Until the late twentieth century, artists and art educators working in the European Arctic were predominantly trained in southern urban centres, where artistic education was grounded in Western art canons and Enlightenment-based epistemologies. As a result, artistic representations of the Arctic and related educational practices were often shaped by an external gaze that positioned the North as peripheral and culturally deficient. While such practices increased visibility and awareness of Arctic regions, they also reinforced colonial power relations and generated tensions between dominant national cultures and regional or Indigenous communities.

Since the 1990s, Arctic art has increasingly been understood as a contemporary and situated field of practice that engages with present-day Arctic realities, ecological systems, and nature–culture relations. This shift aligns with broader decolonial perspectives that critically examine the role of art education in either sustaining or challenging colonial structures.

This poster draws on decolonial theory, eco-cultural perspectives, and the principle of two-eyed seeing to frame Arctic art education as a relational, place-based, and epistemologically plural field. The concept of eco-cultural intra-action is used to emphasise the agency of land, materials, and more-than-human actors in learning processes, challenging human-centred and canon-driven approaches to art education.

This poster presents findings from art-based action research aimed at developing Arctic art education, with a focus on northern Finland, Norway, and Greenland. It draws on empirical insights from long-term involvement in Arctic art education research and development projects conducted in both formal and informal educational settings. The research examines artistic interventions, pedagogical models, educational programmes, and institutional collaborations, analysing how these negotiate relationships between Western art education traditions, Indigenous knowledge systems, and local ecocultural contexts. Data sources include documentation of art-based practices, reflective materials, and collaborative research processes within community-based and educational environments. ________________________________________

The analysis highlights persistent tensions between Euro-American fine art education canons and the diverse ecocultures of the Arctic, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous. At the same time, the findings indicate a gradual shift toward more situated, relational, and decolonising approaches to art education in Arctic regions. This transformation has been supported by the establishment of art and art education programmes in northern universities, as well as by transnational collaboration through networks such as the University of the Arctic’s Arctic Sustainable Arts and Design (ASAD) network. The poster introduces New Genre Arctic Art Education as a framework that reframes art education as an ecocultural and relational practice. Rather than positioning knowledge as flowing from South to North or from expert to learner, this approach understands learning as emerging from entangled relationships among learners, educators, materials, places, and cultural contexts. By integrating Indigenous and Western ways of knowing through principles such as two-eyed seeing, and by recognising land and more-than-human actors as co-educators, Arctic art education is positioned as a key contributor to culturally sustainable, inclusive, and context-sensitive educational futures in the European Arctic.

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