The Young Art community has got hundreds of new members. We have met more online than we could have ever guessed.

This blog post introduces few highlights from the year 2020. First, the concept of Young Art is shortly introduced.

Young Art in a nutshell

The Young Art is a community and environment offering opportunities and spaces for 13-28 years old to do and experience art. Foundation of the activities is to strengthen the activity and participation of youth. In addition, we follow the ideology that art needs to be accessible for all.

We organise nationwide and local events, training and workshops. We are also active in social media.

The Young Art belongs to a cultural youth work network in Finland. Our specialisation in the network is visual art.

The words small and close describe our core team that consists of a producer and community manager. Size of the team varies in different projects done in a collaboration with different young art makers and partners. 

Our home base is located in Art Centre for Children and Young People (located in an old wool factory Villa Tehdas) in the city of Hyvinkää in Finland, Europe. From this link you can read more about the Art Centre for Children and Young People.

366 days full of experiences

Hurray! In 2020, we managed to strengthen activity and participation of youth through nearly ten volunteer-based events and other actions. There were more than 1 300 participants including youth and their close-ones. 

Due to COVID-19 pandemic and the restriction set to prevent corona’s spreading, the ways of productions were varying from a live event to online exhibition tour. Unfortunately, some events needed to be cancelled because of the pandemic. Let’s keep fingers crossed 🤞that in 2021 we can implement planned events either in a hybrid form or 100 % online.

Next, we will return for a moment to the year 2020.

Generation 2020 art exhibition

Young artist in Generation 2020 exhibition in Amos Rex art museum

Generation 2020 exhibition filled Amos Rex art museum with youth’s art between 12 Feb – 23 Aug in 2020 in the city of Helsinki in Finland. The exhibition was curated from over 1 600 work proposals and it showed art from a total of 80 young artists aged 15-23. 

Collaboration between Young Art and Amos Rex began in 2016 when a need for an art residency for youth was noticed. As a continuity for residencies in 2017, six artists from Generation 2020 made their exhibition works in Villa Arttu in late 2019. Villa Arttu art residency is a first art residency targeted for youth in Finland.

Haloo! Can the art world hear us? panel discussion was designed to happen as a part of Generation 2020. The aim of the event was to offer for youth opportunities to discuss art making and its meanings for themselves. The panel discussion needed to be cancelled because of the pandemic. 

Next Generation 2023 artists will work in art residency in Villa Arttu in 2022.

Click here to read about Generation 2020 residency experiences (only in Finnish).
From this link you can read more about Generation 2020 exhibition in Amos Rex.

A tip for a person planning an artist career

Many professional artists want to have working/research periods in art residencies. Residencies offer spaces for artistic work and often apartments too. In a residency, artists can meet each other and focus on art making in a new environment. Residencies are a good merit in an artist’s CV.

Together is more art exhibition

Together is more exhibition happened in the gallery of Villa Arttu on 10 Sept – 30 Oct 2020. The exhibition was a mix of art made by youth in different collaborative projects conducted in 2020. The projects are  Power Circle art project, Together is separate Instagram campaign, What do you want to build and destroy art course, set of works from Commonly Asked Questions from Youth, Generation 2020 art residency and environment art project for Rauma Lace Week. The exhibition happened during the strict corona restrictions in Uusimaa region so we conducted a video from it.

From this link can watch and listen the video guided by Young Art’s Aurora and produced by our trainee Jenni.

Rauma Lace Week

The group of youth made in a collaboration with visual artist Paavo Paunu an environment artwork for the 50 year anniversary of Rauma Lace Week. Open call was targeted at 13-28 years old art makers.

In the Decorate Lace Week project, the group of youth processed their art work guided remotely by Paunu. The project focused on the conceptual thinking of a lace and how these thoughts could be visualised in a form of a sculpture made from wood and other natural materials.

Lace Week Live streamed this collaboration for a bigger audience. Artwork made by 10 young people and Paavo Paunu was exhibited in the front yard of Rauma Art Museum in 18–26 July 2020.

Taide\Folio

In spring 2020, a new project was launched in Young Art to design a platform for 13-28 years old to present their art and discuss matters around it online. The project was supported by the Ministry of Education and Culture Finland.

Five volunteer young people met in the city of Tampere in July to co-design a platform with Young Art’s Aurora. The workshop included design exercises aiming to answer to the following questions:

• What does it mean to present your artwork online?
• What could be suitable forms to present your artwork online?
• What kind of platform interface is user-friendly?

The workshop was experienced rewarding by its participants. Outcomes and feedback offered good guidelines for designers of the webpage to continue their work.

Our graphic designer is currently finalising the visual layout of the platform. It is soon tested by a small group of volunteer youth. Art\Folio (Taide\Folio in Finnish) was chosen as the name of the platform in an open vote conducted in our Instagram. The webpage will be published in May in Young Art 2021 event in the city of Pori. We recommend young people to start collecting photo albums with standard information of their artwork already now to create their own profiles in Art\Folio.

A tip for creating an art portfolio

While planning or creating one’s art portfolio they should remember to collect standard information of their artworks, including the artist’s name, title of the artwork, year of publication, date of the artwork, medium of the artwork, size of the artwork and/or the duration of the art work), ALT-text (optional text) and descriptive photo and/or video.

