Reflections: Capturing knowledge & culture

Reflections

View more documents from Pétur Magnason.

After listening to many voices on our journey it´s became clear that many of them want to set

priorities to establish knowledge and competence in the arctic region. Many of the towns we visited were concerned about certain monoculture in the local society. One type of industry or job isn´t enough to sustain the population in small towns. The largest emigrating demographic group in Finnmark-region are young females that move away are between the age 19-30, in most cases to gain higher education or different form of social life in bigger towns south of Finnmark. But we also met some people that have or have been making iniatives to find and cultivate existing history and knowledge based on the locality.

One example is the research/nature based tourism project by Biotop that captures local knowledge about the birdlife in northern Norway through architecture. The genuine apprecation of specifity in birdwathcing in the nature was already there so by combining that with the architecture profession an opportunity was made that became a project for local developement in Varanger. They started by implementing to the municipality what could be done to combine knowledge of local ecosystem for international tourists, by setting up schemes in Northern

Norway. By mapping out network of birdhides along the Varanger coast, they have built many birdwathcing facilities that offers access, shelter and view in Varanger´s nature. After this project became reality the increasment of foreign tourists was 40% that kept the local hotel

running in Vardø. The networks of birdwatching huts in Varanger is able to channel the traffic of the number of tourists. But it´s not only birdenthusiast that are the main users. Local schools have also had lectures for younger students there also.

Pikene pa Broen is an organisation in Kirkenes that curates art projects to create meeting places and build bridges across national borders of Russia, Finland, Sweden and across art genres. It was started by local girls that wanted to show that there was something more that belonged to their town rather than mining. By working on the borders with transnational art and culture, they evoked a meeting place for an on-going production between the border-nations.

In Murmansk, Evgeny Goman, has worked on plan for seven years to start a youth house. Until now the authorities have showed little interest to Evgeny´s socal project. He finally got a ground floor of a dwelling house for rent to setup this platform for realization of youth projects. Like with Pikene på broen, the youth house is dependent on inative money from various people and organisations. To make the youth house a reality the ideology of reusing and reconstruct from recycled material, an old piano for an example, to create space for management and creativity.

These are examples that are hands on and low budget compared to other industry in the region. In these cases there´s always a struggle to get a iniative investment money, to get the ideas in process. But this is also an example of local knowledge and culture can be captured in conditions that may take on geopolitical issues, accessibility to nature or activating youth in the social community. One might wonder if this kind of entrepenuership could be a model for other local communities in the Arctic region. How could this meet existing agriculture and the knowledge of the northern-norwegian farmer or fisherman? Could a network of local scale knowledge industries become profiteble for communities?