The Finnish Cultural Foundation’s Kainuu Regional Fund is funding a project with 60,000 euros to implement art content in connection with the 2027 Jukola Relay in Vuokatti, Sotkamo.
The Kainuu Regional Fund’s project, titled Vuokatti Landscapes, will implement part of the sports event’s side program for participants. The production, coordination and convening of the working group is the responsibility of the Kainuu-based KORPIQUEER collective, whose curator-producer is KM Taavitsainen.
The project idea was born in August 2024, when the Kainuu Regionald Fund’s management board met Merja Ojalammi, the director of education and culture for the municipality of Sotkamo, and cultural producer Marko Karvonen, during a meeting trip.
During the meeting, the topic of discussion was the Vuokatti-Jukola to be held in the summer of 2027, in which the organizers also hoped to include culture from Kainuu.
“The combination of sports and culture was immediately exciting,” says Susanna Jänkälä, manager of the Kainuu Regional Fund.
Sports and culture go hand in hand
The project will implement three different artistic contents in Vuokatti-Jukola, which represent sound art as well as performing, visual and digital art. Some of the artistic contents will be longer-term and will remain in the Sotkamo–Vuokatti area until the end of its useful life.
The project’s artistic working group consists of a local multidisciplinary collective and the American ensemble of Anna Thompson and Taylor Knight, who combine sound art and dance. In addition to them, the Vaara collective will also join the artistic collaboration.
“So we are promised a multidisciplinary, multi-level, diverse and far-reaching artistic ensemble – for the first time ever in Kainuu,” says KM Taavitsainen.
“We are particularly grateful to the Vuokatti-Jukola organization for wanting to make culture the theme of a significant orienteering event. Culture is constantly present in all of our lives,” says cultural producer Marko Karvonen.
For more information, please contact:
* Kainuu Fund, Manager Susanna Jänkälä, tel. +358 50 511 9392,
* Sotkamo Municipality, cultural producer Marko Karvonen, tel. +358 44089 5033,
* KORPIQUEER collective, curator-producer KM Taavitsainen, tel. +358 45127 1612,