Children’s light artwork brings joy to Christmas season
The communal art project ‘Muksut mäppää’ (Kids map) will be projecting artworks created by children living in Helsinki onto the walls of the City Museum courtyard before Christmas. The art project will be opened to the public on Saturday 23 November. Six schools in Helsinki and a total of 558 pupils participated in the project. The work will be available for viewing until Epiphany on 6 January.
Muksut Mäppää (in Finnish) is a communal art project by Reflektor ry, which is an association promoting the social participation of comprehensive school-aged children. Enabling children to make art and experience their own art is at the core of the activities of the association. Reflektor ry wants to show children that they have the right to make a difference in urban spaces and have their voices heard in society. The art project for the Christmas season 2024–2025 is carried out in cooperation with Torikorttelit.
The communal project invites local children to become artists for the festival, and it was previously carried out in Malmi in 2022, 2023 and 2024 and in Kerava in 2024. In the project, children’s works are projected in the urban environment in the scale of residential buildings using the projection mapping technique. The project operates in schools, where it engages in a dialogue with children about their participation and right to shared urban space as well as provides them with means to mould it in their image. Operating in schools ensures the accessibility of the artwork, especially for children in socially vulnerable situations, and underscores everyone’s right to use their voice in public spaces.
Photo: Hannu Iso-Oja / Reflektor Malmi 2024.
