Symposium
August 9, 2024 at 11:00–17:00, Palupera Elementary School
An international symposium of the project “Creative Connections” will take place in the Palupera Elementary School on 9 August. The programme will focus on different ways of using art to shape children’s social skills. The symposium is part of the main programme of European Capital of Culture Tartu 2024.
We welcome teachers, social workers, educators, artists and anyone interested in hearing about recent developments in the fields of arts and education, learning about exciting teaching materials, gaining inspiration, sharing their knowledge and making valuable new contacts across sectors. Participants can look forward to a packed programme of presentations, talks, workshops and creative activities in the special atmosphere of the Palupera Manor School and Park.
Speakers include local art, design and education professionals: Eva Liisa Kubinyi (EAA), Jane Meresmaa-Roos (Miiamilla Children’s Museum), Sireli Uusmaa (PROTO Discovery Factory), Grete Arro (Tallinn University) and others. There will also be engaging foreign speakers, including Jennie Guy (Ireland, Platform Art School), Mija Renström (Sweden, Göteborgs Konsthall) and several artists. The talks will be moderated by Maarin Ektermann (EKA) and Kristiina Treial (Bullying-Free School Foundation).
The symposium will be held in Estonian and English with simultaneous interpretation.
You must register HERE by 01.08.2024 at the latest. Places are limited, so registration is open as long as places are available.
The symposium registration fee is €20 for early registrants (registration until 15 May). Afterwards, the fee is €30 (registration until 30 June) and €40 (registration from 1 July on).
The participation fee includes coffee breaks and a hot lunch.
Thank you: the Palupera Elementary School, Tartu 2024 Foundation, Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Embassy in Berlin, Tartu Art Museum and Elva Municipality.
See you in Palupera!
Additional information
Marju Kask
Symposium Project Manager
Symposium schedule
11:00 Gathering and welcoming coffee
11:15 Introduction of the day; Marju Kask, Symposium Project Manager.
I Supporting children’s social well-being through co-creation in art and design
11:30-12:15 Presentations
11:30-11:45 Art creates closeness?! Shaping children’s social skills with artists; Hanna-Liis Kont (curator and project manager of “Creative Connections”).
11:45-12:00 Self-initiated projects by children and young people born out of co-creation; Eva Liisa Kubinyi (design educator and researcher at the Estonian Academy of Arts).
12:00-12:15 Ten Years of Art School: Sustaining an Independent Art in Education framework; Jennie Guy (curator, platform Art School)
12:15-12:45 Discussion
Moderator: Maarin Ektermann (art historian and art education specialist, Estonian Academy of Arts).
Discussion participants: Grete Arro (educational psychologist, Tallinn University) and Lundahl & Seitl (artists).
13:00-13:45 Parallel sessions
SESSION 1: Supporting the projects initiated by children and young people; Eva Liisa Kubinyi
SESSION 2: Explorations of trust in the sound journey of the artists Lundahl & Seitl (Christer Lundahl and Martina Seitl).
SESSION 3: Photo project: a new approach to class photographs; the artists Sigrid Viir and Kristiina Hansen.
SESSION 4: Colouring and art therapy workshop; the artist Jarõna Ilo.
SESSION 5: Creating prompts with children; the artist duo Leisure (Meredith Carruthers and Susannah Wesley).
13:45-14:30 Lunch break
II Art against bullying
14:30 Introduction to the second part of the day; Hanna-Liis Kont
14:35-15:15 Presentations
14:35 Friendship IRL – Hacking an art gallery; Mija Renström (Education Curator, Göteborgs Konsthall) and Leah Renström (young participant in the Friendship IRL film festival).
14:50 Museum lesson “Art against bullying”; Eliis Vaino (Head of the Education Department, Estonian Open Air Museum)
15:05 Museum lesson “Close-up and closer with art”; Sireli Uusmaa and Jane Meresmaa-Roos (education curators of the project “Creative Connections”).
15:15-15:45 Discussion
Moderator: Kristiina Treial (The Bullying-Free School Foundation)
Discussion participant: Anna-Liisa Kree (artist).
15:45-16:00 Coffee break
16:00-16:45 Parallel sessions
SESSION 1: Berlin Children’s Museum MACHmit! children’s rights bus activities; Maren Klingbeil and Uta Rinklebe
SESSION 2: Introduction to the lesson “Art against bullying”; Eliis Vaino.
SESSION 3: Outdoor education with “A palette of feelings and experiences”; Jane Meresmaa-Roos and Sireli Uusmaa.
SESSION 4: Art therapy workshop with a little whimsy; Mariliis Tähepõld.
