Art professionals

In the Language of Fans 

Producer Rafael Agudo has worked for three years in the HUG organisation that brings Finnish artists to organise communal activities in the suburbs of Madrid. He holds a master’s degree in cultural management as well as experience of working in the publishing industry and is currently employed by the department of public activities at Casa del Lector in Madrid.

In the municipality of Ii, Agudo became acquainted with Finnish production methods and shared his experiences of the operation of HUG and assisted Raquel Sakrístan.

Theatre to think

Eduardo de Albar Vera is a Mexican artist, actor, pantomime master, playwright and director who also likes to explore other mediums of art such as graffiti. He is committed to working with vulnerable communities and seeks to carry out projects with high quality yet low costs, for example by using recyclable materials and reused objects.

During the KulttuuriKauppila Artist-in-Community residency period, Eduardo works with the customers of Oulunkaari mental health services in Pudasjärvi and Ii on the Theatre to think project. The aim is to gain experience of creating a play and explore it as a method of expression of the experiences that mental health rehabilitators have in living as part of society.

“The project has seeked free expression through theatre to generate awareness and to encourage individual and collective analysis to get a better quality of life individually and socially,” de Albar Vera says of the project.

The result of the residency was a play with working title Forgotten – Unohdettu. Reading events are held both in Pudasjärvi and in Ii.

Garden of Secrets

Ulla Autio is an interior and textile designer (M.A.) specialising in care facility planning who works as an entrepreneur at her own company Aihiomo. Ulla’s goal is to create unique facilities, taking into consideration the spatial requirements and the customers’ wishes. To achieve this, she works in an outcome-oriented manner, by investigating or utilising previous research to provide basis for the assignment.

Ulla’s competence can be experienced in the waiting area of a health clinic or even sitting in a dentist’s chair! In the Lähde! Art and Culture as Part of Social and Health Services in Oulunkaari project, Ulla Autio worked together with director Heta Haanperä.

By utilising the methods of art and design, they collected ideas from disabled people and people recovering from psychiatric problems to develop welfare-generating environments. The ideas were used as the basis for the first Lähde! park to be built in Suvantola, in the municipality of Ii!

Condensed Conversation

Klara Bergman Fröberg is a Swedish visual artist, who was Artist-in-Residence at KulttuuriKauppila Art Centre as part of the Lähde! Empowering daily life with art -project and artist exchange arranged in partnership with Konst i Halland and Region Halland. In her work, Bergman Fröberg explores the crossovers between destruction and resurrection by, for example, creating installations from found and recycled materials such as wood, porcelain, plastic materials, ropes, metal scraps and discarded furniture. The sculptural works study the fragility of materials as well as life in general. The works signal hope for the future, but at the same time, are also remnants and ruins of a distant past. Bergman Fröberg has studied at the Umeå Academy of Fine Arts and in addition to the sculptural work she works with sound in search for lost sentences and language as forms of captured memories of an already forgotten past.

During her residency period in Ii, Bergman Fröberg was working to create an environmental artworks together with the participants from IiPaja. The artworks were presented at the IlmastoAreena event and then moved to the newly built Lähde! park that combines art and nature in order to promote well-being.

Garden of Secrets

Director Heta Haanperä is known for her directorial work at the Oulu Theatre. Her works include the classic Rautatie, the premiere production of the opera Neljäntienristeys and the adaptation of the novel Taivaslaulu. According to Heta, it is possible to bring the entire spectrum of life to the stage in the theatre.

Projects that uncover new stages and stories close to the townspeople are dear to her heart. Appropriately, Heta has also been involved in the creation of the Family Theatre concept that is intended to bring families to the stage to process everyday situations.

“Art enables us to observe our personas and the surrounding world, and affording us with the experience of being visible in a positive sense, providing us with nourishment for a good life.”

In the Lähde! Art and Culture as Part of Social and Health Services in Oulunkaari project, Heta Haanperä worked together with designer Ulla Autio. By utilising the methods of art and design, they collected ideas from intellectually disabled people, people recovering from psychiatric problems and the elderly to develop welfare-generating environments. The ideas were used as the basis for the first Lähde! park to be built in Suvantola, in the municipality of Ii!

Morning walks

Dancer Liisa Heikkinen is known as the entrepreneur behind the HAHAHA Dance School and as a teacher – and for her joyous laughter! She has also worked as a dancer in productions of Jojo – Oulu Dance Centre and engaged in artistic activities through H-Kollektiivi consisting of her family.

In the Lähde! project, Liisa Heikkinen completed her teaching training for the Master’s Programme in Dance Pedagogy at the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki by organising morning walks for immigrant groups at Utajärvi and afternoon activities for women. Liisa will continue her invaluable activities in the spring of 2018 as a pilot artist for the Lähde! project.

