Experiment in Helsinki: From Morgue to Community Lab

In Helsinki's Kallio district, an old morgue is getting an unexpected second life. For decades, the Harju Old Morgue stood as a reminder of the city's medical past. Now, through a bold winter pilot, the building is transforming into Oilery, a community-driven cultural space where anyone can propose, organize, and co-create events. It's a grassroots experiment in urban culture — and perhaps one of the most promising examples of how the principles of participatory art can take root far beyond the Black Rock Desert.

According to the project's English-language description, Oilery provides the "infrastructure and the invitation." The organization covers rent, insurance, administration, and basic operational costs. Participants — artists, DJs, workshop facilitators, cultural creators, and community groups — are free to propose events, exhibitions, performances, or gatherings without financial risk. The doors stay open to everyone, regardless of experience or background. The threshold for participating is intentionally kept low.

A recent article by Yle highlighted this shift: the former morgue will temporarily operate as a "community clubhouse" for December 2025 to January 2026, offering concerts, exhibitions, DJ nights, art shows, workshops, and spontaneous cultural programming. The purpose is to test whether a shared space, governed by trust and openness instead of commercial rules, can strengthen urban cultural life — especially at a time when independent venues struggle to survive.

Though the setting is uniquely Finnish, the underlying idea resonates deeply with a global movement that has shaped my own work for years: Burning Man.

A Burning Man-Style Urban Experiment

Every year, Black Rock City rises from the desert as a temporary metropolis built by its own citizens. It is a place defined not by consumption but by participation: what makes Burning Man meaningful is that people bring something — art, workshops, mutant vehicles, performances, infrastructure, ideas — and contribute it to the whole. Participation isn't a side activity; it is the culture.

Oilery echoes this in three key ways:

1. Radical participation over passive consumption

Anyone can propose something; anyone can co-create. You don't "book" the space as a client — you join it as a contributor. This shift mirrors one of Burning Man's most important principles: the city exists because participants make it exist.

2. Community before commercial goals

Burning Man rejects corporate sponsorship and traditional commercialism. Oilery follows similar logic. The intent is not to build a profit-driven venue but to explore how a city can nurture culture through trust, openness, and equality of access.

3. Reimagining space as a canvas for collective creativity

In Nevada, a desert becomes a city of art.
In Helsinki, a morgue becomes a cultural laboratory.

In both cases, the transformation is symbolic: when you trust people to create, they often exceed expectations.

Why This Matters Now

Urban cultural life across Europe is at a crossroads. Rising rents, regulation, and financial risk push many emerging artists and collectives out of the ecosystem before they can even begin. The result is cultural thinning — fewer grassroots spaces, fewer experiments, fewer surprises.

Oilery challenges this trend by asking a simple question:

What happens if we remove the financial barrier, offer infrastructure, and let the community shape the content?

This is not just a venue; it is a systems experiment. It tests whether cities could move toward more community-supported, low-threshold models where art and culture grow because people want to contribute, not because they can afford to.

My Role as Advisor

I've been invited to support Oilery as an advisor, helping shape both the vision and the practical model. My role is to bring experience from studying and participating in large-scale participatory cultures — from Burning Man to research on open strategy and self-organizing communities.

Practically, this means:

• helping ensure that participation stays open, fair, and inclusive

• advising on governance structures that encourage co-creation without chaos

• strengthening the experiment's cultural values and long-term learning

• helping bridge insights from global creative communities into a Helsinki context

My work in Burning Man's research community, in transformative festival studies, and in organizational self-management provides a useful lens: how do you create a system where people feel empowered to contribute — and where the system supports, rather than restricts, their creativity?

Oilery is one of the most promising urban-scale experiments I've seen in Finland. It offers a rare chance to reimagine cultural infrastructure not as a service but as a living organism that grows through contribution.

A Small Urban Miracle

When a morgue becomes a community clubhouse, something more profound is happening than just a renovation. A city is testing new ways of being alive.

Oilery is an experiment — but so was Burning Man once. And some experiments, when given trust and space, end up reshaping how we think about community, culture, and what we can create together.

If you'd like, I can also prepare:

• a shorter Instagram or LinkedIn version

• a version with Finnish translation

• a more academic or more personal tone

Just tell me!

https://yle.fi/a/74-20197774