MUUN MAAN MUSTIKKA EVENT SCHEDULE

10.00 – 10.30 Buss trip from Tampere to Muu Maa
10.30 – 11.00 Coffee and short introduction to berry picking
11.00 – 13.00 Blueberry picking
13.00 – 13.30 Coffee break
13.30 – 15.30 Blueberry picking
15.30 – 16.00 Buss trip to Arteles Creative Center
16.00 – 16.30 Lunch
16.30 – 18.00 Discussion and Screening of document by Junya Lek Yimprasert
18.00 – 20.00 Solidarity Jam tasting,  introduction to Arteles , opening of Takeshi Moro’s exhibition
20.00 – 21.00 Buss trip back to Tampere

More information about Arteles Creative Center:
http://www.arteles.org/cre​ativecenter.html

We will organize a blueberry picking event on Friday 12th of August. The aim of the event is to pick berries for a first product-run of Solidarity Jam which we will sell to support the Thai wild-berry pickers’ struggle for a fair wild-berry business in Scandinavia. In the event we will also discuss the current situation of Thai berry pickers in Finland, and Thailand and about the future prospects of our Solidarity Jam concept. At the end of the day we will enjoy an evening program organized in the Arteles Creative Center.

We invite you to participate too in our event by joining a bus trip that will start from Tampere City (Finland), in front of Väinö Linna’s Square at 10am. The trip is free.

If you are interested in attending our event, send an email to info[at]muumaa.net

We will publish more detailed information regarding the forthcoming trip in this website.

Everyone is Welcome!

Elina Talvensaari received the Prize for the best documentary in the International competition at Tampere Film Festival with her film ‘How to Pick Berries’. The documentary tells about the Asian wild berry pickers, globalizing berry industry and the reactions of locals in Northern Finland.  www.maurofarinas.net for more info.

This evening there will be a premiere of our machinima Lost in Globalisation about the exploitation of Everyman’s rights in Finland and it’s impact to berry picking culture in a Animex Fringe festival held in Saltburn Community Theatre. Animex Fringe is about collaborative community animations and local cultural heritage.

Schedule of this evenings screening:

http://tvcm.co.uk/animex2011/

So now Hirvitalo is en tour in Britain. On arrival we heard promising news: state owned forests were not going to be sold off after all. The Condem (Conservative and Liberal Democrats) Coalition government here had changed their mind. Several people told us of this and how other commons were in danger. For example the libraires, as we read in the Talk of the Town – Saltburn local magazine, the equivalent of Pispalainen that we have in Pispala where we are based.

In Edinburgh we gave a Clip Kino on the culture of wild berry picking in a place known as the Forest, which was our host, and also gave us solidarity accommodation. Forest is a social center with a vegetarian café where half the food is vegan. But it is much more. Edinburgh has seen in the last couple of years 3 alternative places disappear and this is the radical remnant. There you can find free books swap shelf, info shop, massage parlour, music rooms, exhibition space and a lot of solidarity with movements for change and anarchism.

After the Forest we have headed down to Saltburn and are currently staying in the Rose Garden, a Bed and Breakfast run by Anna, who makes the place vegan/vegetarian and also has started the Saltburn Vegetarian Society. We have not just been hob nobbing it with the veggies and holidaying, we have been spreading the wisdom of jokamiehenoikeudet (Everyman’s rights). Here in Saltburn we have held workshops in Whitecliffe Primary School, Jack Drum Arts and Destinations Café about commons and the future of post-industrial society.

On Thursday there will be a premiere of our machinima, a first part of our documentary about the culture of wild berry picking and the problems related to the exploitation of Thai migrant labor in finnish forests. The machinima, now named Lost in Globalisation will be shown in Saltburn Community Theatre in a screening event starting at 7pm.

We found out that Satburn’s Woodland Centre which provides environmental education for children among other services is in danger. People are now campaigning to save the center by collecting names for petition. There’s also a Facebook group:
SAVE Saltburn’s Woodland Centre Facebook Group

List of online videos discussed in our Clip Kino event in Forest

Seveoutdoors: Mustikkaa 2:22
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kneGK3Z_Ug&feature=related

Stonyfield Yoghurt: Blueberries From The Forest 5:52
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMkHoCeai5E&NR=1

Jynya Yimprasert and Richard Thompson Coon: The 2009 Blueberry Fiasco in Sweden 35:33
http://vimeo.com/12489782

Jynya Yimprasert: The stories of 39 Isan berries pickers in Sweden 14:42
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwPfr1hsZPg

Today Sámi National Day is celebrated not only in Norway, Sweden Finland and Russia but also here in virtual Sápmi where Sámi flag was also raised! Today’s celebration serves as a symbol for a united Sámi nation across national boundaries. The date, 6th of February commemorates the first Sámi congress, held in Trondheim 1917, which laid the foundation for the development of today’s nation-wide and cross-border Sámi cooperation. The biggest worry then was the keeping of their wilderness depended way of life and living conditions, because the main inhabitants took away more and more land from them. Still, after the worst times of Nordic governments’ supression of Sámi culture, the Sámi people’s rights are not fully recognized.

