Skip to main content

Lönnström Project 3

Conversation Park – A Public Space Game

Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen | 2018–2020

Conversation Park – A Public Space Game is a work of community art that was created by 21 Rauma residents of different ages. In the project, they planned and built a public park. The game was played in the summers of 2019 and 2020 in six moves. The park is located in Rauma at Kalliokatu 28–30.

Conversation Park is an action-oriented project that investigates participation, collaboration between different age groups, collective decision making, and public space. The gamelike process began by gathering participants’ ideas for a public park. All players were allotted a piece of land of their own on which to implement their ideas. In the course of the project, five meetings were held where every player received 200 euros to use for the management of their plot. The players were required to spend the money by the next game meeting. After the initial moves in the game, the players began to negotiate and combine their ideas, their allotments and their funds. As the game progressed, so the park changed. In the last meeting, the players received a collective amount of 14,000 euros to finalise the park.

Conversation Park is a public space that everyone is free to visit. Enjoy the scenery, have a barbeque around an open fire or participate in a hobby horse race. Come create wonderful memories in the park!

Tellervo Kalleinen (b. 1975) and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen (b. 1971) are an artist duo who won the 2014 Ars Fennica prize. Many of their works are participatory in nature. Conversation Park is their first artwork in the public space and also their longest project by duration.

keskustelupuisto.fi

The park was officially opened on 12 September 2020. At the opening ceremony, it was donated to Wihertoimi, the Rauma park services unit, which undertook to maintain the park at least through 2022. Conversation Park is now part of the city’s park adoption programme, which allows everyone who is interested to participate in its upkeep.

A free mobile app provides a tour of the park, an experimental park disco and an audio tour.

Read more about the app

Conversation Park phone app

Designed and built by Rauma residents, Conversation Park opened in September 2020 at Kalliokatu 28–30. The phone app adds a digital dimension to the park. Named after the Finnish art project, the Keskuspuisto app offers access to a tour of the park, an experimental park disco and an audio walk. The app also contains lots of suggestions for activities in the park. Some of the features can only be used in the park, but many of them work regardless of your location.

A key focus of the app is the intricacy of collaboration and learning experiences: What does it take for a group of people to create a shared public space? The app features videos of project participants sharing their thoughts and feelings during and after the two-year process of creating the park.

Find the free app in your app store by searching for Keskustelupuisto.