Berry wars: A science centre as a forum for a dialogical activist, interdisciplinary art project

The Berry Tours project was a collaboration between artists, activists, researchers (politics and social sciences) and science communicators. Its focus was the berry industry, which has seen a rising number of seasonal foreign berry pickers arrive in Finnish forests and has resulted in conflicts between foreign and local berry pickers. The aim of the project was to create dialogue between foreign berry pickers and locals, increase understanding of the richness of berry picking culture in Finnish Lapland, gain knowledge about interdisciplinary collaboration, and promote the use of art at science centres. One result was a joint exhibition, titled Berry Tours, which was presented at the Arctic Centre in Rovaniemi (Finland). In this article, the author describes the Berry Tours project and discusses similar collaborative projects in the field of activist art, dialogical art, and art and science collaborations.She describes the experience of showing art in a science centre and considers some of the possibilities of interdisciplinary collaboration in art education. The educational potential of dialogical art, community art and interdisciplinary exhibitions is the core of the article.