In this special episode, we're reflecting on the first three years of NAARCA – exploring what’s been achieved, what the challenges have been, and where things might go next.

We'll also be hearing about all the work that’s been going on within NAARCA, beyond what this podcast series has so far explored – including the role of the Eco Coordinator, the art commissions and writing commissions, and the workshops and pedagogical toolkit for children and young people.

NAARCA's online exhibition (available till 31.07.2024): https://naarca.art/online-exhibition

Creative Climate Champions digital toolkit for young people: https://naarca.art/resources

Sustainability Toolkit for Artists' Residencies: https://naarca.art/2023/11/02/naarca-publishes-sustainability-toolkit-for-artists-residencies

Contributors:
Alex Marrs, Programmes and Communications Producer, Cove Park; Leena Kela, Residency Director, Saari Residence; Rose Tytgat, Project Coordinator, Art Hub Copenhagen; Charlotte Hetherington, Director, Artica Svalbard; Helena Selder, Director, Baltic Art Center; Kamilla Gylfadóttir, Project Manager, Skaftfell Art Center; Lise Autogena, Director, Narsaq International Research Station; Celia Harrison, Director, Skaftfell Art Center; Jaana Eskola, NAARCA Eco Coordinator; Maraid Macewan, Designer of NAARCA's Digital Toolkit for Young People

Credits: Testing Grounds is produced and edited by Katie Revell and includes original music by Loris S. Sarid and artwork by Jagoda Sadowska. With thanks to Alex Marrs and the rest of the NAARCA team.

Contact us: naarca.art/contact-us

Who we are: Art Hub Copenhagen (Denmark), Artica Svalbard (Norway), Baltic Art Center (Sweden), Cove Park (Scotland), Saari Residence (Finland), Skaftfell Art Center (Iceland) and Narsaq International Research Station (Greenland).

Thanks for listening!

How might a philosophy of repair change our approach to planning and architecture?

Art Hub Copenhagen is NAARCA’s Danish partner, and the only member residency located in a major city. It opened in 2019 as a place for artists, curators and creative professionals to gather, network and collaborate.

Jacob Fabricius is the Director of Art Hub Copenhagen. He tells us about Art Hub’s development, including its upcoming move to a new – old! – building that’s being refurbished with an emphasis on reuse, recycling and sustainability. Jacob also introduces us to our contributors, Søren Nørkjær Bang and Emmy Laura Pérez Fjalland. Søren is a curator with a background in art history and philosophy – and a passion for architecture – who now works for Copenhagen Architecture Festival. Emmy is a Danish-Colombian cultural geographer, writer, researcher and teacher with a deep interest in human-landscape relationships.

Emmy and Søren explore the potential for more collaborative, humble and regenerative approaches to architecture and planning, the idea of “repair”, and the power of author Ursula K. Le Guin’s “carrier bag theory of fiction”.

Find out more:
Art Hub Copenhagen (https://arthubcopenhagen.net/en/)
Copenhagen Architecture Festival (https://www.cafx.dk/)
Thoravej 29 – Art Hub’s Future home (https://thoravej29.com)

Contributors:
Jacob Fabricius, Director, Art Hub Copenhagen
Emmy Laura Pérez Fjalland, cultural geographer, writer, researcher and teacher (https://emmylaura.info/)
Søren Nørkjær Bang, Curator, Copenhagen Architecture Festival

Credits: Testing Grounds is produced and edited by Katie Revell and includes original music by Loris S. Sarid and artwork by Jagoda Sadowska. With thanks to Alex Marrs and the rest of the NAARCA team.

Contact us: naarca.art/contact-us

Who we are: Art Hub Copenhagen (Denmark), Artica Svalbard (Norway), Baltic Art Center (Sweden), Cove Park (Scotland), Saari Residence (Finland), Skaftfell Art Center (Iceland) and Narsaq International Research Station (Greenland).

Thanks for listening!

What could it mean to decolonise art, and to use art as a tool for decolonisation?

Saari Residence is NAARCA’s Finnish partner. It’s located in Mynämäki, Southwest Finland, and maintained by Kone Foundation as a residence for artists of all disciplines and nationalities.

