In the 1990s, local political leaders in the working-class industrial community Hällefors insisted on and deployed different types of cultural and aesthetic initiatives to counteract deindustrialisation with references to “the coming post-industrial society”. Residential areas constructed in the 1970s were redesigned with art and sculpture parks, which attracted attention and criticism. Subsequently, several projects were carried out where culture and arts were invoked as economic growth factors both locally and as regional development. This paper addresses this with a focus on the transformation of some municipally owned housing estates.