The Thematic Network on Arctic Sustainable Arts and Design (ASAD) from the University of the Arctic, an internationally connected platform for Arctic art and design education, research, and mobility, has included the MAST Network in its annual review. The network brings together initiatives that advance contemporary and innovative practices in teaching, learning, research, and knowledge exchange in the fields of arts, design, and visual culture education.

MAST is highlighted as a project that explores Indigenous and art-and-design ways of knowing through making. The third MAST workshop, to be hosted by Umeå Institute of Design in June 2026, is also featured as a key activity to follow in the coming year.

Read the original news here:

https://www.uarctic.org/news/2026/2/arctic-sustainable-arts-and-design-year-in-review/

The network is organizing a workshop on 14–15 November, hosted by the Design Department at Aalto University, Finland. This workshop will center on making knowledge: using land-based dyes and colors to explore visual materials and systems that sustain memory and transmit knowledge within communities.

Some activities are reserved for participants and network members due to limited capacity. However, presentations by researchers on dyes, digital fabrication, and pictograms as cognitive devices, as well as the closing exhibition, are open to the public.

We warmly invite you to join the public activities taking place onsite (highlighted in yellow in the program below) and to reflect with us on indigenous research practices and other ways of making knowledge.

If you plan to attend, please register via this link:

https://link.webropolsurveys.com/EP/D97AD5CEE44B3296

We began with a recap of the project, highlighting its focus on creating safe spaces and strengthening capacities through creative making practices. In this light, we emphasized Indigenous forms of production, knowledge transmission, and material culture as central to the initiative, while also noting its exploration of possibilities for North–South collaboration.

Together, we reflected on the project’s aims:

We also prepared for our first in-person workshop at Sámi University of Applied Sciences, the starting point for a series of three workshops around which the network will develop. Each workshop will focus on specific making practices and materials (see table). Participating researchers will engage in sense-making through these practices, using them as a lens to explore and discuss research skills and resources.

WORKSHOP 1	WORKSHOP 2	WORKSHOP 3
Making TerritoriesSpace: duodji studio Host: Sámi University of Applied Sciences Norway	Making KnowledgeSpace: dyeing studio, mix material workshop Host: Aalto Finland	Making TransformationSpace: makerspace Host: Institute of Design and the Várdduo Centre for Sámi Research at Umeå University Sweden

Maker/speakers from both indigenous contexts and artistic and design research backgrounds will guide the making processes. Through participatory design approaches and hands-on exploration, the workshops will foster collective reflection on Indigenous methods and epistemologies, principles of just and sustainable design, and knowing-through-making. Tangible objects will be produced as extensions of these discussions.

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