Australians to Finland for two weeks to think about the development of our new space,” says Vilkuna.

The University of Canberra team will work in Kuopio on 13-16 May and 24-26 May 2024.

The changes at Kuopio Art Museum are part of the results of the museum’s strategy work, in which activities are being made more customer-oriented and young people are being made a key target group. The opening of the new space will be timed with the opening of Kuopio Art Museum’s future main exhibition in 2025.