About us

Download INSEA article on background of the
research group (p. 13 onward)

 

Click here for Mari's website

E-mail: mari.vonboehm(at)viapori.fi
Phone: +358 (0) 44 56 09 240

Mari von Boehm was born in Kerava, Finland, in 1976. Music and visual arts have always played an important role in her family. She played violin, sang in several choirs and studied at the Kerava school of art. After finishing the Sibelius high school (which is specialized in music education), she started to study graphic design at the Pekka Halonen Academy in Tuusela. In 1997, she started her studies at the Department of Art Education at Aalto University in Helsinki (TaiK). In 1998 Mari graduated from the Pekka Halonen Academy.

Mari got enthusiastic about wilderness - both on the land and on the sea - and in her studies she specialized in arts-based environmental education. Over the years, she has worked in several environmental education projects. Her master's thesis was a big international project, Nordic Messages From the Seas, which took place in 2002. Mari graduated in 2006 and started her doctoral studies in art education at TaiK in 2007. Mari von Boehm has been working as an art teacher at Forssa School of Art from 2003 to 2007, and, since the autumn of 2007, also at the Espoo School of Art. She has also organized courses and projects at Aalto University, such as In the Wake of the Swan (2005 and 2006) and Out From the Classroom (2007, 2008 and 2009). Together with Jan van Boeckel, Mari organised Art and Sea (2008) and Wind and Water (2009). In the spring of 2010, she co-organised the sea expedition Ars Navigare.
		Mari trying to find different tunes from a huge rock that has been used as an instrument for hundreds of years

Click here for Jan's website

E-mail: jan.vanboeckel(at)aalto.fi
Phone Netherlands: +31 (0)630283115
Phone Finland: +358 (0)449374141

Jan van Boeckel is a Dutch anthropologist, visual artist, art teacher and filmmaker. One of Jan's areas of interest and concern are the worldviews and environmental philosophies of indigenous peoples. Together with filmmaking group ReRun Productions, he produced a series of documentaries on this subject, as well as films on philosophers such as Jacques Ellul and Arne Naess, who provide a critical analysis of the Western way of life. These films include, among others: The Earth is Crying (1987), It's Killing the Clouds (1992), The Betrayal by Technology (1992), and The Call of the Mountain (1997).
Jan has lived for several years in Hällefors, in the forests of central Sweden, where he was an art teacher to both children and adults, and consultant on international cultural projects. He established the Cloudberry Dreams network with partners in Latvia, England, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. The mission of this partnership is to share ideas and to explore new ways to interpret landscapes through art and creativity. Another project he took part in conceptualizing is called Clearings in the Forest, which focuses on the cultural and mythical significance of open spaces in the woodlands.
Between 2004 and 2006, Jan has worked as Head of Communications at the Netherlands Centre for Indigenous Peoples in Amsterdam.
Currently Jan van Boeckel is research fellow at Aalto University in Helsinki, where he is focusing on the added value of art practice in the context of nature and environmental education. Inspired by indigenous peoples' cultures, his own engagement in art and art teaching practices, and his experiences of living close to wilderness areas of Sweden, Jan's interest has moved to art as a means to connect to what David Abram aptly called 'the more-than-human-world'. Since 2007, Jan is member of the ecoart network.
His research supervisors are professor Juha Varto (TaiK, Helsinki), professor Timo Jokela (University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland), and associate professor Edvin Østergaard (Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Ås).
One of Jan's research interests is the tension between trying to 'open the senses' whilst coping with the current ecological crisis. An issue all the more pressing when working with children. Jan is also on ResearchGate.

 E-mail: violetpiascik(at)hotmail.com
 

Wioletta Anna Piascik is an environmental educator and oligofrenopedagogist from Poland. She is also a materializing artist, fascinated by the round shapes of sails, mountains and dresses.
She has graduated at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, has completed her master thesis in deep ecology. As part of the Socrates/Erasmus Program for student exchanges, Wiola studied at the University of Linköping in Sweden in 2005. She has completed specialist courses on the methodology of ecological education, natural therapy, artistic sensibility and drama communication.
Wiola has also gained extensive experience in teaching and taking care of people with special needs in the USA, Poland, Sweden, Austria and the UK.
In 2006, she took part in the Art in Place course at Schumacher College, with teachers Peter London, Anthony Gormley and Peter Randall-Page.
In 2008 Wiola participated in the Art and Sea expedition on the North Sea and Baltic Sea.
She has worked for the Workshop for All Beings Association in Poland, at the Deep Ecology and Ecological Education Centre. There she lead trainings for children, teenagers and teachers. Wiola is actively engaged in diffusing the Wild Poland concept.
Piascik's research is focused on teachers that are oriented towards arts-based environmental education. She is interested in how their pedagogy relates to wilderness. How do teachers practising arts-based environmental education enable, facilitate and deepen the connection to wilderness through their work?