The Adventures of VIlle and Visiting Santa’s Village Christmas Magazine 

Art for housing services workshop

Dramaturge Jukka Heinänen is currently employed by the Oulu Theatre. In addition to his work at professional theatres, he has also worked as a teacher in various educational institutions and participated in many projects applying artistic methods in other areas of life.

“After everything I have experienced, I have become even more convinced that the mobilisation of art in different areas of life and society provides joy and value to everyone.” In the Lähde! Art and Culture as Part of Social and Health Services in Oulunkaari project, Jukka Heinänen piloted the social art residence operation in the Startti group home.

Arjen aines

Tuomo Kangasmaa is a video and visual artist who has also studied experimental dance and theatre. He is interested in combining performance, documentary and traditional film expression and uses various techniques of visual arts in his pieces. Along with his artistic work, Tuomo also participates in exhibitions and works in different kind of art projects.

In the residence period in Lähde! project, Tuomo works in Utajärvi with groups of Oulunkaari customers among artistic environmental research. “When I work in residence I want to emphasize the meaning of personal experience and try to create room for experiencing environment with multiple senses.”

Employment paths

Sanna-Maija Karjalainen is an Oulu-based theatre professional, who has extensive experience in the fields of theatre and culture in general.

Sanna-Maija will be working with the youth at Utajärvi as part of the Lähde! project

Face of the Space

Miia Kettunen is a costume designer who has been working diversely in different performing arts projects. She is inspired by the way in which social and communal art is made. She likes to work with the new and unknown by stretching her professional skills as an artist.

During her social art residency period Kettunen worked in Pudasjärvi with mental health customers from Ruskapirtti and Osviitta. The aim was to create an artwork ensemble called Face of the Space. Single artworks of the ensemble were born using object and accessory art. The participants chose locations that are familiar to their everyday life. At the Pudasjärvi library a colourful granny greets the visitors, and at the Puikkari swimming hall the faces reflect the different emotions that can arise from swimming.

Photo: Anne Niskanen

Suitcase Radio

Jaap Klevering is a sound and performance artist who works widely with different arts, also looking for solutions outside the art field. For more than 30 years, Jaap has been designing, directing and recording sounds, music, dance and theatre performances, films, installations and other art projects. In addition, he has been teaching and directing both professionals and amateurs. Dutch-born Jaap has been living and working in Finland since 1983.

In Ii, Jaap worked at the social art residence with people recovering from mental health problems. With the participants, he collected and created sound material for radio programmes and self-built a suitcase radio. Creating the content of the radio programme was an interactive process in which the customers and also the staff participated. For example, they recorded interviews, coffee table conversations, speeches, wise sayings, jokes and songs. Different kinds of art methods were used to support the process, for example painting, music improvisation and dancing.

From these recordings the participants assembled several programmes. The programmes can be listened to on a suitcase radio that was built at the Ii work rehabilitation centre. The suitcase radio will start off at the Myötätuuli day centre, but later it will travel from place to place; a radio corner can even be set up in people’s homes!

Employment paths at Vaala 

Writer and literary art teacher Minna Mikkonen works in diverse community art projects through culture cooperative ILME. She also works as a teacher in Oulu city employment services’ art groups in Culture house Valve. Minna wants to work with people of various ages and different life situations. Minna’s first novel Kivenkerääjät was published in 2015. She is now writing her second novel.

In Lähde!-project Minna worked as an Art sponsor especially in Vaala area in autumn 2018. Art sponsor together with young adults seeks for their own art paths and new perspectives for their lives through art to support their employment. Minna believes that with the help of art everyone can find themselves a new language and a new way of being. “By art we are all equal despite of our roles.”

Photo: Timo Heikkala

The Adventures of VIlle and Visiting Santa’s Village Christmas Magazine 

Art for housing services workshop

Comics and visual artist Jyrki Mäki is known as the singer and one of the primary lyricists of the band Radiopuhelimet. He has published three graphic novels: Hermolomamatka (Like 2011), Kiskoja (Like 2014) and Musta lipas (Like 2016). He also draws comics for the Oulu-posti and Rantapohja papers.

In the Lähde! Art and Culture as Part of Social and Health Services in Oulunkaari project, Jyrki Mäki piloted the social art residence operation in the Startti group home.

Teach me a song

Makiko Nishikaze is a Japanese composer and pianist who works in Germany. In her work she often integrates sounds using everyday objects and materials. Recently she also has been creating video work as “visual composition”, often without sound.

In Lähde! Taiteesta voimaa arkeen –project Makiko works in a social art residence in Ii together with customers from a group home in spring 2019. She works with a project “Listening in Ii” where she studies the similarities in how Japanese and Finnish languages sound. For the project, Makiko meets local people and collects stories of their daily lives. In addition, Makiko organizes listening walks where the participants try to discover and capture sounds of nature by visual meaning.