Leena Kela is a performance artist, and the Residency Director at Saari. She introduces us to the region, to Saari, and to our two contributors: Taru Elfving and Pauliina Feodoroff. Taru is a curator and writer focused on nurturing “undisciplinary” and site-sensitive enquiries at the intersections of ecological, feminist and decolonial practices. Pauliina is a Skolt Sámi theatre director, artist and land-guardian whose performance piece Matriarchy appeared in the Sámi Pavillion at the 2022 Venice Biennale. Taru and Pauliina explore ideas of decolonisation in art and “the art world”, both in the Nordic region specifically, and more broadly.

Find out more:
Saari Residence (https://koneensaatio.fi/en/saari-residence)
Snowchange Cooperative (http://www.snowchange.org)
Contemporary Art Archipelago (https://contemporaryartarchipelago.org)
Matriarchy (https://oca.no/thesamipavilion)

Contributors:
Leena Kela, performance artist, Residency Director at Saari Residence (http://www.leenakela.com)
Taru Elfving, curator and writer (https://contemporaryartarchipelago.org/about)
Pauliina Feodoroff artist, film and theatre director, land guardian, Sámi advocate (https://oca.no/thesamipavilion/thesamipavilion-pauliinafeodoroff)

Credits: Testing Grounds is produced and edited by Katie Revell and includes original music by Loris S. Sarid and artwork by Jagoda Sadowska. With thanks to Alex Marrs and the rest of the NAARCA team.

Contact us: naarca.art/contact-us

Who we are: Art Hub Copenhagen (Denmark), Artica Svalbard (Norway), Baltic Art Center (Sweden), Cove Park (Scotland), Saari Residence (Finland), Skaftfell Art Center (Iceland) and Narsaq International Research Station (Greenland).

Thanks for listening!

Please note: this episode features brief mentions of suicide, alcoholism and violence.

What does “progress” mean in an age of climate crisis? Who should define it? And how can the process of defining it be made more inclusive and democratic?

Narsaq International Research Station (NIRS) is NAARCA’s Greenlandic partner. It’s an independent non-profit research platform with a focus on cultural and scientific research in South Greenland.

In this episode, Lise Autogena, an artist and founder of NIRS, outlines some of the tensions at play in Narsaq, and in Greenland more broadly. Here, the climate crisis is dramatically disrupting people’s ways of life, and simultaneously opening up opportunities for the exploitation of globally-prized natural resources. Indeed, the community of Narsaq is itself at the centre of a fierce dispute over a proposed mine.

Lise introduces us to our contributors, filmmaker Inuk Jørgensen and community psychologist Peter Berliner. In different but overlapping ways, Inuk and Peter are both engaged with exploring visions of “progress” in a Greenlandic context. They explore how Inuit values can help make the process of defining progress more inclusive, respectful and productive.

Find out more:
Narsaq International Research Station (https://www.narsaqresearchstation.gl)
Siunissaq (http://siunissaq.gl)

Contributors:
Lise Autogena, Artist, Professor, Director of Art, Design and Media Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam University and founder of NIRS (https://www.autogena.org)
Inuk Jørgensen, filmmaker (https://www.inuks.dk)
Peter Berliner, Professor of Arctic Community Psychology, Ilisimatusarfik/University of Greenland (https://uk.uni.gl/find-employee/department-of-social-work/peter-berliner)

Credits: Testing Grounds is produced and edited by Katie Revell and includes original music by Loris S. Sarid and artwork by Jagoda Sadowska. With thanks to Alex Marrs and the rest of the NAARCA team.

Contact us: naarca.art/contact-us

Who we are: Art Hub Copenhagen (Denmark), Artica Svalbard (Norway), Baltic Art Center (Sweden), Cove Park (Scotland), Saari Residence (Finland), Skaftfell Art Center (Iceland) and Narsaq International Research Station (Greenland).

Thanks for listening!

What are young people’s views on the climate crisis? And how can artists, and art institutions, help to amplify their voices?

Cove Park is NAARCA’s Scottish partner. It’s perched on a picturesque hillside on the Rosneath Peninsula, on Scotland’s West Coast.

In this episode, Emma Henderson – Cove Park’s Curator of Engagement – introduces us to both the residency and the region, and to NAARCA’s pedagogy work. We then hear from artist Louis Brown and students Frankie O’Connor and Cameron Glendinning, both of whom recently graduated from a local high school. Frankie and Cameron were part of the “Net Zero Youth Voice” project, initiated by Imperial College London and facilitated by Louis – a youth-led film project that highlighted young people’s views on the climate crisis, air pollution, and net zero policies.

