Shifting Ground: Art exhibition as informal pedagogy on the changing Arctic

The chapter addresses the urgent need for innovative teaching and learning models that create and examine human-land relationships as collective expression. It presents how artists and art educators in northern regions of Canada and Finland address the impacts of climate change and natural resource extractions. Their art practices, which include aesthetic, material, interactive, time-based, sound, and performance elements, as well as viewer engagement in exhibitions, serve as a means to advocate for social, cultural and environmental justice. These regions share the urgency of landscapes in distress impacted by climate change, challenging distances of remote communities, land (and water) use, histories of colonialism and questions of sovereignty. Many local environmental conflicts are ongoing in Northern Finland and Canada, some of which have persisted for decades, causing community members to experience uncertainty and frustration. Artists and educators reflect on and respond to land use, mining, forestry and related conflicts that determine the region's possible future and life. They also are optimists in their promotion of positive change.