Valsa ry is renting creative spaces and offering cultural activities with a joy

On 29 September, I visited an interesting creative space called Kulttuuriyhdistys Valsa ry, which is located in Rovaniemi. Valsa is a cultural society officially made of 9 members including artists, cultural producers and designers. This society is connected to a large network of cultural producers and friends of Valsa involved in activities. The purpose of Valsa is to promote local culture and to provide a workspace for its members. In addition, Valsa promotes its members cultural and artistic networking.

At the moment, their working spaces called Värinä kellari are located in the heart of Rovaniemi. Currently there are 6 artists working in these spaces. Before autumn 2016, their spaces were in a property of Valistustalo. That building was deconstructed and they had to move temporarily for another spaces. Now they are looking for new spaces to offer better facilities to their members.

Valsa is renting creative spaces to people who may be interested. One does not necessarily have to ‘fit’ into one creative industries sector – anyone can join.

Valsa used to organize art exhibitions and events. Events have included music concerts and dance performances.

“We would love to start cultural activities again and hopefully we will find new spaces as soon as possible to organize those things”, tells Jenny Ammondt the president of Valsa.

Jenny Ammondt has been a member of Valsa for many years. She heard about a possibility to rent a working space when she had a group exhibition in the association’s art gallery called Galleria Värinä, which has been defunct since the deconstruction of Valistustalo.

“The working space was so perfect with a lovely view. Immediately I decided to take it and I am still involved in activities of Valsa!”

Jenny recommend working in a creative space because there you can do your own thing. Jenny tells that the most important thing in creative space is networking but also to find good friends for spare time.

My name is Jenni Kemi and I am working as a project worker in a Creative Momentum project. I will graduate as a Bachelor of Business Administration in this autumn and I have specialized for marketing. In this project my duty is to contact businesses and freelancers working in the creative industries sector in Northern Finland to showcase their work on MyCreativeEdge website.