Find out more:
Net Zero Youth Voice
Air Quotes Premiere
East London Cable

Contributors:
Emma Henderson, Curator of Engagement, Cove Park
Louis Brown, artist and filmmaker, East London Cable
Frankie O’Connor, student
Cameron Glendinning, student

Credits: Testing Grounds is produced and edited by Katie Revell and includes original music by Loris S. Sarid and artwork by Jagoda Sadowska. With thanks to Alex Marrs and the rest of the NAARCA team.

Contact us: naarca.art/contact-us

Who we are: Art Hub Copenhagen (Denmark), Artica Svalbard (Norway), Baltic Art Center (Sweden), Cove Park (Scotland), Saari Residence (Finland), Skaftfell Art Center (Iceland) and Narsaq International Research Station (Greenland).

Thanks for listening!

In this bonus episode, Glasgow-based Gaelic writer Mairi Macleod reads her short story, Seasickness/Cur na Mara. In 2023, Mairi was commissioned by NAARCA to create a short piece of fiction in both Scots Gaelic and English, and was also granted an 8-week residency at Saari Residence in Finland, where she wrote Seasickness.

Mairi's writing engages with humanity’s relationships with space, place, and the complex thing we call "nature". As a young woman writing in a minority language, she wants to contribute not just to the survival of Gaelic, but to its blossoming and evolution.

In Seasickness, Mairi draws on a traditional Scottish folk tale – the Selkie wife – and updates it for an age of climate crisis.

Credits: Testing Grounds is produced and edited by Katie Revell and includes original music by Loris S. Sarid and artwork by Jagoda Sadowska. With thanks to Alex Marrs and the rest of the NAARCA team.

Contact us: naarca.art/contact-us

Who we are: Art Hub Copenhagen (Denmark), Artica Svalbard (Norway), Baltic Art Center (Sweden), Cove Park (Scotland), Saari Residence (Finland), Skaftfell Art Center (Iceland) and Narsaq International Research Station (Greenland).

Thanks for listening!

What role can, and should, artists play in an age of the climate crisis? What opportunities do artists have in this context, and what – if any – are their responsibilities?

Baltic Art Center (BAC) is NAARCA’s Swedish partner. It’s based in Visby, the main town on Gotland, an island in the Baltic Sea. Gotland is a popular tourist destination known for its beaches, its medieval history, and – increasingly – its water shortages. The reasons for these shortages are complex – industries such as agriculture, chalk mining and cement production have played a part – but there’s little doubt that climate change is exacerbating the problem.

Helena Selder is the Artistic Director of BAC. She introduces us to Visby, to Gotland, and to our three contributors: artists Rikke Luther and Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas, who work together as Urbonas Studio. All three artists are engaged with water, but in very different ways – Urbonas’ focus is on swamps, and Rikke Luther’s is on mud. They explore their shared interest in human-nature interactions and climate change, their contrasting approaches to their work, and the potential for art and artists to help us navigate our current reality – and, perhaps, imagine a different one.

Find out more:
Baltic Art Center: balticartcenter.com/home
GRASS Fellows programme: balticartcenter.com/projects/grass-fellow
Swamp Observatory app: nugu.lt/us/?p=1687
Swedish Art Residency Network: swanresidencynetwork.com

Contributors:
Helena Selder, Artistic Director, Baltic Art Center
Rikke Luther, artist and researcher (rikkeluther.dk)
Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas, artists and educators, Urbonas Studio (nugu.lt/us)

Credits: Testing Grounds is produced and edited by Katie Revell and includes original music by Loris S. Sarid and artwork by Jagoda Sadowska. With thanks to Alex Marrs and the rest of the NAARCA team.

Contact us: naarca.art/contact-us

Who we are: Art Hub Copenhagen (Denmark), Artica Svalbard (Norway), Baltic Art Center (Sweden), Cove Park (Scotland), Saari Residence (Finland), Skaftfell Art Center (Iceland) and Narsaq International Research Station (Greenland).

Thanks for listening!

How can arts institutions and artists be more sustainable – in terms of their impact not only on the environment, but also on local communities?

Skaftfell Art Center is NAARCA’s Icelandic partner. It’s based in Seyðisfjörður, a small but vibrant town in Eastern Iceland, surrounded by mountains and sea. Seyðisfjörður’s unique location and atmosphere has long attracted artists from all over the world. That location also makes it vulnerable to avalanches, mudslides and landslides – and in a changing climate, those threats are increasing.

