Photo exhibit: Meanings of archipelago forests
The project “Meanings of archipelago forests. A co-productive art-science project,” funded through the 2024 SOS Project Booster call, organizes two photo exhibitions together with two schools in the archipelago. Both exhibitions open on Monday, 26 May and are open throughout the summer.
The SOS-funded project “Meanings of archipelago forests” organized two forest workshops with schools in Nagu and Velkua in April. During the workshops, pupils from grades 7-9 took photographs with their mobile phones, thinking about what meanings of archipelago forests the photographs reflect – e.g., ecological, recreational, economic, cultural, or a mix of these. The photos taken by the pupils will be exhibited in both Velkua and Nagu during the summer.
The scientific part of the project explores how attitudes towards the forest have been guided in schools in Finland and Sweden over the past decades. The photography project in Nagu and Velkua aimed to see how pupils in the archipelago today perceive the forests around them.
In Velkua, the photos were taken by pupils of Velkua school on the island of Lailuoto and they are displayed at the Livonsaari Cooperative (Livonsaaren osuuskauppa, Velkuantie 988). The opening festivities take place on 26 May at 9.00-9.45, and the exhibition can be visited throuout the summer during the shops opening hours.
In Nagu, the photos were taken by Kyrkbacken school pupils in the forests around Vargberget. The participants also cooperated with the Archipelago Sea Biosphere Reserve and nature educator Aija Mäkinen, focusing on archipelago forests as specific types of forests, both ecologically and culturally. The Nagu exhibition opens on 26 May at 13:30-14:30 in Sjöfartshuset (Kyrkostigen 3) and it is open to the public until the end of August during Sjöfartshuset’s opening hours.
The project is led by historian Otso Kortekangas (Åbo Akademi University) and photographer Erkka Malkavaara.
More information on the project
For further inquiries, please contact Otso.Kortekangas@abo.fi
