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  • we just won the **Oslo Opens hederspris** for our contribution to improving the non-EU/EEA artists’ working situation in Norway!       we just won the **Oslo Opens hederspris** for our contribution to improving the non-EU/EEA artists’ working situation in Norway!
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(EN) Verdensrommet is an artist-powered mutual support network by/for immigrant artists based in Norway. We stand for fair immigration policies, better living and working conditions, and encourage new imaginations for the future of artists' work.

(NO) Verdensrommet er et kunstdrevet og gjensidig støttenettverk av/for utenlandske kunstnere basert i Norge. Vi arbeider for en rettferdig immigrasjonspolitikk, bedre leve- og arbeidsforhold for kunstnere, og oppmuntrer til å tenke nytt rundt fremtidig kunstnerisk arbeid.

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VR at #StopHatredNow 2026

What role and responsibility does art play in a cultural transition? How do different choices shape our lived reality—what do the representations seen on stage, the curatorial choices made in museums and other institutions, or the direction of cultural policy reveal about our times? To whom do power, freedom, and responsibility in the art world fall? The #StopHatredNow event week seeks answers to these pressing questions this May. As polarization deepens, funding shrinks, and discourses on representation and equity intensify, #StopHatredNow turns the spotlight on power, accountability, and care. The keynote lectures, panel discussions, and workshops organized during the event week will delve into these topics from different perspectives, including leadership, curation, accessibility, and inclusion. There will also be concrete advice and tools presented that will benefit both larger institutions and individual artists alike. The entire event week program is free of charge and can be enjoyed from anywhere in the world, as the majority of the program will be streamed live. For more information, stream links and program: www.stophatrednow.fi

V Festival: We Are Still Here

Celebrating its 5th anniversary, Verdensrommet launches V Festival: We Are Still Here –a week of public talks, screenings, a workshop, a party and other satellite events in partnering venues across Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim, Stavanger and Tromsø. V Festival: We Are Still Here wants to create a forum for criticality, mutual support and interdisciplinary collaboration, encouraging new ideas around the future for art practitioners in Norway, particularly non-EU artists.

Urgent Matters, Event no 5: From Advocacy to Policy: Redefining Artistic Economies II

UKK is pleased to welcome you to From Advocacy to Policy: Redefining Artistic Economies II – a digital discursive event featuring the art organizations La Buse (France) and Verdensrommet (Norway) hosted by UKK’s Art and Economy working group.

Verdensrommet receives the medal 'Ridder av den gyldne palett [Knight of the Golden Palette]' by UKS.

*UKS-hosted gala for its members where the medal “The knight of the golden palette” was awarded as part of the ceremony in the Rococo hall of the Grand Hotel in Oslo, Saturday 15 Febuary 1930.*

Aliens Network

The Aliens Network has been established by Verdensrommet to make the diversity of collaborative efforts to support non-EU/EEA artists and cultural workers visible and to create an exchange of knowledge and competency between grassroots organizations working on these concerns in the Nordics. One of the network’s core aims is to reflect on concrete answers to crucial challenges related to sustainability, financial stability, and immigration awareness for non-EU/EEA artists who are self-employed.

Verdensrommet receives Oslo Opens Honorary award for 2023

With this award, the board of Oslo Open wishes to honor, recognize and draw attention to the important work that the volunteer network Verdensrommet does to make it possible for artists from all over the world to work in Norway.

Somewhere in Between: On the Challenges of Artworld in Norway

Verdensrommet was invited by Prague-based tranzit.cz to respond to the question Are Artists Precarized in Norway Too? through a series of texts exploring the topic. The series seeks to answer these and other questions through interviews and essays by authors associated with the platform Verdensrommet, who in our work and activities thematize, explore, and question the existence of borders. The invitation comes as one of the outcomes of tranzit.cz curator František Fekete's curatorial research into the Oslo art scene and is part of the programming of the Biennale Matter of Art.

What is not but could be if

The workshop is a gathering of collective intelligence, a dialogical exchange to engage in a reconsideration of the economic relations we form and maintain as artists. This is experiential research that focuses on reflection, fiction, and a shared policy to dive deeper into the labor relations and conditions in the field of art. From a grassroots point of view, we ask artists and creative professionals what kind of new economic arrangements, cooperative and atypical relations we want in the future, and how it could be different from today.

Protest Kit | Free Printable Protest Banners

Verdensrommet is part of a united national front to push back Norway's Minister of Education's new proposal to introduce tuition fees in higher education for Non-EU/EEA nationals. Together with the artist Tansiyu Chen, we have produced six protest banners you can download and print for free. The protest will take place in different cities across Norway (Oslo, Trondheim, Stavanger, Bergen, and more). **The fight to safeguard the right to free education for everyone is not Norway’s affair only, but a planetary fight for it to be a truly universal human right!**

Why don't you marry an Icelander?

Earlier this year (2022), Verdensrommet was invited to participate in the panel discussion “Why don’t you marry an Icelander?” organized by AIVAG (Icelandic Artist Visa Group) at Norræna húsið The Nordic House. “Why don’t you marry an Icelander?” has become a pervasive response when non-EU citizens recount their troubles navigating the immigration system during studies, post-graduation or when working in Iceland...

Retirement Rave at FSS

Verdensrommet Retirement Rave was a performative moment at Klub Elsker, as a response to an invitation made by the First Supper Symposium team about the issue of Ageism. We proposed a dancy and political techno-choir—a colorful and Almodovar-like remix of our manifesto and beats of retirement policies for intergenerational groups of artists. "Due to ageism, there is today a considerable range of artistic quality that has been made invisible" - FSS.

