Architect Iida Kalakoski, DTech, and Otto Huttunen of MW-Kehitys Oy will discuss the urban landscape as a work of art. Mänttä-Vilppula has distinguished itself as an art town. At the Festival’s 2025 edition, the idea of an art town will be turned upside down: what would happen if, instead of seeing an art town, we would see the town as a work of art? In addition to the company responsible for promoting and developing the vitality of Mänttä-Vilppula, architects and architecture students from the University of Tampere were invited to the working group. The aim is to create a freely formed vision, without visual constraints, of what a residential area for artists would look like. How could it be realized with attention to artistic freedom, independent living, and a sustainable relationship with nature? The project peers into the artists' imaginary homes, creating images of a residential area that challenge the conventions of living.

Iida Kalakoski

Iida Kalakoski is passionate about built heritage conservation. Having worked on demanding restoration projects at the Finnish Heritage Agency and others, Kalakoski is currently doing research and teaching at Tampere University. Her research focuses on the meaning of built heritage, different ways of conservation, and the culture of demolition. Leading questions are how, when, where, and why does building heritage become meaningful? These questions have led her on city walks and to events that share information and popularise science to the general audience.

Otto Huttunen

Economics and international cultural activities in architecture, music, and film have led Otto Huttunen to be the CEO of Mänttä-Vilppula's development companies. Strengthening regional culture is one of his passions. Huttunen sees opportunities for combining business and culture in his work, even with surrealistic innovations. Huttunen, who plays organ and piano, is one of the founding members of the Mänttä Music Festival. This CEO, who also used to run a cinema, cherishes and collects film and projection history.

Teacher Hannele Karppinen, Visual Artist Heidi Saramäki and Mänttä-Vilppula’s Head of Culture and Leisure Antti Korkka will lead a project in which all 518 preschool and primary school pupils from Mänttä-Vilppula are invited to reflect on what they would not give up in their home area. Based on this, the children will each design their own city pennants, which will be displayed around the town and as part of the Pekilo exhibition in the summer of 2025.

Hannele Karppinen

Studies in art history, fine art, Finnish language, and literature, as well as training as a Colour Bathing Instructor, complement Teacher Hannele Karppinen's master's degree in education, among other things. Karppinen relies on the power of positive pedagogy and wellness education. Her mission is to influence and develop the local cultural education plan so that all schoolchildren in Mänttä-Vilppula can experience and learn comprehensively about the nature and culture of their local area. Karppinen believes that learning is an outcome of collaboration and continuous pedagogy - progressive with life and age - created in cooperation with local cultural actors.

Heidi Saramäki

Heidi Saramäki is a visual artist, art educator, and assistant principal of the Sara Hildén Academy in Tampere. As the director of the visual arts school, she enables and develops encounters and collaboration between artists and children, among other things. For Saramäki, collaboration is a natural way of being. In these processes, it is vital to be open to inspiration and let content take its form. Saramäki is inspired by how children and young people think and works to make it seen by society. Their voices need to become part of the public space, as our cities are otherwise built mainly by adults.

Antti Korkka

Antti Korkka views the world through cooperation and believes culture brings vitality to municipalities. The extensivity and inclusivity of the cultural field, as well as the development of a vibrant urban environment, are some of his core values. In his position, Korkka supports the community commitment of new generations of artists through artmaking. He sees beyond boundaries. Against a backdrop formed by cultural and art history in addition to spatial and regional planning, the activities of the cultural field appear as a whole.

Visual Artist Elina Försti and Architect and Doctor of Technology Iida Kalakoski, DTech, examine the dilapidating traditional landscape, issues of repair and repairability, and the urban landscape of the Mänttä-Vilppula factory town. The cultural environment will be seen as a work of art and building conservation as a contemporary art project. A collage work dealing with the changing cultural environments and questions regarding the future will be built in the exhibition space. On display will be paintings by Elina Försti, rhymes on the values of architectural heritage written by Iida Kalakoski and her colleague, and a thesis on the potential for renovation and reuse of the old Mänttä spirit factory by the University of Tampere. Instead of being discarded, the building could serve Mänttä's cultural life and remain an important part of local identity.