16:45-17:00 Summary of the day
Presenters
Hanna-Liis Kont is a curator and art researcher. Her exhibitions and research projects are driven by her desire to contribute to the social well-being of different individuals and communities through art. She often uses participatory approaches in her work. Hanna is the initiator and leader of the project “Creative Connections”. As part of this project, since 2021 she and a project team have been exploring how to support children’s social skills development through contemporary art, working with first through fifth grades in general education schools and families with children in South Estonia. Hanna’s research is framed by her studies in the PhD programme of the Estonian Academy of Arts, the Institute of Art and Visual Culture and her work as a lecturer.
Eva Liisa Kubinyi is a design educator and researcher at the Design Faculty of the Estonian Academy of Arts, currently pursuing her PhD on the topic of youth mental health. Her design practice focuses mainly on children’s roles within society, resulting in creative workshops or service concepts. She holds an MFA in Child Culture Design from HDK-Valand (Sweden) and previously worked as a designer at VIVISTOP Telliskivi (EST), a creativity accelerator for kids and young people.
Jennie Guy is a curator, artist and writer based in Dublin. Her practice explores new contexts for artistic experimentation rooted in collaborative enquiry. Jennie is the founder and director of the Art School, an experimental framework that explores strategies for placing artists within sites of education, and the editor of Curriculum: Contemporary Art Goes to School (Intellect Books; 2020). Her artworks include films, performances, installations and text-based works. She was formerly the programme manager at Fire Station Artists’ Studios and currently curates major public art commissions for a range of clients.
Lundahl & Seitl are Swedish artists living and working in Stockholm. Through their projects, which touch on different senses, exhibitions become interpersonal processes using choreography, physical objects and time. Christer Lundahl studied at the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and later at the Konstfack Transdisciplinary Studio. Martina Seitl studied choreography and performance art at Middlesex University and later at the Konstfack Transdisciplinary Studio. Together they formed the duo Lundahl & Seitl in 2003. They investigate the capacity of art to form imagined communities that can help bring about personal and social change. For more information, see lundahl-seitl.com/
Maarin Ektermann is an art worker, based in Tallinn, and works on intersections between contemporary art and more-or-less experimental education. Recent projects have included “Artists in Collections, Collectives and Communities” (with Mary-Ann Talvistu, 2017 - ), a proposal for a fair fee system for the Estonian art scene (with Airi Triisberg, 2019 - 2022) and running the new educational platform proloogkool (“school of prologues”, 2020 - ). On a daily basis she works as the Head of the Center for General Theory Subjects at the Estonian Academy of Arts and teaches courses on 20th century art history, self-organised practices and art criticism.
Sigrid Viir is a photographer and installation artist living and working in Tallinn. She studied cultural theory at the Estonian Institute of Humanities and graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts in photography. As an artist, she is interested in the analysis of social constructions, the absurdity of everyday situations, the formation of different roles of human beings (especially women), the border between work and leisure, and questions of visual language.
Kristiina Hansen graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts with a BA in Photography (2008) and an MA in Contemporary Art (2012) and studied at the Bergen Academy of Art and Design (2009). As an artist, Hansen works with plays of meaning and poetic imagery, mostly in the form of photography or installation. She is interested in how materials, objects and utterances with different qualities change shape and meaning when they meet, create unexpected contexts and form new stories.
Jarõna Ilo is an Estonian artist of Ukrainian origin. Ilo has taught drawing at the Estonian Academy of Arts, the Old Town Education College, the Viljandi Culture Academy and the Australian National University in Canberra. Since 2017 she has conducted art therapy workshops in Ukraine, which have primarily benefited children, but also teachers and school psychologists. In 2022, workshops led by Ilo were held in Estonia for young people from Ukraine. The aim of the art therapy activities was to support students’ adaptation, mental health and better contacts with teachers.
Leisure is a research-based collaborative art practice between Canadian artists Meredith Carruthers and Susannah Wesley based in Montreal. Working together under the name “Leisure” since 2004, their approach includes archival research, interviews with artists, site visits, and extending their own conversation and collaboration to include their historical subjects, family members and community participants. The resulting projects are multidisciplinary in format — from workshops, to published texts, interactive installations, and object-making involving a variety of media. Wesley and Carruthers are currently working on a precedent setting collaborative PhD candidacy within Concordia University's Individualized Program.
Mija Renström has been working as a Curator of Education at Göteborgs Konsthall since 2015. Mija works with participatory methods to engage the public and increase understanding of how art can strengthen people both collectively and individually. A major focus of her work is strengthening children’s and young people’s ability to express themselves in order to increase their own creativity and compassion for others and provide tools to organise themselves in a future of great challenges.
