Next weekend the Tour de France will tear through Ashford in Kent, en route from London to Canterbury, on the first stage of the greatest cycling race in the world. But should you find yourself there, and choose to wander farther, you may encounter stranger sights: sheep making music in a churchyard; a Victorian building wrapped in newspaper; a tent issuing passports for a nonexistent country.

The events are all art installations; part of The Lost O, a project to redevelop Ashford’s grim 1970s ring road (the “O”) into a free-flowing, artistic space by 2008.

The bizarre, hazardous-sounding concept behind the project is to give everyone using the road equal priority, from a toddler to a monster truck. “It will have no road-markings or pavements – in theory a bench, tree or coffee shop might be put bang in the middle, and a driver would simply have to grit his teeth, slow down and navigate his way around,” says the curator and artist Michael Pinsky.

Surely that would play havoc with the Highway Code? But apparently the idea has been made to work on a smaller scale on the Continent, and even streets in London. According to Richard Stubbings of the county council, the presence of sculptures in the road does not, in general, cause as dangerous a distraction as you might assume. “The unexpected quality for the motorists makes them want to slow down to see what’s going on around them.”

The completion of the first stage of the road’s transformation – turning it into a series of two-way streets – is being marked by a series of temporary installations that play with urban space, to be seen by residents and visitors as the Tour de France passes through.

The work invades the town with no apparent limits – churchyards are occupied, roads are painted and one artist, Bryony Graham, has planted herself firmly in the central building site. She occupies a Portakabin next to the site manager’s office. “I find out what’s happening on the site and the builders leave me gifts to use in my work,” she says. In her studio, clay roses are imprinted with fingerprints of the engineering crew and domestic items such as a tissue box are coated with gravel.

Working so closely with the builders, does tension arise over priorities? “It was strange at first, but now I’m part of the furniture. Artists and builders are not that different – they’re makers, we’re makers,” says Graham. “We have very heated debates about art.”

Touring the sites, we pass St Mary’s church, where the graveyard will house a flock of sheep – all with their bells tuned to chime a diminished seventh chord, frequently the penultimate sound in a composition.

At Pinsky’s installation, next to the road, stands a sign with the national speed limit. It is part of a series of signs set in a circle to celebrate the removal of the ring road. A passing builder insists the sign comes down, or “boy-racers will be round here like nothing else”.

Other works will include a team of volunteers trained by the artist Gary Stevens to negotiate their way around town in a tightly packed mass, a historic Victorian building covered in newspaper by Akay+Peter, and a tent set up by the Canadian artist Mark Prier to serve as an embassy for Nomadsland, a borderless country “for people who want to be part of something more than a plot of land”.

There is no decommissioning schedule on the project, so “if it lasts, it lasts”. Some will be destroyed by the creation of the new road, when other, more permanent installations will start to be constructed.

It still strikes me as completely mad, but it can only be an improvement over the hideous ring road. As Pinksy points out: “Ashford has nothing to lose and everything to gain. We’re putting it on the map.”

The Lost O, Ashford, Kent (www.losto.org), July 7-8

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