Street Moves is the name of the project where Hultsfred is one of three places in the country that have been selected to participate. And since last autumn, architects, urban planners in the municipality, preschool children and high school students have collaborated to transform a street that was perceived as unsafe and dark into a meeting place.
See the results and hear voices from today's opening in the clip above.
Along Oskargatan there is now a green long table worthy of the name, with lots of chairs and summer flowers planted by preschool children in the municipality. And on Friday, there was a premiere of a unique theater production by director Suzanne Osten in collaboration with Byteatern in Kalmar.
But what does art have to do with urban planning and street environments?
"Artists think differently. And if there's one thing that's obvious, it's that kids don't play in the streets anymore, like we did. That's no longer the case, the cars took over," says Suzanne Osten.
How a street stump turns into something attractive
Fredrik Mats is a landscape architect and has been involved in the work of transforming the street stump in Hultsfred into something more attractive.
He talks about collaboration with preschools that planted the flowers and high school students who painted and weatherproofed the collected chairs and tables at the meeting place.
And it is there, in the collaboration of many, that he highlights one of the great benefits of the entire project.
"The most important thing is not the result, but the way forward," says Fredrik Mats.