Memorial page: The whole village yard in Tampere
The Whole Village Yard – or Pyynikki Time Travels – served as a low-threshold meeting place and event space in the middle of the city of Tampere from 2003 to 2025. The block-sized art gallery offered space to hang out and make art, play yard games, take care of the vegetable garden in the summer or take a dizzying ride on an ice slide in the winter. The area featured recycled art, sculptures and various installations.
The place, which was popular with city residents, was developed and maintained by “art caretaker” Mika Pettissalo, who led the place to develop into a diverse area of free art. A point of comparison for the implementation can be found, for example, in the bohemian corners of Berlin.
The block was once home to the Tampere Epidemic Hospital. Pettissalo, who had been studying visual arts since 2003, voluntarily began to take care of the courtyard, which had been left as a wasted space and an urban fallow. He began to create the art world of Pyynikki Time Travels there, which offered communal opportunities for participation to everyone who wanted it. The work resulted in a property management model based on the circular economy, which functions as an open art space.
In the 2020s, the area was subjected to complicated zoning battles. At times, the situation looked hopeful: Tampere’s politicians cancelled the block’s infill building plans and saw the space as promoting the values of the city strategy – well-being, participation and community. However, in 2024, the City of Tampere terminated the area’s lease agreement because the block’s plot and buildings began to be prepared for sale. Mika Pettissalo was evicted.
Operations in the Pyynikki historical area in question have ended and they have been moved or directed to other sites, such as the Orivesi Campus, where Mika Pettissalo and his spouse Heidi Meriläinen moved in 2025 and started exhibition and art workshop activities there. As far as is known, the authorities did not destroy the works of art in the entire village yard.
Mika Pettissalo is a trained visual artist, but a kindred spirit of ITE art, making a self-made life a reality. “If there is even a small thing that makes you happy, it is worth doing,” he ponders.
