Winter art education project

The purpose of this article is to describe how the Department of Art Education at the University of Lapland in Finland has developed winter art as a method of environmental and community-based art education. I will focus on the Snow Show Winter Art Education Project, a training project funded by the European Union and the State Provincial Office of Lapland. The general aim of the project was to increase the know-how of winter art in Northern Finland. This goal was put into practice through workshops on snow construction, documentation of winter art, winter-oriented media production, and snow and ice sculpting; through continuing education seminars, workshops, and school projects for teachers; and through public lectures and seminars on winter and winter art. In this article, I describe the challenges that winter offers to community and environment-based art education in the North. Further, I introduce the methods of implementation and the outcomes of winter art exercises carried out by several schools in Lapland in cooperation with and inspired by the Snow Show Winter Art Education Project.