Julia Martin is an artist living in Seyðisfjörður, and the former Project Manager of the Residency Programme and International Projects at Skaftfell. She introduces us to Seyðisfjörður, and to our two contributors: Pari Stave, Director of Skaftfell, and Jessica Auer, a photographer, filmmaker and educator living in Seyðisfjörður. Pari and Jessica explore some of the ways arts institutions and artists can be more mindful of the environment, and of local landscapes and communities.

Find out more:
Skaftfell Art Center: skaftfell.is/en
Ströndin Studio: strondinstudio.com
Jan Krtička (artist who provided field recordings from in and around Seyðisfjörður): jankrticka.com

Contributors:
Julia Martin, artist and landscape architect / former Project Manager, Residency Programme and International Projects, Skaftfell Art Center (juliamartin.de)
Pari Stave, art historian and curator / Director, Skaftfell Art Center (skaftfell.is/en/skaftfell/about-skaftfell/staff/)
Jessica Auer, photographer, filmmaker and educator (jessicaauer.com)

Credits: Testing Grounds is produced and edited by Katie Revell and includes original music by Loris S. Sarid and artwork by Jagoda Sadowska. With thanks to Alex Marrs and the rest of the NAARCA team.

Contact us: naarca.art/contact-us

Who we are: Art Hub Copenhagen (Denmark), Artica Svalbard (Norway), Baltic Art Center (Sweden), Cove Park (Scotland), Saari Residence (Finland), Skaftfell Art Center (Iceland) and Narsaq International Research Station (Greenland).

Thanks for listening!

How does the built environment affect our experience of the climate crisis – and vice-versa?

Artica Svalbard is NAARCA’s Norwegian partner. It’s located on the Svalbard archipelago, in Longyearbyen – one of the world’s most northerly towns. Here, the climate crisis is impossible to ignore.

In this episode, Charlotte Hetherington, director of Artica Svalbard, introduces us to Longyearbyen, and to our two contributors: architect Ingvild Sæbu Vatn and anthropologist Alexandra Meyer. They explore how climate change is affecting people’s relationship to the place, why we need new approaches to "waste" buildings, and the value of engaging local people with planning the future of our towns.

Find out more:
Svalbard Social Science Initiative
Svea | post | Mine (article about LPO’s work to close down the Svea mine)
Rett Plass – Rett Form (“Right Place – Right Shape” project – in Norwegian)

Contributors:
Charlotte Hetherington, Director, Artica Svalbard
Ingvild Sæbu Vatn, architect, LPO arkitekter
Alexandra Meyer, anthropologist, University of Vienna

Credits: Testing Grounds is produced and edited by Katie Revell and includes original music by Loris S. Sarid and artwork by Jagoda Sadowska. With thanks to Alex Marrs and the rest of the NAARCA team.

Contact us: naarca.art/contact-us

Who we are: Art Hub Copenhagen (Denmark), Artica Svalbard (Norway), Baltic Art Center (Sweden), Cove Park (Scotland), Saari Residence (Finland), Skaftfell Art Center (Iceland) and Narsaq International Research Station (Greenland).

Thanks for listening!

As the climate crisis accelerates, how can artists' residencies be testing grounds for new – and better – ways of living and working? The Nordic Alliance of Artists’ Residencies on Climate Action (NAARCA) is a coalition of seven organisations that are exploring this question together.

So how did NAARCA come about? What are its goals? And... what is an artists’ residency, anyway?

Host Katie Revell learns more from Alexia Holt (Cove Park, Scotland), Leena Kela (Saari Residence, Finland), Charlotte Hetherington (Artica Svalbard, Norway) and Jaana Eskola (NAARCA’s Eco Coordinator).

Credits: Testing Grounds is produced and edited by Katie Revell and includes original music by Loris S. Sarid and artwork by Jagoda Sadowska. With thanks to Alex Marrs and the rest of the NAARCA team.

Contact us: naarca.art/contact-us

Who we are: Art Hub Copenhagen (Denmark), Artica Svalbard (Norway), Baltic Art Center (Sweden), Cove Park (Scotland), Saari Residence (Finland), Skaftfell Art Center (Iceland) and Narsaq International Research Station (Greenland).

Thanks for listening!