e-mail: henrika.ylirisku(at)kolumbus.fi

Henrika Ylirisku is a Finnish teacher of arts (MA) and geography. Her studies have also included courses on anthropology, art therapy and drama pedagogy. Her interest in the visual arts concerns primarily environmental art - especially experiments with mixed techniques and materials. She has participated in many arts-based environmental projects and group exhibitions.
Henrika has worked as an art teacher with both children and adults. She finds it especially inspiring to help youngsters find different ways of seeing and experiencing through art practices. She has organized courses on creativity and arts for Hämeen ammattikorkeakoulu and Hämeen kesäyliopisto and she has worked as an art teacher at Forssa Art school for children and teens. Henrika has started her doctorate studies in 2007, at Aalto University in Helsinki, at the Department of Art Education.
In her research she concentrates on the impact that studying the environment by means of artistic methods has on the human-nature relationship.

Paintings by Henrika made on rocks and beach stones at Nötö. She wrote song lyrics/poems/spells
she felt important at the time with water soluble paint. For a random passer-by to find at places she felt special.

Leena Valkeapää
e-mail: leena.valkeapaa(at)aalto.fi

In her research, Dr Leena Valkeapää looked at the connection between art and natural science. She is actively involved with the Ars Bioarctica programme. and more specifically with the activities at Kilpisjärvi Biological Station, which is part of the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences at the University of Helsinki.
The aim of her study was to establish concrete joint projects between art and science with the aim to develop new kinds of artistic thinking. Through this she wanted to participate in and contribute to the discussion on the relation between humankind and nature. In Leena's view, art and science collaboration provides new tools to art education which allow us to approach the Earth in an artistic way, together with scientists.
The working environment in Valkeapää's study was northern Lapland and her interest was in the local natural phenomena. In her doctorate research she took an in-depth look at the local Sami reindeer herding culture and the Arctic reality of living with and amidst the topic of her research. As part of her studies, Leena has been researching the use of wireless communications by the reindeer herders, specifically a collection of over 14 years of text messages that she received from her husband, e.g. when she was in far-off places like Helsinki. From their home near Kilpisjärvi, text messaging is often the only way to communicate. Leena found a beautiful poetry in the simplified messages. This simplicity of form perhaps relates to some of the basic qualities of the ecosystem in this area.

Link to an article on Leena Valkeapää's art 

On 11 November 2011, Leena defended her PhD thesis entitled Luonnossa, vuoropuhelua Nils-Aslak Valkeapään tuotannon kanssa (In nature - conducting a dialogue with the works of Nils-Aslak Valkeapää).

All this is my home / these fjords rivers lakes / this cold this sunshine these storms” (Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, 1979)

Wind, reindeer, time, fire, people – the people living with reindeer in nature still have a straightforward relationship with the basic elements of life. Leena Valkeapää’s dissertation is a study aiming to develop artistic thinking in which the focus is on the way of life and the way of being in north-western Lapland which are both intertwined with nature.
In her dissertation, Leena Valkeapää goes beyond the traditional anthropological approach by engaging in a dialogue with Nils-Aslak Valkeapää's poetic, academic and literary portrayals of the Sami way of life and her own feelings. Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, Àillohaš (1943-2001) was a Sami artist working in a broad range of fields and he is probably best known in Finland as the creator and performer of the new yoik. He also published eight collections of poems two of which have been translated into Finnish.
In the dissertation, the dialogue intensifies as text messages of Oula A. Valkeapää, the husband of Leena Valkeapää, and excerpts from the work Kertomus saamelaisista (A portrayal of the Sami people) by Johan Turi, a member of the Swedish Sami community, are shown side by side with Nils-Aslak Valkeapää’s poetry. Turi’s work was first published in 1910 as Muitalus sámiid birra and it was translated into Finnish in 1979. The dialogue involving three different narrators reveals common experiences, which each of the three describe using their own background as a basis. All three are members of the Sami people. In her study, Leena Valkeapää calls the way of life and the cultural traditions common to them reindeer life. The core of Leena Valkeapää’s dissertation is the dialogue relationship in which Oula A. Valkeapää’s thinking and her own thinking create a state of discussion.
Leena Valkeapää is an environmental artist. Her work includes a large number of exhibitions (both group exhibitions and exhibitions displaying her own works only), environmental projects and environmental works of art. The best known of her works of art is “Jäähuntu” (Icy Veil; 1999) at the rock cutting of Helsinginkatu in Turku. In addition to her artistic activities, Leena Valkeapää has also worked as a teacher of environmental art in a number of educational institutions. Between 2005 and 2010, she worked as a teacher of environmental education at the Department of Art of the University of Art and Design Helsinki.
Leena Valkeapää’s dissertation (in Finnish) is published by Maahenki in the publication series of the Aalto University School of Art and Design. Orders: TaiK Publications, email: books@taik.fi, online bookshop: www.taik.fi/kirjakauppa

e-mail: pirkko.pohjakallio(at)aalto.fi