Jönköping Art Strategy

I was invited by Jönköping municipality in Sweden to write an art strategy for the city. Working with landscape architect Jake Ford, we produced an ambitious, in-depth report which drew on the voices of local, national and international artists, curators, architects, planners and museum specialists.

Like many cities across the world, Jönköping is grappling with multiple challenges: urban expansion, a growing population reliant on a crumbling welfare state, the fall-out of neo-liberal policies, the climate crisis, and diminishing cultural funding.

While the book is specific to the city of Jönköping, it is also relevant to a broad range of organisations looking to develop an art commissioning programme that is embedded in the hopeful infrastructure of city life. It takes the temperature of contemporary commissioning practice and proposes ways that things could change.

This project draws on the work I have been doing with Jake Ford over the last seven years in Lund for the award winning Råängen programme of commissions, events, publications and buildings – an urban expansion programme involving artists, thinkers, academics, priests, local people and magic.