The Sámi are Europe’s northernmost and the Nordic countries’ only officially indigenous people. Sami ancestral lands span an area of approximately 388,350 km2 (150,000 sq. mi) which is comparatively about the size of Sweden in the Nordic countries.

Of the countries that overlap with Sápmi -the cultural region traditionally inhabited by the Sami people – only Norway has ratified the ILO Convention 169 Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples which is the most important operative international law guaranteeing the rights of indigenous peoples.

A Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet recommends to make a call to Finland if there is a problem to be solved. This recommendation is a conclusion to the casually referred Country Brand Report ordered by Finland’s Foreign Ministry. This report sets an ambitious goal: in future Finland should be known as The Problem Solver of The World.

‘Tehtävä Suomelle (Mission for Finland)’ titled report has a slogan borrowed from one US based accounting and financial services firm. It goes ‘Consider it Solved!’.

In the summary of the report there is two main tasks that are potentially conflicting each other. Finland’s national imago is suggested to be developed through practical actions: to truly make Finland a better place. In the other hand Finland and Finns are encouraged to praise, even arrogantly Finland’s ability to solve wicked global problems.

These two task can conflict each other in a situation in which the solving of a problem is being avoided by focusing on keeping up appearances of the party(Finland) who’s responsibility it is to solve the problem (and who is the problem to be solved).

The person who knows more than well this method of avoiding responsibility is the leader of the Country Brand Delegation Jorma Ollila who himself has applied it succesfully in polishing Shell’s, Nokia’s and his own imagos.

Just before the publishing of the report, a Finland’s Foreign Ministry presentative had a change to try this method – although in slightly glumsy and shy manner – and market Finland as a country which has managed to deal with one wicked global problem rather succesfully.

As the global audience knows, Sweden is still struggling in solving the shameful issue of exploitation of Asian wild berry pickers within it’s borders. This is why a journalist from Sverigeradio decided to make a call to Finland’s Foreign Ministry’s official Vesa Hakimäki and ask how this issue has been solved in Finland. Although the official in question didn’t have the arrogance required by the Country Brand Report, he made his best and managed to state the following: “Allthough there are several problems, our way of  handling the migrant labor based wild berry picking is good enough so that we have managed to continue from year after another without need to make any substantial changes” (and we will continue to do so also in the future?)

http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=1637&artikel=412843

Just to make this clear to Sweden: The current State supported globalising Finnish wild berry industry’s model of getting the raw material for it’s production is simply unsustainable, unethical and criminally minded. It is not suitable model to be copied in other countries. This is why we give a mission for Finland:

Fix the Bloody Problem Before Considering it Solved!

For further reading:

Country Brand Report
http://www.tehtavasuomelle.fi/

Report of Asian wild berry pickers’ current situation in Sweden
http://www.scribd.com/doc/45065606/A-report-on-The-on-going-struggle-of-Thai-berry-pickers-in-Sweden

As part of our (postponed) Animex event in Saltburn, artist collective Hirvitalo from Finland is offering a workshops for schools and community groups as set out below. Our Finnish visitors will arrive in time to deliver these on Feb 28th March 1st and we hope to film them and show highlights in Saltburn on March 3rd at Saltburn Community Theatre.

Workshops so far are

28th Feb 1.15pm Whitecliffe Primary, Carlin How 4.30pm St Cuthberts Centre Crook (Juniors) 7.00pm St Cuthberts Centre Crook (Seniors)

1st March 7.00pm Destinations, Saltburn (Upstairs) 7.00pm

JUNIORS – Pirates and Vikings (15-30 min)
We will explore commons and common rights through the dialogue of several characters. Children will be given the chance to share their opinions and thoughts around this subject. Examples from history, present and the future will be explored through interactive theatre.

SENIORS – The Post Industrial World – Dystopia to Utopia (30-45min)
Emptied factories and no jobs. Finland and England have this in common. Paper, steel, coal and other mass industries are history and are being replaced with??? A workshop will give participants an empty factory building and we will try and build a future with it. A new paradigm – a commons industry is the aim and an animation will be made of the process.

NOTE ‘The commons are resources that are collectively owned or shared between or among people and can include everything from natural resources and land to software.’

About the artists

Finnish artist collective Hirvitalo initiated last year a project Second Forest which explores the cultural change of globalizing boreal forest in the age of social media by various artistic means including discussions and workshops in both virtual and real world environments.

This year the Second Forest project is focusing on the concept of Everyman’s Rights, a Scandinavian version of Common Rights which has profoundly shaped the relationship between Nordic people and the forest. This concept is currently in a crisis, which is caused by the globalizing industry based on forest products. Also the whole concept of Commons is changing due the growing distrust to privatizing of natural resources and development of the Peer-to-Peer culture in the online world.

Second Forest project team, Markus Petz, Ismo Torvinen and Mikko Lipiäinen are now organizing workshops and discussions in which the past, present and the future of the Everyman’s Rights and the Commons is explored so that we gain a better understanding of the global importance of these concepts.

For more info or to host a workshop contact:

Steve Thompson,

Community Media Manager, Institute of Digital Innovation, Teesside University
s.d.thompson[at]tees.ac.uk