Can art change the climate conversation in Oulu?

Awareness of the climate crisis is usually communicated through alarming data, rising temperature graphs and lengthy scientific reports. But Oulu’s new Climate Clock in northern Finland is asking whether art might offer a more emotional and reflective way for people to engage with the environmental change happening around them.

As one of the world’s northernmost cities, Oulu’s more than 200,000 inhabitants are experiencing the effects of Arctic warming four times faster than the global average.

Now, as part of Oulu2026 European Capital of Culture celebrations, a series of six public artworks spread across forests, rivers, coastlines and urban spaces opened on June 13, and has become a permanent trail across the wider Oulu region. Project Curator, Alice Sharp, Artistic Director of UK art and climate organization Invisible Dust hopes Climate Clock can create moments of pause for locals and visitors to the region.

“Maybe these artists could give us a little bit of time to reflect and feel,” she says, “and maybe those kinds of feelings would enable us to understand climate change in a new way.”

Taking Oulu2026 out of the city center

Climate Clock’s producer, Claudia Woolgar has worked on the project since its earliest planning stages seven years ago. She says the original idea grew from a much broader question facing the Oulu2026 European Capital of Culture: “What does this city need, and how can culture help with that?”

At the time, many residents assumed the European Capital of Culture program would focus mainly on Oulu’s city center. Instead, Climate Clock expanded outward across the wider region, linking smaller communities — each with their own distinct relationships to the surrounding landscape.

For Woolgar, involving local people directly was an essential goal from the beginning. “I didn’t want artworks simply parachuted into beloved communities and their much-loved landscapes,” she says.

Different communities brought different climate realities into the project, from changing rivers and coastal erosion to snow, flooding and biodiversity. Sharp matched each artist with a scientist whose research connected to the place or the artist’s creative interests together with residents to shape artworks grounded in each location.

“What this did was precisely what I wanted it to do,” Woolgar says. “It recognized the individuality and differences of each of those communities.”

Local participation was central to the design and curation of a seventh temporary installation. Sharp approached Helsinki artists Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen, who created a traveling community artwork called The Most Valuable Clock in the World.

Developed during the last two years, its minute and second hands are formed from personal video clips and images submitted by local residents through an open call. The hour hand takes a longer view, showing species and landscapes and natural phenomena whose future is uncertain in a changing climate. Together, they capture moments that people in the region consider most valuable.

Slow Homeric time in Haukipudas

Among the permanent installations, one example Woolgar points to was inspired by historical changes to local rivers. The surrounding rivers were once artificially straightened by the forestry industry, cutting away the natural curvature to speed up the logs on their journey down to collection.

“By altering the waterways they had sped time up, Woolgar says. “But they also disrupted natural habitats for flora and fauna, like beavers, and brought down fish populations, partly because they had no river bends left to lay their eggs in.”

This idea of speed bringing environmental disruption is what inspired the installation by Danish artist collective SUPERFLEX. In the nearby coastal community of Haukipudas, visitors will sit inside a pink marble “fish cube” sculpture and hear a single word per hour being read by a local fisherwoman from a Finnish translation of Homer’s Odyssey. It will take 10 years for the entire work to be heard, encouraging visitors to slow down and experience time differently.

“That journey that Odysseus went on can be likened to the one that we’re on now as we try to understand what’s happening with climate change,” says Woolgar.

Deep time in clay at Kierikki

Further inland at the Kierikki Stone Age Village, British-Nigerian artist Ranti Bam is creating towering clay vessels inspired by prehistoric ceramics discovered at the site. For Sharp, this installation highlights a thread of creativity that stretches back to the stone age.

“The people who lived there did more than just make functional pots,” she explains. “They decorated them, embedded patterns, and expressed spirituality and connection to nature through them. So that need to be creative was there for humans 7,000 years ago.”

Bam’s own approach echoes that connection. As part of her artistic process, she physically hugs and shapes the clay with her own body, leaving traces of human touch in the finished works and linking ancient craft traditions with today’s environmental concerns. Bam’s guiding belief is that the way we hold our bodies is the way in which we hold the Earth.

Real-time sculptures in Oulu square

Back in the city, British-Bangladeshi artist Rana Begum will transform Kauppurienaukio square with monumental stone sculptures inspired by glaciers and shifting Arctic sea ice. Designed to catch and refract the northern light, the installation brings a fragment of the Arctic into Oulu’s busy city center.

Sharp says Begum wasn’t just fascinated by the changing visual forms of the glaciers, but also by their sounds and movement. Her work invites people to pause and notice the natural forces shaping the region. “Most people are rushing about with their daily shopping, and Begum’s piece is about slowing down and connecting into the nature surrounding Oulu,” says Sharp.

Seasonal time in the North

During the development process, the artists themselves were also encouraged to step away from the pace of modern life and tune into nature’s own rhythms. They didn’t just arrive, make a few sketches and leave. Sharp says their works evolved slowly, shaped by conversations with local people, scientists and the landscape itself.

The artists also returned to Oulu in both the summer and winter months, experiencing temperature swings ranging from minus 30 to plus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit), Sharp recalls. This was important for testing whether their installations could survive the region’s extreme seasonal shifts. But it also gave them a first-hand experience of northern Finland’s remarkable contrasts.

“You’ve got this very deep snow and ice and the whole sea freezes,” Sharp says, “and then in the summer this very, very fast-growing verdant landscape, when suddenly everything bursts into life.”

Time to go experience it

If you’re going, Woolgar stresses the importance of looking at the works as one connected exhibition. Rather than being housed in a single museum or gallery, Climate Clock compels visitors to travel through the wider Oulu region itself.

An ambitious visitor could complete the trail in a day, but it might be better in two. Either way, Woolgar’s advice is simple: “Do them all, because that will give you the best picture of what this extraordinary art trail brings to the area.”

Climate Clock launched on June 13, 2026 as part of Oulu2026, European Capital of Culture.

For more information visit Alice Sharp Curator’s Invisible Dust website.

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