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MeMes are the voices of the participants of the Agents of Change: Mediating Minorities project (MeM). How do we imagine the future? What changes do we strive to become agents of, what changes to make inevitable? And how does our project contribute to this?
Each of us, one way or another, participates in building of personal, local and global future. In MeM, the project partners from several countries collectively seek and explore tools and instruments of influence. Minorities have experience and knowledge that is different from that of the majority, and the well-being of our common future depends on whether society is able to use this diversity as a resource.
We want to show how to create such situations when knowledge is not transmitted from top to bottom, but is created in the process of equal interaction here and now. As a model, we use the art mediation approach, which suggests building a dialogue on equal terms and treating each of its participants as an expert in their own life, experience and cultures.
Author of illustrations: Dasha Surma
Text: MeM project participants based in Finland
The full comic series is available on the Culturafest Instagram account in Finnish and Russian languages.
I believe that in the future, inclusion will become one of the most important societal values, diversity will be seen as richness, and meeting with diverse people will be considered an opportunity to discover something new and interesting!
Image: Dasha Surma
MeM has forever changed my way of thinking, both as a person and professional: from the project I am now 100 % sure that every challenge bring opportunities, and that is a fundamental knowledge and lesson for the future!
Image: Dasha Surma
My participation in the project is just one step towards the image of the future that I am drawing in my head, where all the global challenges predicted by political scientists, economists, ecologists are inevitable; but it is also the future with the people that I’ve met in the project. And it is genuine happiness!
Image: Dasha Surma
Diversity leads the future!
Image: Dasha Surma
I already see many positive changes happening in Finland and I believe that thanks to such projects as MeM, and especially the people who take part in it, this country will become even more inclusive and open to diversity.
Image: Dasha Surma
Participation in MeM impacted my vision on the future of museum and exhibition activities and gave an understanding that the sooner you will learn how to apply mediation tools and realise the importance and value of inclusion – the more interesting and diverse projects you will create.
Image: Dasha Surma
Future is like a cardboard box. Before, it constantly turned over, shook, it would feel nice to get rid of its familiar and boring lines. Now it’s enough to put the box in front of you, put your palms on its two opposite walls, press a little, and a completely different shape comes out – now it’s for us to understand, how to assemble the box from the new form back.
Image: Dasha Surma
My perspective of the future has become more positive. I want to believe that we’ll go further in the matters of social inclusion, diversity and equality, and will move from words to action. From the other hand, future brings anxiety: will we achieve what we are aiming at? Because there is so much more to be done in this direction.
I am inspired by such projects where only common values, principles and aims are defined and set beforehand, but all the rest is agreed by all the partners and participants together during the process. I believe that the future belongs to such projects because they provide opportunities for real participation of building this exact future.
Image: Dasha Surma
The project’s value is in the development of two-way dialogue between minorities and the majority, which the globalised world desperately needs. Therefore, in the next decades, everyone will face serious challenges in their daily life – would they be related to the human relationships, technological progress or ecological turmoil.
Image: Dasha Surma
Participation in MeM is directly linked to my future professional career, because I think that very soon it will be just impossible to be a competitive member of any process or a team, not taking into account the values which MeM promotes – equality, respect to the experience of other and their motives, and inclusion.
Image: Dasha Surma
Now it is not scary to say what you think – because every voice can be heard, and what’s more important – it can be decisive!
Image: Dasha Surma
Thanks to MeM, I understood that the inclusive future of the Finnish art institutions is in my hands.
