Neighbourhood Yurt

The project was founded on an understanding that inequality is on the rise in the Finnish society and there is increasing juxtaposition between various population groups. Instead of starting from a problem-oriented standpoint, the project set out to explore what kinds of dialogues, good practices and networks of help did people enact and engage in their daily lives.

The working group combined research and arts to identify and understand people’s own ways of community-making and their ways of negotiating differences that arise when people from different backgrounds, and in different life situations share the same space and encounter each other. Neighbourhood yurt was both a research project and an artistic intervention into people’s social and mundane realities through which it sought to understand contemporary developments in the Finnish society.

The project ranged from 2018 till 2021 and was funded by the Kone Foundation. The project team included: Eeva Puumala (PI), Salome Tuomaala-Özdemir (research), Karim Maïche (research), Vadim Romashov (research), Anne Savitie (arts), S.M. Khalid Imran (arts), Imran Adan (coordinator), and Otto Laakso (film-making).

The yurt that was the centre piece of the project is nowadays in the possession of Etappi, where it can be either rented or, in case of open community events, borrowed for free.