Niin Metsä Vastaa: New Language for Forest Relationality
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Proactive Systems Change Initiatives
Tags: Forests, collective imagination, language
Summary
How does the language we use impact how can we imagine our relationship with nature?
How can we design new words that can make invisible collective experiences visible?
What kind of forest heritage are we curating for the next generations?
Niin Metsä Vastaa (As the Forest Answers) explores the topic of the collective imagination of Finnish forest relationships. Inspecting and intervening in the system through language, we tap into the diversity of already existing forest relationships pushed away from the mainstream, and co-create the new words needed as a society to move towards a more regenerative relationship in the future. Together with the stakeholders of Finnish society, Niin Metsä Vastaa seeks to co-develop a creative dictionary of new words and phrases defining the need for future forest relationships.
“We would need new kinds of words and language to connect history and future between forest owners and Finnish society, and to support ecosystems as whole, beyond the property limits.”
We are hosting two open workshops in August 2024,
free to join for anyone interested in our approach and method.
Find out more and register here.
Process
We are investigating:
How can we diversify, reimagine, and reconstruct the language we use to speak about Finnish forests, their plural meanings, and their importance?
How could we use design approaches to curate new sustainable heritage for the future?
In turn, how can this language affect our relationships and collective imagination of forests?
How can this approach contribute to sustainability transitions?
During the first working period, funded by CIPC, we created a prototype approach for co-creating intentional language to inspect and shape our relationships with nature.
Impact
As this project is ongoing, we are yet to map the impact that language co-creation might have on sustainability conversations and actions. However, it is our hope that this project will:
Improve the quality and widen perspectives of Finnish forest discourse, by engaging an extensive group of Finnish society to reimagine our relationships with forests
Contribute to the making of Future Heritage through the co-created stories and terms, and disseminating them into personal, social and professional conversations
Contribute to sustainability transitions by encouraging a material change in how Finnish forests are imagined, treated and managed
We welcome funding or consortium partners to support the next phase of applying the method into practice, developing the dictionary, and disseminating it to use in society and different industries.
We are also keen to explore this workshop format in other ecological contexts - perhaps The Ocean Answers, or The Meadow Answers, or The Desert Answers.
If you would be keen to explore this process with us, we would love to hear from you.
