About the project

The project is owned by Bodø Municipality. Operational responsibility lies with the Municipality’s Society and Industry Department, New City Project. Per-Gunnar Tverbakk and Ellen Sæthre-McGuirck have acted as art consultants for the project. Bodø 2024 has been responsible for the planning and implementation of Sub-Project 2, KUNSTKANTEN (an outdoor exhibition arena). 

KORO supports art throughout Norway, including outside major institutions and the largest cities. Its Art Programme for Local Communities is intended to stimulate curiosity, project implementation, risk-taking, collaboration and diversity in Norway’s local communities and municipalities.

Freedom of artistic expression in the Norwegian public sphere is more important than ever. We have great faith that artists can make extremely important contributions to the major change processes that Bodø is facing, both in relation to urban development and Bodø’s future residents. We see many examples of artists contributing to the creation of economic, social and cultural value, and to enhancing the quality of local development projects.

Bodø Municipality has demonstrated its ambitions to facilitate artists’ contributions. It is against this background that KORO has provided significant support to the Municipality on several occasions in recent years.

Truls Ramberg – curator and coordinator of KORO’s Art Programme for Local Communities

Bodø is now embarking on one of the largest urban development projects anywhere in Norway. The ‘New City – New Airport’ project will make 2.9 square kilometres of land available for urban development, the NATO base will be downsized, and the 900-metre civilian runway will be relocated. AVINOR commenced construction work in January 2024. The landscape in the far south-west of the area will be completely transformed by blasting, levelling, land reclamation and other major earthworks. Once the new airport is finished in 2029, Bodø Municipality will take over the current airport site and start to develop the new urban district of Hernes.

By involving artists at this very early stage, the Municipality aims to:

provide scope for the involvement of aesthetic and creative expertise in urban development, and allow artists to take on a central role in defining forms of working and approaches;

contribute to community involvement, openness and the formation of diverse opinions by using sensory and visual approaches to the communication of values, plans and visions;

identify silent narratives relating to the Bodø Peninsula and make them part of today’s urban development, local identity and ideas for the future city; and

contribute to internationalization, innovation and smart solutions for achieving the Municipality’s climate and environmental goals.

Bodø’s status as European Capital of Culture 2024 gives Flyfugl the opportunity to deliver both nationally and internationally, in accordance with the Municipality’s artistic and cultural ambitions.