Elina Försti

With her work, Elina Försti joins the continuum of colour painting and upholds the value of traditional techniques. The fields and farm buildings of the Ostrobothnian Plain combine with colour theory, skill, and time-consuming work in Försti's brush strokes. The redundant and dilapidating barns are proof of the developments in food production. For Försti, art is inseparable from life. Her creative actions are rooted in her experience of environmental change. To counterbalance the solitude of her painting practice, Försti enjoys working in groups.

Iida Kalakoski

Iida Kalakoski is passionate about built heritage conservation. Having worked on demanding restoration projects at the Finnish Heritage Agency and others, Kalakoski is currently doing research and teaching at Tampere University. Her research focuses on the meaning of built heritage, different ways of conservation, and the culture of demolition. Leading questions are how, when, where, and why does building heritage become meaningful? These questions have led her on city walks and to events that share information and popularise science to the general audience.

The politics of the body is the theme of the international jewellery collection. Searching beyond Finland's borders enabled the curators to display certain jewellery art classics to the public. The collection includes a material showdown from New Zealand, the infinite girlishness of a young Estonian artist, and insightful play with objects and words. Jewellery is a part of human identity and its expression. However, jewellery’s identity is not tied to places or national borders but to the wearer. By definition, they travel with our bodies. There is always some communication between the jewellery and the environment - is there such a thing as a non-political body or jewellery?

Tarja Tuupanen

Stone dominates Jewellery Artist Tarja Tuupanen's body of work. In the international field of jewellery, Tuupanen is also a stone-hard professional. As the Chair of the Finnish Jewelry Art Association, Tuupanen has led the association for several years and has been responsible for the international KORU Triennial. Jewellery conveys messages that transcend borders. The act of wearing and the embodiment of the wearer's choices are its fundamentals. Much like contemporary art, jewellery has broken out of its starting point. However, the corporeality behind it remains. In contemporary jewellery the body is broadly conceived through the limitations of the senses, the dimensions of the body and cultural differences.

Jenni Sokura

Not only does Jewellery Artist Jenni Sokura work in the international fields of jewellery and contemporary art, she also passes on her knowledge by teaching and lecturing. The master-apprentice culture has not disappeared entirely in this field. Jewellery plays a powerful role in the various institutions and traditions of society. Engagement rings and medals of honour have contributed to the public conception of jewellery as something that is earned and thus paraded around. In her own artistic practice, Sokura has dealt with food, snacks, and takeaway dishes, among other things, and the cultural meanings associated with them.

The exhibition Unarmed Finland by Ihmisyyden tunnustajat first opened in 1979. Since then, the art exhibition by the community based on a theosophical worldview and a pacifist ideology has been exhibited more than 200 times around Finland. For the summer of 2025, Ihmisyyden tunnustajat will curate a part of the exhibition for the exhibition spaces of the Väinölä and Sampola communities. Satulia Saarilehto and Artist Paula Tella will produce a play on resistance to change for the Väinölä summer theatre.

“Ihmisyyden tunnustajat are committed to self-education, which creates a unique environment for creating art. Beauty is not what pleases the eye, but what is real, eternal, and enduring in nature and human beings. If the force of violence, bitterness, selfishness could be redirected into cultural work for peace, we could create something unique: an unarmed nation”, the community describe their aims.

Satulia Saarilehto

Ihmisyyden tunnustajat strive to live by theosophical ideals and implement them in practice. Satulia Saarilehto is a second-generation member of the community that recognises the possibility of brotherhood of all people and a non-violent world. Saarilehto has studied the visual aspects of theatre extensively. In addition to her training as a Puppet Maker, she holds degrees in clothing and theatre technology. Instead of a career, theatre has become a way of life, which has extended to scriptwriting and directing. Playing all the diverse and various roles involved in the production of performing arts is another way to actively promote pacifism.

