ScAN member Dr Gina Wall has just travelled to Finland to participate in Relate North #12 which took place in Rovaniemi 4 – 7 November.
The ASAD Thematic Network consists of three special interest groups – Arctic Arts and Visual Culture Education; Arctic Sustainable Design; Indigenous Art and Craft. The network is very active, with representation from Canada, North America, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Finland and Finnish Lapland. There is excellent Scottish participation in the network from The Glasgow School of Art, UHI, UWS and Gray’s RGU.
Relate North #12 was a busy conference with ASAD Coordinators meetings, Project meetings, three exhibitions and social events. The main conference consisted of keynotes and several publication launches in the morning sessions and the afternoons and evenings consisted of online and in person parallel sessions and workshops. The network has a very good culture of student mobility and there were numerous students (Masters and PhD) in attendance. There is also very good support for PhD student and ECRs who were well represented amongst the presenters. There were 65 in person participants and 15 online participants and the associated exhibitions remained in situ for several weeks after the conference.
The University of Lapland campus was a perfect venue with excellent lecture hall, cinema, exhibition and classroom facilities. The conference was streamed into thematics which focused on ecocultures and transformative art & design; new materialism, entanglement and intra-disciplinary dialogues; and sustainable transitions in the Arctic. We were treated to a screening and director’s introduction of the documentary Lynx Man/ Ilveskuiskaaja by Juha Suonpää, well worth a watch. Juha also participated in a multi-species panel discussion to close the conference.
