With feedback from the rest of the project team (Virpi Nurmela, Faculty of Art and Design; and Outi Snellman, Scott Forrest, and Hannele Palviainen, UArctic International Secretariat), the students created a stand design that conveyed a sense of the North: home, clean, welcoming, quiet, airy.

In late spring, local Industrial Design students Terhi Silvennoinen and Malla Haapala were added to the group to finish the project and construct the stand together with Barry Todd, an Irish exchange student who had been involved in the design process from the beginning. The design was based on the use of local materials, easily transportable and handmade elements, reusability, and fixtures that can be sourced from many locations. The central element of the stand was to be a projector screen, for which another Arctic Inspiration student, Pietro Lodi from Italy, was asked to produce a video with themes that would reflect the unique atmosphere of the Circumpolar North. The result is a combination of serene landscapes, calm oceans and lakes, the coolness of snow and ice, the nightless nights of summer, and the magical aurora borealis, but above all, the warm sense of home that northerners share.

EAIE_stand_people_2Creating a conference stand for the UArctic network exemplifies the kinds of unique opportunities for international students coming to the University of Lapland and other UArctic partners in the North. It began with the University of Lapland’s ‘Arctic Inspiration’ course, during which the students stayed several days in a cottage in the countryside and drew inspiration from the surrounding nature for their design projects. The Arctic continued to inspire them in the planning of the stand, and now their design has come to life at EAIE with one student present to speak for the entire team.

Scott Forrest and Barry Todd are hosting the stand in Istanbul together with UArctic member organizations who were invited to partner at the conference, sharing time at the booth to make international contacts and promote their institutions as destinations of study and international education cooperation partners. The seven institutions participating in EAIE 2013 at the UArctic stand are University of Lapland, Oulu University of Applied Sciences and University of Eastern Finland from Finland; University of Saskatchewan from Canada; University of Tromsø and University of Nordland from Norway; and North-Eastern Federal University from Russia.

For the exact stand schedule, click here!