In addition, Mija has been an artist for thirty years. Her latest exhibition is about memory and textile history, focusing on the women in her family. She has an MA in photography from the University of Gothenburg's School of Photography. www.mijarenstrom.com
Leah Renström participated in the Vänskap IRL– film festival at Göteborgs Konsthall and she will reflect on her experience of taking part in the process. Leah is the daughter of Mija Renström and has always been an important source of inspiration and a collaboration partner for Mija in the field of art education.
Eliis Vaino believes that museums and art have great potential to create a safer and more connected future. She currently contributes to this effort as the head of the Education Department at the Estonian Open Air Museum. She has been an educational curator at the Art Museum of Estonia, run educational programmes at the Tartu Art Museum and taught first grade at the Herbert Masing School in Tartu. She is the author of the museum lesson “Against Bullying with Art”, which was produced in 2019 in cooperation with the Bullying-Free School Foundation.
Jane Meresmaa-Roos is a playful and curious learner who loves creative solutions in her professional practice, as well as in her everyday communication culture. She likes to find points of intersection between different topics, to leave room for interpretation and to give people space to play. Jane has studied youth work, teaching art and drama pedagogy, practised as a children’s yoga teacher and has been a member of the creative team at the Teo Theatre for 25 years. She first worked as a museum educator at the Kumu Art Museum and the Kadriorg Art Museum, where she initiated projects for people with special needs, bringing art closer to people with different types of disabilities. She is currently the director of the children’s museum Miiamilla and the curator of the permanent exhibition “Children’s Worlds” and the outdoor exhibition “Children with Green Fingers”.
Sireli Uusmaa is an experienced educator and museum specialist who has worked in several Estonian museums and educational institutions, including the Art Museum of Estonia. Sireli holds a master’s degree in teaching history and social studies. She has been involved in a number of projects combining education and museum experiences, such as the “Museum comes to visit” project for Estonians abroad and the “Children’s Republic” project, a major project of the Year of Children and Youth. In recent years, as a curator, she has focused on creating inclusive and playful environments for children, such as the children’s level electronic guide at Vabamu, the Children’s Republic at the Estonian History Museum and the recently opened Children’s Museum Miiamilla. Sirel is currently working as the Content Manager at the PROTO Discovery Factory.
Anna-Liisa Kree is an artist who sees her work as part of a personal reflection and therapeutic process that manifests itself in analogue photography. Social equality and acceptance, especially dealing with societal prejudices against children with intellectual disabilities, are central to her work. The works are made in collaboration with her own children, one of whom has Down’s syndrome. Emphasising human similarities rather than differences, she invites us to reflect on our values and prejudices. She studied photography at the University of West London (2010) and contemporary art at the Estonian Academy of Arts (2024).
Kristiina Treial is a founding member of the Bullying-Free School Foundation, a development and quality manager and a trainer. She has a background as a school psychologist, has worked for a dozen years in teacher training at the University of Tartu and for a couple of years as a guest lecturer of school psychology at Tallinn University. She is the mother of three sons. Kristiina believes that by working together and acting wisely, it is possible to create a kinder childhood, where bullying has no place.
Uta Rinklebe is the director and curator at the MACHmit! Museum for children in Berlin. After being a paediatric nurse, she studied European Ethnology at the Humboldt University of Berlin. She started working at the MACHmit! Museum in 2008 and became the director in 2015.
Maren Klingbeil studied Social & Business Communication at the Berlin University of the Arts. She has been working at the MACHmit! Museum for children since 2011 and since 2015 she has been the educational director, curator and deputy museum director.
Mariliis Tähepõld is a professional creative therapist, and graduated from Tallinn University in 2019 with a master’s degree in art therapy. She works as a creative therapist in rehabilitation and private practice. Her main target groups are children and adults. Most of her professional life has been dedicated to supporting parent-child contacts and relationships through art and hands-on activities in a group environment. In her work, she focuses on supporting the expression of creativity, because creativity is health.
Programme content
First theme: Supporting children’s social well-being through co-creation in art and design
In the first half of the day, you will hear about different ways to involve children and young people in the co-creation processes of art and design. In addition to presenting practical examples, we will discuss the links between participatory creative activities and the social well-being of participants, i.e. how art can support self-expression, mutual understanding, a sense of belonging, cooperation etc.