Paula Tella

Visual Artist Paula Tella works within the various processes of performance, community, and urban art. She was led to performance art by buto - a physical expression developed in Japan that crosses the terrain of visual art, dance, and theatre. Her various performances, shows, collectives, and their inclusivity have involved planning, scripting, directing, and performing. Tella is part of The Pie Club, a collective of eight sculptors, and Other Spaces Collective. Tella's work focuses on people, various borderlands, and a multitude of physical and spiritual exercises.

The editor-in-chief of the 2025 exhibition catalogue is Poet and Art Critic Raisa Jäntti. Instead of the traditional printed publication, the catalogue will be published during the summer as daily posts on social media channels of the Mänttä Art Festival. Texts based on experience will present the co-curators, events, artists, and artworks. The printed catalogue will be a NO anthology, a collection of texts from different authors related to the theme.

Raisa Jäntti

Raisa Jäntti writes art critiques based on experience, which convey a feeling of presence. She intends to deconstruct roles and make art accessible, miraculous, and regular. Putting experiences into words is not easy for most, but the difficulty of verbally expressing one’s emotions is familiar to all - it connects people. Jäntti’s poetry often depicts people in extreme circumstances and looks at humanity in biological, corporeal terms. The focus is on presence, often in situations where people transcend the limits of their bodies or minds.

Museomagiaa article by Art Historian, researcher and lecturer at the University of the Arts Kaija Kaitavuori changes its form from an article to a work of art at the Mänttä Art Festival. The article will take over the former control room turned exhibition space of the old Pekilo factory. The study is elevated to the status of a work of art and returned to its starting point. What is art is not the question proposed this summer, but how is art?

Kaija Kaitavuori

Kaija Kaitavuori is well acquainted with art-related topics. Through history, museology, sociology, and cultural politics, Kaitavuori has formed an understanding of how cultural events are born. Kaitavuori connects art with society by encouraging encountering – instead of owning. Kaija Kaitavuori is an action-oriented researcher who engages with participatory art. As a thinker, she approaches the art world in a human but realistic way. She does not care for monetary worth and encourages people to find value elsewhere.

Dissertation Researcher and Curator Sanna Karimäki-Nuutinen will be curating the guided tours of the Mänttä Art Festival. Experiencing art will be the focus of the guided tours. Do you have to make an effort to experience art? The guided tours will explore how the Mänttä Art Festival is experienced from a specific, inaccessible, or other species perspective.

Sanna Karimäki-Nuutinen

Sanna Karimäki-Nuutinen lives in Seinäjoki – the growth centre of South Ostrobothnia. While working as the director of a local art venue, she was involved in developing a new program in which the art would draw from the surrounding countryside and engage with discourses on the history and development of agriculture and the future of animal and food production. She is interested in the influence of art regarding the climate crises and creating a sustainable culture. As a curator, Karimäki-Nuutinen strives to understand and give voice to her environment. This year, she is also curating the Rauma Triennale.

Visual Artist and Art Educator Hanna Rantala will take art education out of the exhibition space and to the roadsides of the art town. The starting point of Rantala’s workshops is the volunteer-based mowing of the invasive lupine and the processing of the clippings into a new form. The open-to-all sessions will involve mowing, experimenting with lupine pigments, and creating a work of art as part of the Pekilo entrance. Amidst the activities will be a discussion on the themes of this year’s Mänttä Art Festival.

Hanna Rantala

Hanna Rantala's background is in environmental, spatial, and sound art. When teaching, Rantala prefers to use site-specific and multi-artistic approaches as well. Themes of identity construction and self-expression are present in her work as a visual artist and when working with children and young people. Rantala values creative courage and moral ambition. She hopes to create art activities and events where the focus shifts from art objects to the state of mind, the encounter, and the inner vibe – a concoction which could be called art.