Immigration Clinic for Creative Professionals

IC is a two-day seminar that brings together artists, trade union representatives, lawyers, and politicians to discuss, for the first time in Norway, the gaps between the immigration regulations (of self-employment in particular) and the working conditions in the cultural and creative sector and its impact on the livelihood of international artists.

Verdensrommet | Website launch + 2 years Celebration Party

Verdensrommet presents the launch of its new website developed by Oslo-based studio Blank Blank as part of the network's second-year celebrations! The web project is an inclusive and welcoming digital space providing important information and resources for the network's users—non-EU artists and creative professionals in Norway.

Verdensrommet at 100 Years of Conviviality, UKS Seminar : Artists Organizing Artists

As a part of UKS’ 100th-anniversary program 100 YEARS OF CONVIVIALITY and on the day of UKS’ 100th birthday, 28 October 2021, UKS presented the second seminar in the series Artists Organizing Artists, at the new main library in Oslo, Deichman Bjørvika. Verdensrommet’s co-initiator Gabrielle Paré delivered an account on the work of Verdensrommet.

A/nordi/c, Nordic Culture Point | signal on The Living Catalogue

ANORDIC is the first Nordic think tank for knowledge, debate and action in the arts, and has produced a living catalogue as the motor of the knowledge work. The catalogue examines practices in different areas and develops insights. Verdensrommet was featured, explore our signal here.

Podcast | Conversations with Aliens of Extraordinary Ability

This is Verdensrommet's community channel podcast covering various immigration issues through a three-part series on Education–Labour–Solidarity for artists. Episodes feature informative and speculative talks with a group of local and international critical voices around the exclusionary conditions of non-EU/EEA art and cultural workers in Norway. We seek to redefine and create processes to sustain radical livelihoods and artistic practices in reaction to the multiple crises accentuated by the COVID-19 pandemic. *Co-host by artists Anthony Morton, Prerna Bishnoi, and Rodrigo Ghattas-Pérez.

Verdensrommet is now part of the Nordic network AOOO (Arts Organizations Out of Office)

During 2018, Art Lab Gnesta initiated together with other nordic art organizations a network for small-scale and self-organized organisations within the field of art, working proactively in relation to current political challenges. Verdensrommet is now a member of AOOO.

Post-capitalist lexicon for immigrant artists

A post-capitalist desire, an anti-bureaucratic gesture, a new grammar for radical behavior, and a call for progressive immigration reform. This is a mirror of an immigration bureau's grammar, aesthetics, and regulations. A post-capitalist lexicon for immigrant artists is a collaboration with Graziela Kunsch’s project for Oslobiennalen, Public as Mutual.

Participatory Imaginaries for Rest & The Future of Retirement

A one-day assembly in public space focusing on interrogating the current retirement policies for Norway’s artists. In particular for non-EU/EEA artists living and working in the country as professionals who lack the right to a 'patchwork economy'—that is the impossibility of having multiple and diverse sources of income beyond the arts’ economies.

Panel discussion | ‘Hvordan skape et best mulig ytringsklima for kulturelt mangfold?’– Kulturytring

Interkultur in Drammen Municipality and Samspill International Music Network organized a public event to exchange experiences and knowledge, and strengthen the professional environment in the arts. Verdensrommet was part of the discussion, read more about it here. [video, start time 6:32:45']

The Virtual Bar | Verdensrommet & Open Forum

Verdensrommet and Open Forum invite you to a virtual bar, an evening of discussions on alternative economies, social housing, immigration and institutions in connection to the economic and social context of non-EU art students and artists living and working in Norway.

Verdensrommet at Danza Bastant - RadiOrakel fm 99.3

fm 99.3 @radiorakel with @re___voe and @verdensrommet.network listening to some divine tunes and talking a bit about the history of this mutual support network for artists and what is being done behind the screens!

Verdensrommet in residency at PODIUM

In May 2020, during our residency time in PODIUM, we carried on a series of network-building and resource-sharing events for immigrant artists based in Oslo and artist allies. As the city slightly started to open up again, we were extremely excited to make social encounters as vivid as before and so we hoped for many to show up and to get to know each other, share thoughts and hopes, knowledge and ‘proto-failures’, and some drinks too.

Monday Lectures | The Verdensrommet Allegory

On Monday, February 1, Verdensrommet delivered a lecture about the network and insight into the journey of a fictional non-EU artist based in Norway, starting from the time of their KMD application to the current pandemic moment (2021).

Verdensrommet at Radio Tenthaus - EP.20 Aspirant

Rodrigo Ghattas-Pérez, co-initiator of Verdensrommet, was invited to be in conversation with Bergen-based artist and curator, Tatiana Lozano, to discuss Kulturrådet’s aspirant scholarship scheme offered as a 100% position of employment directed at non-Norwegian interested in working in cultural institutions.

In solidarity with non-EU artists in Norway

The income requirement for self-employment visas rises in the midst of a pandemic, in spite of the continued economic impact on the cultural sector in Norway. Support Verdensrommet by signing the petition here and getting to know more about the Høring (public hearing).

Welfare

activist GIF by Juan Qin

Safeguard non-EU/EEA artists & cultural workers based in Norway

In April 2020, Verdensrommet started a petition directed at the Norwegian government, Labour and Social Welfare Department / Arbeids- og sosialdepartementet, the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration / Utlendingsdirektoratet (UDI), Kulturdepartementet (KUD), Utenriksdepartementet (UD), to draw their attention to the working and immigration conditions of non-EU/EEA cultural workers in Norway, especially during the pandemic. We updated the petition in Jan 2021, in parallel to the UDI høring.