Photo: Inka Hyvönen

Kota Workshops

Oili Nissinen is the developer of the Kota workshop, and teaches visual arts and ceramics in Utajärvi. Previously she has worked as a counsellor e.g. in Finnish Cultural Foundation’s Myrsky project for youth.

Working with people of various ages and with different kinds of life situations has given Oili a wide experience of the positive effects that making art has to the participants. These experiences have encouraged her to develop new operating models to do art in new contexts.

In Lähde! project Oili pilots the Kota workshop in Utajärvi. Kota workshop is a new opportunity for youth outside the working life. It combines making art, paths in working life, young people’s ideas, recycling, enterprises and work communities.

In the Language of Fans 

Raquel Sakrístan is a multidisciplinary artist, who endeavours in her projects to eliminate the borders between aesthetic codes, techniques and artistic languages. At the Complutense University of Madrid, she became interested in studying creative processes. With her projects, she has participated in individual and group exhibitions in Ghana, Beijing and Rio de Janeiro.

When she moved to New York in 2006, Sakrístan transferred to working with public spaces and widely varying social contexts. In her work, she introduces temporary objects and ambiguous texts to spaces and landscapes to create different perspectives. Her projects carried out with elderly people in distant villages, African youths, psychiatric patients and other groups considered to exist outside of the arts have provided opportunities to focus on listening.

Since 2014, Sakrístan has primarily worked with artists belonging to special groups, bringing forward ideas that might not have been otherwise conveyable.

In the municipality of Ii, Sakrístan combined her interest in landscapes and working with special groups by visiting the Startti group home.

Mosaic workshops

Paula Suominen is a versatile artist. The baselines of her work are often organic shapes of nature and recurrense of life. Paula is inspired by colours and day-lighting. Along with traditional art she has, during the last years, made several public artworks as murals and for example society art with mosaic technique.

In the Lähde! project Paula participates in the contents of Lähde! park and in the autumn 2018 she implements mosaic workshops for special groups in Ii. Mosaic artworks are made of the plates and tiles the citizens have donated. The artworks are part of the building the first Lähde! park in Suvantola, in the municipality of Ii.

Dream News

Artists Defne Tesal and Murat Yildiz live and work in Istanbul, Turkey and in Den Bosch in the Netherlands.

They took part in the KK AiC (Artist-in-Community) programme by working together with mental health rehabilitators from Oulunkaari health and social services.

Together with the mental health rehabilitators Tesal and Yildiz will work on the project Dream News, which will become a printed newspaper.

“Usually news is about problems and past events. We want to look into the future to dreams and hopes,” Yildiz explains. Dream News will be distributed widely, from libraries to political leaders, and will also be able to be read in the newly built Lähde! Park.

Tesal and Yildiz also took part in the Valon juhla – Festival of Light in Lähde! Park behind the Ii health centre.

“The most important thing is to be together. You don’t need to express yourself all the time,” Tesal concludes.

The Murals of the Amppari Youth Centre

Photographer Martu Väisänen is the developer of the Tunnekuva method, a producer and a versatile cultural operator. The intention of the Tunnekuva method is to create an open interactive relationship between the photographer and the subject. The method has been used, for example, with youths from children’s homes and immigrants. She works as a teacher at the Oulu Art School, teaching animation and film.

Martu trained as an artisan clothier, holds a bachelor’s degree in media and has extensive experience in photography, television work and the film industry.
In the Lähde! project, Martu has worked with young people in Vaala to transform snapshots of their everyday lives to murals for a youth centre. She also works as an Art sponsor in Vaala ja Utajärvi  with young people to help them find their own art paths to support their employment

Inner Mirror 

The conceptual artist and butoh dancer Min Yoon is dedicated to uncovering the deeper, more intuitive nature of how we relate to our being and the world through art, butoh dance, and philosophy, and what may arise from this uncovering. Her works focus on the themes of sharing a sense of connection and presence across socio-political divides.

Butoh dance is an expressive mode of dance that seeks to find what is deep within, beyond what is socially accepted in a pursuit of new expressions of truth. Min has studied butoh dance at the Jinen Butoh School in Italy with Atsushi Takenouchi and at the Butoh College in the USA with master teachers, in addition to studying image and narrative at the University of California, Berkeley.

During the KK AIC (Artist in Community) residency period Yoon invited mental health rehabilitators and other locals to reflect on different facets of their self-identity and how others may view them. This was done through various interviews, reflections, and body exploration methods to excavate new expressions. The aim was to co-create a performance called Inner Mirror. Inner Mirror represents the ethereal and subliminal landscapes of how an individual reflects on their self-identity. Min hopes to create spaces for fuller identities by setting the stage for the ways an individual would like to be understood, experienced, and seen, with their respective trials, and beyond, to potentially yield new ways of relating to one another.

Photo: Inka Hyvönen