PRESENTATIONS
Art creates closeness?! Shaping children’s social skills with artists; Hanna-Liis Kont
The presentation will focus on how to support the development of children’s social skills through collaboration between artists and children. The presentation tells the story of the creation of two works of art with the participation of children in the project “Creative Connections”:
1. “Spirits of the Faultline” by Swedish artists Lundahl & Seitl is a sensory work developed with the help of families in southern Estonia between 2022 and 2024. The work is a sound journey experienced in pairs that tests trust and responsibility.
2. The Estonian photographers Sigrid Viir and Kristiina Hansen searched for ways to express children’s individuality and group identity. Together with eight classes from general education schools in southern Estonia, they created new kinds of class photographs based on interviews and staged photo shoots.
The works will be on display at the exhibition “The Secrets of the Leaning Building” at the Tartu Art Museum from 9 August.
Self-initiated projects by children and young people born out of co-creation; Eva Liisa Kubinyi.
The presentation illustrates the complexity of supporting children and young people’s self-initiated projects, the non-linear process but also the endless learning opportunities and the enrichment of a common cultural space. One example analysed is the “Mobile Youth Centre”, a youth project developed in cooperation between the municipality of Toila and the Estonian Academy of Arts, which was awarded several prizes at the “Thanks for Youth” gala.
Ten Years of Art School: Sustaining an Independent Art in Education Framework, Jennie Guy
Since 2014, the Art School has been operating as an independent curatorial platform, creating opportunities for artists, schools and younger audiences to collaborate on projects ranging from concise workshops to long-term artist-in-school residencies throughout Ireland. This presentation will explore the evolution of the Art School over its first decade, charting the opportunities and challenges it has encountered and contemplating its future trajectory in order to discover tactics that might be shared with other practitioners in this field.
PARALLEL SESSIONS
SESSION 1: Supporting the projects initiated by children and young people; Eva Liisa Kubinyi
The workshop will help to visually plan how to inspire children and young people in generating ideas and how to supportively guide children and young people (and yourself) in implementing ideas. Whether you are a parent, a teacher or a museologist, the process will help you to think through potential challenges in a simplified way and how to approach them creatively. Participants will be able to take all of the worksheets they have used home with them.
SESSION 2: Explorations of trust in the sound journey of the artists Lundahl & Seitl; Martina Seitl and Christer Lundahl
This session is inspired by the series titled “Symphony of a Missing Room”. It is a sound journey that engages different senses and is experienced in pairs. The new version of the work called “Spirits of the Faultline”was completed in cooperation with children and families from South Estonia during several years of research. It is part of “The Secrets of the Leaning Building” exhibition at the Tartu Art Museum. The artists Christer Lundahl and Martina Seitl introduce their art practice by conducting a workshop based on simple movement that challenges trust and responsibility.
SESSION 3: Photo project: a new approach to class photographs; the artists Sigrid Viir and Kristiina Hansen
The photographers Kristiina Hansen and Sigrid Viir discuss the process of an art project with children. What does the back room of a photo-based art project for children look like? How to involve children in the making of a class photograph? How to translate textual material into visuals? Let’s look at these questions together and try to deconstruct a contemporary art project for children in 45 minutes.
Kristiina Hansen and Sigrid Viir’s art project is part of the international children’s contemporary art exhibition “The Secrets of the Leaning Building” at the Tartu Art Museum.
SESSION 4: Colouring and art therapy workshop; the artist Jarõna Ilo
The artist Jarõna Ilo talks about her experience in colour therapy workshops. Through a hands-on activity, Jarõna will demonstrate how to mix all of the other colours from the three primary colours. The focus will be on the relationship between colours and emotions and how mixing colours affects children emotionally. An art therapy workshop based on the teaching of colour will allow children to understand and express their feelings. Feelings and colours meet on a subconscious level and participants learn more about themselves in the process.
SESSION 5: Creating prompts with children; the artist duo Leisure (Meredith Carruthers and Susannah Wesley).
This interactive session led by Leisure (Meredith Carruthers and Susannah Wesley) is based on their work “Having Ideas by Handling Materials.” Wesley and Carruthers will discuss the 1970s pedagogical programme that inspired the work (created by the artist Simon Nicholson for Open University), as well as experiences with their own children that helped them update these ideas. Participants will have the opportunity to try out Leisure's prompts to create temporary sculptures, or invent new instructions of their own. The artwork “Having Ideas By Handling Materials” is part of the Tartu Art Museum’s exhibition “The Secrets of the Leaning Building”.
