Secondary school art-science photography workshop as a vehicle for thinking about the archipelago forests’ manifold meanings

Text: Otso Kortekangas & Erkka Malkavaara
Cover image: Otso Kortekangas

This blog post discusses the contact zone between environmental education and art and science education. Funded by the first SOS booster call, our working group organized two secondary school photography workshops about the manifold meanings of archipelago forests, with subsequent photo exhibitions in Nagu and Velkua in Finland’s southwestern archipelago.

The initial idea for the art-science educational workshop came from the realization that, as a part of the scientific project The Manifold Meanings of Forests in Comprehensive Education in the Nordics 1972–2023, a forest workshop could be a way to get insight into what pupils think about forests. Apart from offering the pupils an opportunity for scholarly reflection and artistic expression, the workshop became a way to widen the scientific project. The cooperation with secondary schools contributed with a more practice-oriented element to the project originally solely focusing on school textbooks. From the start, researcher Otso Kortekangas planned the workshop together with photographer and photography instructor Erkka Malkavaara.

We conducted a pilot project, a workshop in Korpo, in the autumn of 2024. In late 2024, we received additional funding in the first SOS booster call to further develop the concept of the forest workshop and to carry it out in two other secondary schools in the archipelago region.

Archipelago forests and archipelago schools

Forests in general constitute a key theme in Finland’s (and Europe’s) long way toward sustainability. The most recent climate and nature barometers in Finland (a pair of citizen surveys conducted by the Government of Finland) point to an ever-higher awareness of climate change-related risks and issues and increasing concern over nature destruction. Specifically, 75% of the respondents think that more attention should be paid to forests and forestry practices to preserve carbon sinks.

Forests in the Southwestern archipelago of Finland are a pertinent object to study and consider together with pupils. Forestry, and especially the historical and still ongoing forest drainage, is an essential reason for the precarious environmental state of the Archipelago Sea. The forests in the archipelago are special, valuable, and vulnerable ecosystems, shaped in various ways by their proximity to the sea. At the same time, for many inhabitants of the archipelago, forestry is a core livelihood. Art can be a vehicle to discuss these kinds of conflicting and overlapping meanings. Art, in contrast to the aspired exactness of scholarly endeavors, allows for expressions that include various narratives that can be conflicting or overlapping, but that can coexist without canceling each other out.

The core curriculum for Finnish secondary schools underscores the importance of the autonomy of the pupil in acquiring skills and competences needed to participate in societal life, including thinking critically, listening to other opinions, and forming their own standpoints. The core curriculum also highlights the need for pupils to learn to respect nature and their environment, and to understand and tackle challenges and problems related to climate change and biodiversity loss.

The local curricula in the archipelago region further highlight that the pupils should get to know their home region, its nature, environment, and traditional livelihoods. Our project connected in essential ways to the societal discussion around sustainability and environmental challenges in general, and forests specifically, and to several of the principal goals of the national core curriculum and the local curricula.

Workshops in the forest

The structure of the workshop itself was relatively simple. We, the pupils, and a number of teachers traveled by boat and bus to the forests for a one-day workshop. We chose the spots because they were places unfamiliar to most pupils, so we didn’t simply leave the schools for the forests just outside the buildings. A very valuable addition to our workshop was the collaboration with nature educator Aija Mäkinen from the Archipelago Sea Biosphere Academy. Aija’s contribution was felt both on the level of pedagogy and substance, giving the pupils food for thought, e.g., in the form of the question of what constitutes a forest in the first place.

Archipelago forest photography engages – rain or shine! Photos by Erkka Malkavaara and Otso Kortekangas.

While in the forest, the pupils first listened to a short lecture on the history of the various meanings of forests and forestry in Finland. They then received a task with two elements:

The first element delved into the meanings of archipelago forests. Using smartphone cameras, the pupils were tasked with photographing something that they found especially meaningful in the forest.

The second element was related to artistic autonomy and photographing as an art form. Most pupils are used to taking smartphone photos to share with their friends or on social media. But while taking their photos, we asked the pupils to challenge themselves to explore something new in their smartphone cameras – either a technical function, a perspective, or a composition idea.

A few weeks after the workshops, we opened photography exhibitions with the pupils’ photographs. The photographs were printed on large canvases in groups of three or four, with short titles given by the pupils, describing the photo from the perspective of the task: what meaning(s) did they wish to highlight, what photographic idea did they use?

The photographs reflected the reality of archipelago forests in innovative ways. Apart from trees, cliffs, mosses, and plants, water in its many forms was very much part of several photos.

Results and interpretations

Based on the preliminary results of the scientific project focused on textbook narratives, one of the central premises for the workshops was to look at how the economic narrative, given its strong position in the textbooks and the role forestry plays as a source of income in the archipelago, was combined with other meanings. One of the most striking findings of our workshops and exhibitions was that the economic meaning was very much absent from the photographs of the pupils. This finding is worth considering as it stands in stark contrast to the preliminary conclusions of the scientific project, where the economic narrative appears extremely strong in the school textbooks over the years. On the other hand, concerns about loss of biodiversity or climate change did not come across in the photographs, either, in an explicit manner. Possibly because of the age category (secondary school), and because we did not specifically push for the pupils to express concern over these issues, most photos highlighted the sort of everyday character of being in the forest. This result is also valuable, as it shows that forests are very familiar and safe places for most pupils in the two archipelago schools.

Most models regarding environmental education underscore that knowledge, experience, and action for the environment need to go hand in hand in well-structured environmental education. (Cantell et al. 2020) At the same time, it is critical to consider what sort of knowledge the pupils should receive. As Jan Löfström (2012) has noted, in educational contexts, ready-made models for assuming responsibility after receiving specific knowledge about a problem or an issue are less efficient than open approaches. Our workshop included a high degree of intellectual and artistic autonomy, providing the pupils with the opportunity to bring forth their preferred ideas about forests. These meanings could be more deeply embedded and thought-through (such as photos of mosses growing slowly on old trees) or more spontaneous, triggered by the moment in the forest (such as photos of climbing in the trees or dramatic landscapes framed by the unexpected April hail).

The economic narrative was also present in some of the photos, but implicitly, as some of the pictures featured a large area of planted young forest. The opening discussions during the workshops also included the notion of the forest providing a significant economic contribution. And whereas the photos and the titles did not explicitly comment on biodiversity and climate crises, works depicting the delicacy and detail of both biotic and abiotic nature point to an awareness of ecological questions.

The workshops gave us inspiration and encouragement to further develop our ideas and to explore the meanings that the photographs convey. We plan to investigate the types of research data that these art-science collaborations and their outcomes can provide, and explore how such data can be ethically handled in research.

We hope that the workshops and exhibitions had a positive impact on the pupils’ learning, perhaps giving a small contribution to their growth toward responsible individuals with a healthy self-esteem and the skills, tools, and knowledge needed when facing a future filled with complexities and challenges. Hopefully, this future will also include happiness, peace of mind, and calm and peaceful moments in archipelago forests.

Authors

Otso Kortekangas, Researcher in Environmental History, ÅAU
Erkka Malkavaara, photographer and photography instructor

Literature

• Löfström, Jan. 2012. Historialliset hyvitykset suomalaisnuorten historiatietoisuudessa. In J. Löfström (Ed.), Voiko historiaa hyvittää? Historiallisten vääryyksien korjaaminen ja anteeksiantaminen. Helsinki: Gaudeamus.
• Cantell, Hannele, Aarnio-Linnanvuori, Essi and Sirpa Tani. 2020. Ympäristökasvatus. Kestävän tulevaisuuden käsikirja. Jyväskylä: PS-kustannus.