Kirsti Saxi

This will be an introduction to KKS and what we can offer, as well as a presentation of our partners both nationally and internationally. In addition, our work with the Sami will be discussed. Finally, an overview will be given of the collaboration between the center and teacher education. 
Kirsti Saxi is the leader for the National Centre for Arts and Culture in Education (KKS) at Nord University. Her background is diverse with several years of practical experience within both the kindergarten sector and basic educational training. Saxi is an educated preschool teacher (‘76) and has worked as a kindergarten headmaster and consultant, a high school teacher for children and youth education and as a pedagogue for special education. In addition, Saxi has worked as Section Leader for Vocational Studies within the high school system and as Director of Education for the region of Finnmark, Norway.
Saxi also has a distinguished political career as a representative for the Socialist Left party at the county, state and national level.

Gary Hoffman
 Northern Lights is an excerpt from Helgeland Suite, a commissioned work debuted at the 2015 Hemnes Jazz Festival. Helgeland Suite is a  cooperative composition by trumpeter Gary Hoffman, pianist Gavin Ahearn and singer Briana Cowlishaw that draws inspiration from the Helgeland district of Norway. Northern Lights is a Hoffman contribution that attempts to convey the visual beauty of the Aurora Borealis in sound. 
Gary Hoffman was raised and educated in New Orleans and works as Associate Professor of Music, Faculty of Education & Arts, Nord University - Norway

Erik Sandén
Cultural Traces in the Landscape – a resource for schools
The project Cultural Traces in the Landscape – a recourse for schools, is an international and interdisciplinary project that aims to increase the sustainable use of cultural traces in the landscape in education under and south of the arctic circle.
The project focuses on finding and developing methods for using cultural traces in the landscape as a resource in schools and local communities in the regions of Västerbotten and Helgeland, to help to protect and preserve cultural traces by spreading knowledge about their importance for understanding our culture and develop identity.
Partners in the project includes museums, forest boards from Sweden and Norway and he Norwegian Outdoor Board and teacher education institutions from Norway. Schools from both countries are working in close cooperation with the project.

Anne Meek

On the role of arts and culture in place development
At the turn of the millennium, several Norwegian communities chose art and culture as their strategy for local development. At the time, there was considerable optimism connected to the positive impact of arts and culture. One of the spokespersons of these ideas was American economist Richard Florida and his theory about the creative class tending to “cluster” in creative cities. Other contributors to the cultural optimism at the time were American economists B. Joseph Pine and James H. Gilmore who claimed the coming of a new, immaterial, experience based economy where customers would be willing to pay for memorable events; the experience economy. My thesis from 2018 is an interdisciplinary cultural and theatre science study. The goal of the study is to contribute to the field of place development through an examination of how different dramaturgies influence the relational dynamics between people and events and the impact these relations have on the development of the local community.  Is art and culture necessarily the secret ingredient for place development?

Ove Larsen

Dr Ove Larsen and Paal Fagerheim are Professors in Musicology at Nord University, Nesna. They have recently edited as well as published articles in the book “Music, People and Places” (Fagerheim & Larsen 2015), in which they especially focus on the relationship between music and different regional traditions in North Scandinavia.

Timo Jokela  (Leader, Arctic Arts & Design Thematic Network)

Arctic Sustainable Arts and Design (ASAD) is a Thematic Network that aims to identify and share contemporary and innovative practices in teaching, learning, research and knowledge exchange in the fields of arts, design and visual culture education. The network consists of art and design art education universities in the circumpolar area. Combining traditional knowledge with modern academic knowledge cultures at northern academic institutions represents an opportunity unique to the Arctic.

I see my art, which combines research and education, as a type of northern visual ethnography. I use this method to bring out cultural, social and sometimes even political strata and linkages in the north and the Arctic. Landscapes, snow and ice installations as well as environmental and community-based works of art convey traces of the eco-social cultures in locations in Finnish Lapland, Northern Norway, North-West Russia, Siberia, and wherever else I am working.