Text: Tiina Männistö, Anselmi Petäjäaho and Roosa Pyykkönen, University of Lapland, Finland
Summary
In this land-based art education project, pupils in Utsjoki’s local schools joined in different snow and winter-themed workshops. The project aimed to develop Arctic art education through workshops and explore and support schoolchildren’s relationship with nature and local culture through contemporary art.
The Land is seen as a reciprocal teacher in the communal Land-based learning method. Media pedagogy based on digitalisation played an important role in the project, too. During the time at Utsjoki, there were four different winter-themed art workshops, and in collaboration, a group of students from the University of Lapland did snow sculpting.
The theme of the workshops was snow and winter, which are an essential part of the area and people’s lives at Utsjoki. The background of the implementation of the project was land-based learning, Utsjoki as a place, Sámi culture, New Genre Art education and Arctic contemporary art, curriculum and local beliefs.
The project implemented four snow-themed art workshops for the school’s pupils, from pre-school to upper secondary school students. The school’s pupils participated in the initial brainstorming of the workshops.
The topics of the workshops were:
The land-based art education project was carried out at Utsjokisuu Comprehensive School and Upper Secondary School in February 2025 as part of the University of Lapland’s Lessons of the Land project.