These information will be asked from you when uploading your work in Art\Folio. Same information is usually asked when applying to an art school or when marketing your work for, for example, gallerists.

The core team and community grow

The Young Art was founded by Päivi Venäläinen. In spring 2020, Päivi started working as an executive director of Art Centre for Children and Young People. We are lucky that Päivi’s long experience from cultural youth work stays close to us and we can still easily brainstorm ideas with her. 

In December, Anni Rupponen started as a new producer of the Young Art. She is currently familiarising herself with the actions of the community and its people. Aurora Salomaa continues as a community manager of the Young Art.

The Young Art has already over 1 000 community members! The community has been described lively and developing by its members. The community has helped many young people to find answers to their art related questions. To belong to our community, follow Young Art on social media and participate to our events.

Follow Young Art on Instagram from this link.
Follow Young Art on Facebook from this link.

A tip for young people exploring the art world

Do you know where to meet professional artists and ask help from them? Does art professional need be an entrepreneur? How art collectives work?

We are happy to help you with your art related questions. You can reach us by email (nuoritaide(at)artcentre.fi) or in social media.

Cooperation is a strength

As a community we can wider and better view actions, experiences and phenomena related young art makers. Major part of our community member are 13-28 your old making art themselves or being interested in art. In addition, many different organisations and individuals from the fields of art and culture as well as youth work in Finland and abroad influence in the community. To mention a few most active ones: Suomen Suomen Nuorisoseurat ry’s Nuori Kulttuuri and Amos Rex art museum.

Together, as a community we have a great amount of knowledge and skills in topics relevant for us, such as accessibility of young people’s hobby opportunities, behaviour of the audience of art and event production.

Do you want to collaborate with Young Art? Do you want to support Young Art? We are constantly looking for new partners with similar values. Drop us an email: nuoritaide(at)artcentre.fi.

A tip for developing professional networks

People work in many different professions and tasks in the art field. The needed professionals vary from from artists to producers and communication specialists to gardeners.  

Art professionals benefit from networks including professionals and experts in their own field. With the support of your network, may a challenging task to be resolved quickly, for example, where should I order pins to hang artworks on a stone wall.

One should not forget all other professionals traditionally not connected to the field of art. We recommend building a network including professionals from different fields. Discussions with different-field-professionals help one to understand what they do and how it could be beneficial for artistic practise. One never knows when a creative process requires consultation from a coder, plumber or nurse.

Social media tells the current news

The Young Art is active in social media channels in Instagram and Facebook. We are not yet active in TikTok or Snapchat. Nonetheless, we are eager to hear, in which social media platforms you wish to meet us in the future.

Social media is a great place to meet our community members and share information about our upcoming events as well as others’ events and phenomena related to the art field. In 2020, we made amazing number of over 870 posts in social media.

We find social media amusing and quick communication channel. It is also nice place to educate your self in art. However, we can’t wait to meet in person with the community members after the corona restrictions decrease to, for example, brainstorm, conduct an event, or have a lunch meeting together.

Can the future be planned?

The Young Art is a changing community and environment. We have established actions, such as social media profiles, nationwide Young Art events as well as regional and local workshops and trainings. Nonetheless, we are constantly predicting what the future will bring and how it will affect to our actions. We are eager to know: where, how, why and with whom youth want to make and experience art now and in the future.

Upcoming events and other actions are advertised in our webpage and social media. 

A workshop sneak peak for 2021

We are currently planning a workshop series where youth can learn to influence issues and phenomena of the democratic society thorough arts-based methods.

The project is inspired by brave change makers like Greta Thunberg.

Grate summarises our aims well:

We showed that we are united, and that we, young people, are unstoppable. Change is coming whether you like it or not.

We will soon inform more about the project and how you can apply to become a change maker.

Where to go in 2021

It is definitely our nationwide Young Art 2021 event. Registration for the event will open in 2 Feb 2020 at 9am (EET) in www.nuoritaide.fi. The event will happen on site (hopefully) and online to reach as many young people as possible from Finland and abroad. Follow us on social media and you will be among the first to hear about the event and how to register.

From this link you can read more about Young Art 2019 event.

Young Art 2021 event sticker was design by our trainee Jenni.

Manifest for 2021

Let’s collaborate and be active to achieve a happy and rewarding year 2021. Let’s meet online and on site (hopefully). Being open and respectful for each other’s ideas, opinions and feelings is also what we will do.

Let’s support youth to produce events for other young people. Let’s participate together for the events and phenomena of the art world and society. Influencing the topics most meaningful for us is the core of our actions. 

Let’s strengthen the Young Art community through discussions and sharing, online and on site. Let’s do art and improve its status and meaning in our lives. Let’s be active nationwide to become more aware of what happens in the youth’s art life from Sevettijärvi to Kirkkonummi and Kalajoki to Imatra, and all places between that. This is made by sharing stories and experience told by youth themselves.  

Art is for us a strength and freedom, happiness and insight, question and statement, and all that we need it to be in our lives.

We welcome to the Young Art community all 13-28 years old art makers who want to be
VISUAL, LOUD, EXPERIMENTAL, EXPRESS YOURSELF and BE YOU.

Thank you for all who involved the Young Art’s community, activities and development in 2020!

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