Mission Statement

ANTI takes space.

• ANTI Festival is the leading specialist in site-specific art presented in public spaces in Finland and an internationally renowned live art event.
• As the art festival we take space in Kuopio to give it to underrepresented people, phenomena, and art forms.
• We are an active social conversationalist also on the national and international art scene.
• We are visible year-round all over the world.

 ANTI gives space.

• ANTI Festival supports the civic society, through its artistic activity, and everyone’s right to experience art as a part of their living environment.
• We actively give space to marginalized artists (e.g. POC, disabled and LGTBQI+).
• We recognise the diversity of our audiences as well and make space for wider, deeper participation; accessibility of arts cuts through all our activities.
• We organise spaces where the inhabitants of Kuopio are invited to provide local knowledge and other content to the artists’ work.

ANTI is a shared space.

• ANTI Festival is a shared space where the participants share experiences, ideas, knowledge, and emotions.
• We aim to increase the number of committed audience members rather than to seek a big growth in audience reach. 
• In Kuopio, ANTI is a year-round community through which the participants get new experiences through the arts and social dialogue.
• During the international ANTI Festival, the local participants and artists as well as the visitors and artists coming from outside of Kuopio, form a temporary, unique community.
• Participating in ANTI Festival is an interactive experience that we want to return to. 

ANTI is unexpected.

• ANTI Festival surprises in public spaces and brings art closer to people’s everyday life.
• We agilely react to changes and to new, international phenomena of arts.
• We support the artists in experimental art practices and in mediating challenging topics and themes to the audiences.
• We constantly aim at learning and at renewing both the ways we think and work and the ways our partners think and work.
• We take risks and make new openings.
• We present the world’s most interesting and topical live art in places where one doesn’t expect it.

ANTI leaves a mark.

• ANTI Festival is one of the main attraction factors in Kuopio and its activity supports the vitality of the city.
• ANTI is an urban activist that engages also others in developing their home city.
• We offer a safer space to process complicated social phenomena and difficult feelings related to them, which strengthens the emotional resilience of the participants.
• We believe that art can serve as a catalyst that helps society, communities and individuals to adopt ecologically sustainable approaches. 
• Participating in ANTI Festival is an experience that revolutionises one’s thinking and understanding of the arts.
• Participating in ANTI Festival leaves a mark.