Meet Jonna from Art Studio Aarhus

In their creative workshop in central Aarhus, around 20 members meet today around art — sharing their own experiences, thoughts and feelings through color and form.

Together they visit museums, galleries and exhibition openings across the country, and sometimes they put on their own events, exhibiting work individually or together under a shared theme.

But most of all: they have a great time doing it.

Beyond the group’s physical home in Frichsparken, the artist community also lives digitally on Oase. That’s where tips, inspiration and news about upcoming exhibitions get shared — and where activities are planned and coordinated.

“It has to be easy to get into — even for people who aren’t especially tech-savvy. And Oase is just really user-friendly and intuitive to use,” says Jonna, on a video call to talk through how Art Studio Aarhus found its way to Oase.

“Since the start of 2026, several of us had been talking about alternatives to our Facebook group. There were a lot of different motives in play: the power of the tech giants, ads, surveillance, misinformation, AI models exploiting photos, images, art and music from social media. And Trump!” Jonna adds.

She admits not everyone in the community was equally eager to try something new. The Facebook group worked fine, after all — it’s the devil you know.

She herself was a little concerned about whether any of the alternatives were actually mature enough yet. She’d heard of, and even tried, a couple of the new European platforms springing up, but wasn’t sure if it was too early to move over.

“But on the other hand, we can only really test it once we’re all using it in practice.”

So they agreed on a three-month trial period, where the whole group could test Oase alongside their Facebook group. Afterwards, they’d be better placed to decide whether to switch or not.

Jonna had already set up an oase with the two other co-founders. Then, in early May 2026, they invited the rest of the community down to the workshop to get everyone on board with Oase.

“It was really straightforward to download the app and sign up. It also helped that we were sitting together in person and could help each other get going,” Jonna recalls from the kickoff meeting.

At the meeting, every interested member managed to get set up on Oase. She highlights a couple of things the founders made clear to the rest of the community that day:

“We stressed that we’d always be available to help members and guide them through Oase.”

Besides offering technical help, they made clear it was only a trial period, and that members didn’t need to leave or delete Facebook and Instagram. It was also important to explain to the others why several of them wanted to move the community from Meta to Oase.

Today, Art Studio Aarhus is nearing the end of their trial period. Soon they’ll meet to take stock of how it’s gone. If it’s up to Jonna, they’ll keep using Oase.

“Some use it a lot, others only occasionally — but that was true on Facebook too. Most people are happy using Oase. We still need to bring the last few on board, but personally I believe, and hope, that they’ll come around eventually.”