IHME Helsinki 2024: Audience workers

Four audience workers have joined the IHME Helsinki Commission 2024 – Cooking Sections’ Maaleipä Challenge team for the week of events: Milja Rikkonen, Niko Wearden, Jasmin Virtanen and Ville Mattila. These audience workers, who come from different backgrounds, are an important part of the IHME Helsinki Commission and of communicating it to the public. Each of them brings their own expertise to the event.

Milja Rikkonen, an environmental and natural resource economics student at the University of Helsinki, has focused her studies on sustainable food production and consumption patterns, and on biodiversity. Art is an important hobby for her. In her work at the Climate Security Festival and Maaleipä Feast, Milja is particularly fascinated by the possibility of combining her interest in art with her studies:

I’m excited about the Maaleipä challenge because it’s a way to concretely create something good for the planet and for people.

Niko Wearden, a performance artist from the UK, first encountered Cooking Sections through the On Tidal Zones project while living on the Isle of Skye in Scotland:

When I heard about their IHME Helsinki Commission, the Maaleipä Challenge, I was excited to follow how their thinking on sustainable food systems might situate itself in the Finnish context that I now also share.

Niko lives in Helsinki and studies on the University of the Arts Theatre Academy’s Master’s programme in Live Art and Performance Studies. They also have experience of participating in a recipe competition. With British colonial and imperialist histories and food sovereignty in mind, Niko submitted a recipe for a Climate grief cake to a competition to design a cake for Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee. Unfortunately they did not win.

Jasmin Virtanen, a student of cultural production at Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, hopes to build a more sustainable and inclusive art scene. What interests her most about IHME Helsinki is the pervasiveness of ecologically sustainable activities amid social crises and upheavals:

In my role as an audience worker, I get to experience the production of events of this kind for the first time, their diverse content, and above all, to be part of the vanguard of the ecological sustainability transition on the Finnish art scene.

Ville Mattila, an art-history student at the University of Helsinki, is particularly interested in public art because it is the most accessible to everyone. Ville thinks that, at its best, public art can enrich people’s everyday lives, and educate or strengthen the local identities of different communities.

Because the annual IHME Helsinki Commission is always open to everyone and located in a public space, I feel quite at home as an audience worker on this year’s Commission.

What fascinates Ville about Cooking Sections’ CLIMAVORE project is its tangible impact on the food sold in museum cafés.

The audience workers will be at the Climate Security Festival and the Maaleipä Feast to tell visitors about IHME Helsinki Commission 2024 and Zhanna Kadyrova’s PALIANYTSIA. PALIANYTSIA will be shown in the lobby of the Finnish Meteorological Institute at 10:00-16:00 on 18–20 September. The stone loaves in this artwork are for sale and the proceeds will be donated to humanitarian causes in Ukraine chosen by the artist. During the Maaleipä Feast, the audience workers will serve samples of bread to taste, tell people about the Challenge’s finalist breads, and collect feedback.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version) Revised by MG.