This is my home, Vardø.
My family has lived here for 350 years.
There are 2,000 people living on this island in the Arctic part of Norway.
If you come to my homeland,
then you immediately see that it is half empty.
More than 60% of the population left in the past 30 years.
We were once with 5,000 people.
Now there are only 2,000 more left.
The fishing industry has collapsed
exactly at the moment the Norwegian government
many government jobs began to centralize.
That way we lost more than 700 jobs in a very short time.
Growing up under these circumstances is pretty dramatic.
Everything you are proud of, everything that belongs to your heritage …
Suddenly they are things you are ashamed of
and you fear that other people will discover and see them.
But I wanted to dedicate myself to turning this all around.
So I started doing projects to help other people.
I started helping people to rebuild their home and their home
and get that financed.
But when I started with those projects,
I discovered that in construction projects
people are often not recognized.
They become … The system makes them small.
For example, when we renovate houses,
then the system is not aimed at the people.
It is about renovating houses or cultural heritage
and those rules are very strict.
I was frustrated by it.
And so I had to think of a way to change the working method.
Instead of holding formal meetings in government offices,
where people wear silk scarves and computers and bring books of law,
I held the conversations in a lavvo, a traditional Sami tent.
I cooked for the people
and asked them:
“How can we handle this? You know the answer.”
And people started to share their stories.
They shared their thoughts about why the systems did not work.
And we could change them,
and devised a new way of restoring houses or cultural heritage
that did give people control.
The most important part of renovating a house
is not actually that the house is being renovated,
but that something will be restored inside the person who is doing the renovation.
That process also happens on the inside, not only at the house.
And this has evolved to the work that I do today,
called Vardø Restored,
with more than 50 ongoing renovation projects
and people who restore their own home and history in my hometown.
A few years ago
Pøbel, a Norwegian artist, came to my hometown.
Previously he had worked in Lofoten on an art concept
that wanted to highlight the consequences of depopulation and centralization processes.
He wanted to come to our community,
together with 10 international artists, to paint the walls of our city.
At first I was very skeptical.
He wanted to paint those same walls
which we tried to restore with so much effort.
I was afraid that the art project would destroy our work.
But when I met him and he presented his idea,
I realized that this could be extremely important for my community.
And we chose to continue with it anyway.
Normally, Pøbel only works.
He works incognito.
He does not work with a lot of people.
When we started the collaboration, we decided during the conversations
to do it the other way around.
We chose to involve as many people as possible.
The first thing we did was jump into my car,
because we had little time.
And we just drove through the city and met the whole community.
He introduced himself and his idea to everyone in the community,
even before we started.
That created a very strong, positive attitude around the entire project,
even before we even started.
For example, this artwork is called ‘the community wall’.
It became one of the artworks of the project,
involving nearly the entire community
his name with white paint on the wall signed.
I show some more artworks that we created in just 4 weeks.
[ETERNAL LIGHT, ETERNAL NIGHT]
[EVERYTHING IS A STORY]
[COD IS GOOD]
(Laughter)
And this work of art, which was probably the most important of them all.
Pøbel saw this bus and he said, “Let’s make a work of art here.”
I did not understand how that was possible.
(Laughter)
[(Norwegian) MOVITORS]
But he said, “Let’s put it in the ground.
People will understand. “
And today it has become the symbol
from the end of the depopulation of our community.
But what would be the results of such an art project?
To begin with, it gives people a say.
Pøbel told me he wanted a project that would light people,
that the spark would be that would kindle the fire in people.
He wanted them to remove the artwork and restore the buildings.
And I, I thought, “That’s not possible,
that is only possible in our ‘old’ way. “
But Jørn is an example of what really happened:
he bought two of the buildings,
those with ‘Cod is Good’ and those with the whale.
And both buildings have been restored by him today.
And so it went with many of the buildings with artworks on it.
Or in this way, like Tor Emil,
who is the cook of the village, specialized in local food.
He tattooed ‘Cod is Good’ on his arm and made it part of his mark,
‘Varangerkokken’, ‘Varanger’s chef’.
After this very successful project
we were invited to Russia, just across the border from where we live,
to speak about a project at a place called Teriberka,
about two hours from Murmansk.
Teriberka has more problems than Vardø.
They lost 90% of their population
and now the regional government wants
destroying the rest of the houses in the village.
This yellow note says that the house will be demolished this year, in 2017.
The local population is transferred
from their own community to apartment blocks.
During our visit
Pøbel found an abandoned library
in an abandoned school.
And he painted the artwork ‘Closed Chapter’.
At the same time, he got the idea for a new art project
that can contribute to the situation in Terberka,
entitled ‘New Chapter’.
He wanted to make a mobile self-service library.
And while we were there, we spoke to local people
and asked them: “Do you want this project?”
“Is this interesting for you?”
And a young man told us:
“If you want to succeed, here in Russia, in Teriberka,
then you have to make contact with the grandmothers.
You have to work with them.
In the village they are the ones who make the decisions.
They carry the culture.
That is where the power lies. “
We listened and we did what he said.
And so we are heading for Teriberka this summer.
The first thing the did was build a lavvo,
so that we have a social space
where people can be connected to our project,
where we can share food and ideas and be involved.
And then we involved the local people.
We started – how shall I say – rather unprepared,
because that is part of our strategy,
so that everything goes its natural way.
One of the first people we met was Gennadiy,
a local carpenter who joined us in the project
and as good as the whole library built with us.
Ekaterina, a local artist, also went on board
and painted the interior with traditional patterns.
Vladimir, a local welder,
stepped into the project and made all the ovens to size.
And here you see Igor,
who writes a personal message in a library book.
He stayed with us the whole project
and gave tips on how best to work in the community.
An important aspect of the project and its structure,
was to make it as local as possible:
work with local people, but also with local materials.
So we started using materials
of houses that would be demolished,
and that actually make up the culture of a place.
We could collect material from more than 40 buildings
and processed them in the library.
And because we wanted to make the library mobile,
We built him in a good old truck,
about the most used truck in Russia,
so that people could identify with the project.
The project also becomes a lookout point:
you can sit in the library and enjoy the view.
And the library is also a social place where you can share stories with each other.
So —
What are our projects about?
What does our work stand for?
What is our idea?
I think the core idea is: people first.
Working with people.
Building the project from below,
so that people feel involved.
In the communities where we work, where depopulation is imminent,
many people think that the government is the biggest threat,
that the threat lies in the policy.
For example, the threat could be the fishing policy.
But I do not believe that; the threat is in our heads.
It is about how we think about our own situation.
And the only ones who can change something are ourselves.
So by working with people, by giving them a say,
and by helping them to succeed, we can ensure a better future.
If we could convince people to renovate their homes,
it was because we respected them and designed them for them.
If we made the project a success,
it was because we made time to talk to everyone
and involved the whole village and made very fast connections.
And if our project in Russia succeeds –
we do not know yet, because this is just the start of a three-year project –
but if we succeed, I think that’s because we did it with local people,
their way.
Thank you for your attention.
(Applause)
”
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