Second Theme: Art against bullying
The second half of the day will focus on different arts education activities that contribute to bullying prevention. You can find out more about the education programmes underway in Estonia, as well as about exciting cross-border activities, such as the children’s rights bus from Berlin and the children’s film festival “Friendship in real life”.
PRESENTATIONS
Vänskap IRL / Friendship IRL: Hacking an art gallery; Mija and Leah Renström
How can a contemporary art institution give children the opportunity to use film to describe Friendship IRL? How is it possible to create a conversation about children's own creations, and how can children and adults learn from each other to value different experiences through cinematic practices?
The presentation introduces the Friendship Film Festival IRL at Göteborgs Konsthall, where children's creativity took over the ongoing exhibition Mozart’s Ghost (2019). Through various methods, children were involved in making their own films, participated in an organising group, had conversations about their films and finally made adults active listeners to children's experiences of social relationships both online and IRL.
Museum lesson “Art against bullying”; Eliis Vaino
The presentation introduces the educational programme “Art against bullying”, aimed at grades one to four, which was created for the permanent exhibition of the Kadriorg Art Museum and the temporary exhibitions at the Tartu Art Museum. The structure and principles of the programme and the cooperation with the Bullying-Free School Foundation will be explained. The experience of setting up the programme has shown the importance of collaboration and the role of museums and art in promoting bullying-preventing attitudes.
Museum lesson “Close-up and closer with art”; Sireli Uusmaa and Jane Meresmaa-Roos
The education curators of the “Creative Connections” project will reveal the methodology and objectives of the social skills lesson, which was completed in 2023, and how it was created to be adaptable to a wide range of exhibitions. The museum lesson “Close-up and closer with art” gives students the opportunity to feel and view art by experiencing themselves and their classmates. Unlike traditional art museum classes, this lesson does not delve into art history or techniques, but explores how art affects us.
PARALLEL SESSIONS
SESSION 1: Berlin Children’s Museum MACHmit! children’s rights bus activities; Maren Klingbeil and Uta Rinklebe
The MACHmit! Museum has been curating exhibitions for children between the ages of two and twelve for over 30 years. Almost every year, different themes are presented in interactive modules, and they are always linked to UN children’s rights. We invite you to discover how artistic-aesthetic museum education and UN children’s rights education come together. Based on eight beasts, illustrated by the children's book author Nadia Budde for the exhibition “Books are food” (shown in 2020–2023), we will talk about various children’s rights and engage with them artistically around the museum mobile.
SESSION 2: Introduction to the lesson “Art against bullying”; Eliis Vaino
In a practical workshop, participants will go through some of the elements of the “Art against bullying” lesson: familiarising themselves with the cases used in the museum lesson and carrying out practical exercises. Participants will discuss the opportunities and challenges that the solutions used in the lesson can bring to different audiences and how to make use of specific aspects of both contemporary and older art. They will also reflect on what elements could be developed further, how they could be developed, and what points of collaboration could be created through the programme.
SESSION 3: Outdoor learning with “A palette of feelings and experiences”; Jane Meresmaa-Roos and Sireli Uusmaa.
During the session, we will leave the school building, and explore the outdoor space and the surroundings. We will create our own activity patterns and solve creative tasks using “A palette of feelings and experiences”, designed as an outdoor learning material. The aim of the tool is to support the development of social skills, helping teachers and pupils to develop positive group dynamics. The new palette can be used to enrich different subjects as part of a classroom teaching lesson or as a stand-alone outdoor learning lesson. The palette is designed to be a guide for students, guiding them to explore the outdoor environment. “A palette of feelings and experiences” creates a common space between creativity, movement, social skills and outdoor learning methods and can always be supplemented with new tasks.
SESSION 4: Art therapy workshop with a little whimsy; Mariliis Tähepõld
A workshop on art therapy with a small trick for teachers and other professionals working with children. In a practical workshop, we will carry out group art therapy activities aimed at supporting children’s self-confidence, self-management and social skills as preventive measures against bullying in the school and classroom environment.
Past events
Creative Family Day
Come join us with your family for a free Creative Family Day at the Tartu Art Museum on Sunday 11.02.2024! We will explore the museum through playful activities and nurture our connections with art and each other. The activities will last for 1,5 hours. You can choose a time slot in the registration form below (the activities start at 11:00, 13:00 and 15:30).
To register your family, please fill in the form by 9 February HERE. The number of available slots is limited.
The event will be held in English. The activities are suitable for kids from 6 years old.
The Creative Family Day is organized by the Creative Connections project team and Tartmus. The project is part of the European Capital of Culture Tartu 2024 main programme.
For more information, please contact Paola Cieno: paolacieno@gmail.com.