Sara Hildén Academy’s spring Stories and Identity workshop for children and young people explores perceptions of Finnishness inspired by the Encore! exhibition

On 21 March 2026, pupils in grades 6–9 from the Sara Hildén Academy of The Adult Education Centre of the Tampere Region visited the Encore! collection exhibition at the Tampere Art Museum together with their teachers.

– The visual arts teachers prepared a guided tour script for the visit and guided the pupils through the exhibition themselves. Background information for planning the tour was provided by the exhibition’s curator, Virpi Nikkari, as well as the museum’s exhibition pedagogical texts. The collaboration with the Tampere Art Museum was very rewarding, and the young people were warmly welcomed there, says visual arts teacher Anni Toivonen.

The aim of the guided tours was to encourage pupils to critically examine how art has been used – and continues to be used – to construct perceptions of Finnishness.

– During the tours, we reflected, among other things, on the seriousness and one-sidedness of depictions of Finnish folk culture, the origins of the Kalevala stories outside Finland in Viena Karelia, and how Symbolist artists sought to break away from national romantic thinking and instead explore universal questions of life and death, Toivonen explains.

The course module focusing on stories and identity will continue in April with a workshop held at the visual arts school.

The application period for basic education in the arts for children and young people runs from 1 May to 31 May 2026. The Adult Education Centre of the Tampere Region will publish application instructions online at the end of April. Basic education in the arts is a goal-oriented hobby that progresses from one level to the next and aims to support independent artistic work and creative self-expression. Groups meet approximately once a week.

Basic education in the visual arts at The Adult Education Centre of the Tampere Region is provided by the Sara Hildén Academy, which is located in Koivistonkylä, Tampere.