Communities and places

In the literature review in Chapter 2 I will discuss the different ways of seeing communities: those of place and practice, as well as those of interest and circumstance. In this study and for this researcher’s curiosity, communities of place and practice and their stories and perspectives have been in put focus. The geography, the “placeness”, of this study spreads from the British Isles, through Finland and the Russian Kola Peninsula all the way to South Australia. But beyond the locations of actual engagements, between all of the research participants, artists and my fellow researchers who contributed to the study, the overall community covers most of the European continent, Southeast Asia and Southern Africa (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Map of locations of research encounters and places of origins of the research participants.

Placeness additionally manifested itself in a variety of units and scales: studio or university, shop or community centre, street or neighbourhood, town or rural area, land or country. It is crucial to acknowledge that at times place can be also manifested through “placelessness”, or misplacement, like in the situation of some of the Australian Aboriginal communities still struggling to reclaim and re-inhabit their historical territories, or the migrant research participants with varied experiences of navigating places. Digital space has been, naturally, an important tool in recreating and representing physical encounters, as well as in maintaining connections within this outgrown community of place.

In terms of practices, quite a few were represented among the communities involved in the study: the practice of trading and hospitality in Edinburgh and Cork;

artistic practice and traditional craft in Australia, Finland and Russia; the practice of storytelling and migratory practices throughout the communities and places.

Table 2 introduces the communities of research participants and the places where our research encounters took place alongside their respective case studies and the articles they are discussed in.

The first case study Have you heard? was conducted in July 2014 in Edinburgh, UK, and engaged with the stories and places of eleven first or second-generation immigrants of Portuguese, Spanish, Lithuanian, Dutch, Pakistani and Polish origins. Seven of them were shop owners or employees in Leith Walk, which became the main area of operation for my colleagues and me. The choice of this first location of engagement was somewhat arbitrary and coincided with an artistic residency we attended. The presence of migrant communities, however, was a key factor for the case study.

The second case study Shop around the corner was carried out in February 2016 in Cork, Ireland, where I worked with six local family business owners in North and South Main Street, four local artists and one community activist. One can say that the previous case study led my research to this one. I was invited to meet this community as a commissioned artist by Quarter Block Party festival after having discussed Have you heard? with the festival organisers by chance.

The remaining four locations indicated in Table 2 were all part of the large case study Margin to margin conducted in South Australia, Finland and Russia.

The locations and the communities were chosen through my colleagues and my networks and connections to artists and craftspeople who live and work in geographically remote areas. Thus, each of the researchers had some insight into and familiarity with at least one of the represented communities. In Fowlers Bay, South Australia, we worked with 32 female Aboriginal artists from four different communities, four Australian artists, one social worker of Maori origin and two invited Finnish artists. In the other South Australian location, Port Augusta, we encountered seventeen Australian artists of Fibrespace Inc art collective, fifteen women and two men. The group of research participants in Rovaniemi, Finland, was made up of thirteen art or design students, artists and researchers of the University of Lapland and elsewhere, of Finnish, Turkish, Moldovan, Cypriot,

Dutch, English, Estonian, Namibian and Australian origins, comprising ten women and three men. And finally, in Murmansk, Russia, we worked with fourteen art and design students of Murmansk Arctic State University, comprising twelve women and two men.

The case studies are discussed in greater detail throughout the dissertation and in Chapter 4.

Table 2. Communities, places and case studies.

Throughout the dissertation, when giving examples of concrete field situations and shared stories, I will refer to my participants by their first names unless something prevents their identification. In the articles included in this dissertation, I mostly identified them with the word “participant” and their respective geographic locations for simplicity, while in public displays of the research and artistic outcomes shown in exhibition and digital space everyone’s full name was included for the purpose of rendering their voices audible through their work. Anonymity was never a pursuit in this study, quite the opposite—both my research participants and myself have been looking forward to the stories gaining a voice and presence when being told and retold across the globe.