SHOWROOM
Showroom
The examples and creative outputs presented below have been produced as part of the FIRE collective’s art-based activities. They can be used to get acquainted both with the creative workshops as well as artworks co-created with children.
Statements on Wood
Statements on Wood on is an communal artwork created together with children from grades five and six as part of creative workshops of friendships, gender and power. Statements on Wood combines research, art, activism and children's experiences. Altogether 80 children's statements, stemming from their everyday lives, merge into this communal piece in powerful ways. Statements on Wood will travel in public spaces as part of impact work and activism to counter gendered and sexual harassment in young peer cultures and to support safer peer relations.
Friendship Dreamland
What would children hope for in their friendships? What would the dreamlands of their friendships be like? Friendship Dreamland is a travelling art exhibition comprised of children's artworks. It tells about children's dreams and hopes related to their peer cultures. The exhibition is based on children's artworks from Friendship workshops. In them, a group of 5th and 6th grade school children explored, together with researchers and artists, their experiences related to peer relations and their hopes for safer peer cultures.
Friendship dreamland consists of an arts-installation and a series of animations Kinetic Visions-Glitching Power. They convey the significance of safe and equal peer relations and children's visions how such peer cultures could be supported.
The Friendship dreamland exhibition is premiered in April 2022 in "Ränni Gallery" coordinated by Oulu Art Musuem and Kulttuuribingo. After that, the exhibition will continue to travel in different public spaces conveying in powerful way to educators, decision makers and other children how children themselves would like to see their relationships become safer.
Curation: Satu Suvanto, Suvi Pihkala, Eveliina Puutio, Helena Louhela ja Tuija Huuki
Soundscape: Sami Hänninen ja Satu Suvanto
Kinetic visions—Glitching power
Kinetic visions—Glitching power is a series of animations about peer relations, gender, and power, co-produced by school children in grades five to six in northern Finland. It is part of research at the University of Oulu that investigates and develops the possibilities of art-based methods to help children explore and address the harmful use of power in their peer relations, and to imagine safer peer relations.
Friendship workshops
Click the link for the english version: https://youtu.be/vEKPpA0Cno0
Friendship workshops are two-day creative workshops, carried out with schoolchildren in grades 5–6, focusing especially on the themes of gender related harassment and safe friendships. During the workshops children explored ’knots’ related to friendship, and ways to communicate and resist hurtful experiences, and further imagine what friendship dreamlands could look like. The activities of the friendship workshops have been developed as a part of a project funded by the Finnish Academy ‘Arts and research-activism for addressing sexual harassment in pre-teen peer cultures’ (2019–2023)
#Metoo Postscriptum
The #Metoo movement raised sexual harassment into the public debate in a unique way. However, the discussion hardly took into account the fact that sexual harassment also occurs in children’s peer relations, or the importance of addressing it from early on. #MeToo Postscriptum was a research based activistic campaign, which focused on harassment that occurs in preschool children's peer-relations, and the possibilities of creative-methods to address harassment with children, and to communicate children’s experiences to decision-makers and wider audiences.
During the campaign, several school-children aged 10–12 in Northern Finland took part in two-hour creative workshops on gendered power relations between children. In the workshops children crafted Valentine’s Day cards, where they wrote their experiences and thoughts on harassment. Each child could choose to address a card to one of the sitting MP’s or ministers. After the workshops, the research team gathered the cards and posted them to decision-makers on Valentine’s Day. Some of the cards and experiences and thought written to them were posted on a campaign's website, where they are still to be seen. You can get to #MeToo Postscriptum page from here (in Finnish only).
Totuuden hetket
- Moments of truth
Primary school children have among other friendships, and romantically tones relationships, that the children themselves call “dating.” Although common in children aged 10–12, they have been little studied.
It is known that already many young children experiences pressure of “dating” or naming girl-boy friendships as dating relationship – or to be a “right kind” of girl or a boy, to understand how it feels like to be a member of another gender, or to achieve a certain status in a child community. The border between friendship and “dating” is ambiguous, and relationships for children are often a complex and powerful mixture of excitement, hustle, and bustle, fun and annoyance as well as fun and bullying. These relationships include friendship, and fun things to do together, but also different abuses of power are common.
Moments of Truth multimedia presentation was a closure for two-and-a half-year process, where a group of 10–11-years old girls addressed and expressed, through various creative means, things that feel comfortable or hurtful in their relationships with the boys.
Vallan visaiset
kaverisuhteet (in Finnish only)
’Vallan visaiset kaverisuhteet’ is a free, 36 paged booklet, designed to popularize and raise awareness of recent research on gender and power in the peer relationships of elementary school children. Read or download the free PDF-book here.
On the Surface – Under the Surface is a compilation of an 80-hour art-based workshop, related to the data generation for Tuija Huuki’s research project, funded by the Academy of Finland.
In year 2016–2018 a group of 4–5-grade northern Finnish schoolchildren participated in the workshops. The workshops used art-based methods to study the construction of schoolchildren’s friendships and how power and violence intertwine into these relationships. The research focused especially on the possibilities of art-based methods in communication feelings and experiences related to friendships and building equal relationships. The workshops were carried out as a team effort by researchers, artists, the school community, and children.
Kisstories is a compilation of short video animations and related exercise tasks, which help adults working with children to deal with power, consent, and refusal in various encounters such as in peer relations, and friendship and in public spaces.
Kisstories has been produced in two research projects conducted among children aged 5–11 in Finland and the United Kingdom: Tuija Huuki’s research Gender-based violence in pre-teen relationship cultures (the Academy of Finland), funded by the Academy of Finland and EJ Renold’s research Boys and Girls Speak Out: A qualitative investigation of children's gender and sexual cultures
The resource consists of animations and related exercise tasks for discussing about the animations, in Finnish, English and Welsh (see AGENDA resource page 56). Animations are produced intentionally without text or sound. The idea is that children can create their own plot patterns to the animations and add other elements to them, such as symbols and colors that describe emotions. Kisstories made by children can be used as a starting point for discussion.