Flow: Currents of Change in our River Landscapes

This publication is produced by the fifth international and interdisciplinary art methods school Living in the Landscape (LiLa) took place in 2024. This series of schools is orgainsed by the University of Arctic’s thematic network Arctic Sustainable Art and Design (ASAD). The exhibition "Flow: Currents of Change in our river landscapes" is presented in the KILO gallery, at the Faculty of Art and Design, University of Lapland, November 5-21, 2024.

It combines the catalogue for the exhibition of the same name and a collection of essays. They offer a celebration of the flow of ideas, understandings and activity that took part during LiLa 2024. Together participants have shared – struggled, and we hope succeeded – to express our stillness, our currents, our ebbs, and drifts but so too cascades, eddies, and waves of artistic response. Powerfully Lila makes connections between us; and with our key local contributions from artists, curators and others we have been brought together: energised. Our Lila (2024) learning as making and doing is a process (and like our rivers) often gentle and quiet, also ‘loud’ and stirring at times) of active collaborative sharing (making, doing, questions, encouragements and reflections). Significantly, as these essays illustrate here in this book, we have each sought to speak more loudly, and to be a voice for our river nature. However small or large each contribution is we have worked together to generate flows between us. These contributions have each provided different insight to our encounters and dialogues to be then brought forth, carried in currents of reflexive activity and creation for further sharing through art exhibition and this essay collection.

This year (2024) we undertook a hybrid delivery comprising online collaboration with locally situated task activity in each country; coupled with intensive field working in situ in the hydro and ‘green’ energy riverscapes of Finnish Lapland.

The participating MA and PhD students and scholars this year came from several ASAD partner institutions: the University of Lapland (Finland), Umeå University (Sweden), Nord University (Norway), the University of the West of Scotland (Scotland) and the University of the Highlands and Islands (Scotland). The participants came from the disciplines of art education, general teacher education, fine arts, creative practice, and clothing design.