EALA Connections

EALA: Connecting Places and Partners

Two partners were involved in this Scottish Government funded project: one from Scotland – the University of the West of Scotland, and one from the Arctic region – the University of Lapland, in northern Finland.

Lapin yliopisto – the University of Lapland – is a public university and the EU’s northernmost University located at the Arctic circle in Rovaniemi. Rovaniemi that is the administrative capital and commercial centre of Finland’s northernmost province, Lapland. Founded in 1979, University of Lapland has four faculties (art, education, law and social sciences), three multidisciplinary research institutes, the Arctic Centre as largest. The core focus of the University of Lapland is Arctic and Northern research, with its priority and reach on regional connectivity, innovative ambition and sustainable wellbeing of the people, society and natural environment of the Arctic.

University of Lapland’s Faculty of Art and Design engages in research in art, culture, media, and design. The Faculty actively collaborates widely with Arctic creative, arts and design enterprises in the northern and the Sami indigenous communities developing knowledge and projects to create new “Smart Arctic” applications, products, and providing innovative solutions in industry, ecology, society and culture. The university’s institutional motto is “For the North, For the World.”

Oilthigh na h-Alba an Iar – the University of the West of Scotland – is a multi-campus university.  UWS has four Scottish campus sites at Paisley, Ayr, Dumfries, Lanarkshire, and a further campus in London, England. The EALA project is based within the Division of Arts and Media, School of Business and Creative Industries (BCI), located at the riverside campus in Ayr, a seaside town on Scotland’s south-west coast. The University of the West of Scotland  (UWS) is formed from a long history of original colleges and institutions merged and connected over a century and more of learning, technical and skills based education. UWS, formerly University of Paisley, notably includes the current UWS ‘main’ campus at Paisley which had its roots as formerly the Paisley Technical College and School of Art, the archives of which are held at the UWS.

The Division of Art and Media at UWS’s Ayr campus is notable in its learning partnership legacy to enhance further connection across the wider Ayrshire and Renfrewshire geographies and to build its west of Scotland regional focus through the merger between the then University of Paisley and Ayr’s Craigie College for Education. Education, regional connnections through creativity and technical knowldge and skills remain at the heart of the University of the West of Scotland’s Ayr campus learning activities of the School of Business and Creative Industries,  and in the School of Eduction and Social Science. The university’s motto is Doctrina Prosperitas “Learning is success”.

EALA:  Scotland and Arctic Connections

EALA brings an exciting added value opportunity to existing excellent co-working processes of UWS and University of Lapland via the Arctic Sustainable Arts and Design (ASAD) network).  This established trustbase significantly expands Scottish and Arctic collaborative educational (curriculum) potential fostering impactful legacies built around emerging arts and creative sustainable enterprise potential (targeted thematically around four recognised “commons” environments of energy, assets, landscape and arts). University of Lapland is the northernmost university in Europe, situated in Rovaniemi on the Arctic Circle.

With a leading Faculty of Art and Design, it is uniquely placed to engage with UWS in applied art-based collaboration focused on the Arctic and shared ‘near Arctic’ context through the lens of art, design and creative industries. In addition, the University’s Arctic Centre located in the main museum of Lapland Arktikum provides key cultural resource, educational focus and digitalization potential. ULapland brings excellent network that includs key connections with the University of the Arctic, Nord University, Sámi University of Applied Sciences, Sámi Allaskuvlla, for example.

Both ULapland and UWS look to develop learner-centred curriculum content (including co-design). EALA offers just one example of Scotland Arctic connections and a focused sharing of experience. EALA sources, creates and documents examples that highlight the interplay between arts, creative practice and policy in Scotland and Finland. Creation of resources – and reflections on pedegogy and creative practice – help to expand and validate knowledge ‘connections’. EALA offers access to ideas and experience of rural and remote north “margins”. Creative and design actors, including students, staff, community partners and alumni are involved in this process. We hope that EALA can contribute further in small ways to our wider critical understanding and the ambition of enhancing our Scottish and Arctic dialogues.

Transformative pedagogies: “Relating North”

Transformative pedagogies […] encourage learners to enhance their awareness, empathy, compassion and empowerment […] arts-based approaches, combined with spiritual and mindfulness methods, aimed at transformation that could lead into more humble lifestyles and growing awareness of the need for better sustainable lifeways. Desired transformation […] in recognition of self as a part of nature and therefore, connected with and accepting of Arctic cultural heritage rather than rejecting it because of colonialization and fear.”

Huhmarniemi and Joy (2022: 109)

Further Reading: Huhmarniemi, M. and Joy, F. (2022) ‘Forest Encounters: Communication with Trees, Stones and Powers of Nature‘ in Coutts, G., & Jokela T. (Eds.). (2022). Relate North #9. InSEA Publications. InSEA: International Society for Education through Art http://www.insea.orgp.
Source: https://www.insea.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/RelateNorth9_WEB.pdf