Urban Soil Literacies

Sub-project objectives

“Urban Soil Literacies” explores how soil literacies could be practiced in an urban context with a multi-species perspective. The aim of the project is to recreate “Soil-Soul-Society” connections where being touched by soil also leads to taking societal action for soil. Soil literacies are researched through literature and discussion with soil experts from different disciplines. A collection of soil experiments is developed through artistic and scientific work, and practiced in workshops with urban citizens. With the help of human and more-than-human participants, a series of mixed media artworks are created and exhibited at three exhibitions in Helsinki, Lahti and Kemiönsaari, accompanied by soil presentations. In the end, a playful guidebook is created for soil experiments at home from the experiments of the project.

Challenges and how they will be addressed

One challenge is to keep the scope of the project small enough. Therefore, we will work with one urban location only to properly explore place-based soil literacy and connection in depth. Another challenge is the short availability of exposed soil in Finland, as there may be snow cover from October to April, which means we will be most intensively working during the summer season 2026.

Expected outcomes

The outcomes of the project are:

– Video interview with soil experts

– Three workshops with urban citizens

– Three exhibitions of art works at SOILSCAPE festival, Kulturhus KUBU and Aalto University

– Press release of exhibitions

– Three soil presentations

– Playful guidebook for soil experiments at home

– Supporting the Finnish soil-art-science ecosystem