RURAL CONTEXTUAL PRACTICE
Towards a place-based arts pedagogy
A document from the development of a new MFA course series
Editors
Gailė Cijūnaitytė, Sissi Westerberg, Daniel Peltz
Initiators
Daniel Peltz, Sissi Westerberg,
Course Leaders
Daniel Peltz, Sissi Westerberg, Vytautas Michelkevičius
Rural Contextual Practice is a pedagogic development project
exploring site-responsive artistic education in rural and remote contexts.
The project was initiated by artists and educators Prof. Daniel Peltz
(Uniarts Helsinki, Academy of Fine Arts) and Senior Lecturer Sissi Westerberg
(Konstfack, Stockholm), and developed together with researcher
Prof. Dr. Vytautas Michelkevičius (Vilnius Academy of Arts).
A new master’s level course offering was at the core of the
project. The course was offered in three editions, at three separate sites,
from 2022–2024. It brought together students and educators from the
fields of craft, fine art, and media art to engage in three specific rural
locations: Rejmyre (Sweden), Nida (Lithuania) and Kilpisjärvi (Finland).
The project was supported by funding from the KUNO Nordplus
network, allowing participation of master’s students from across
the Nordic/Baltic region. KUNO describes itself and its mission as:
a lively and ambitious Nordplus network comprising 18 Nordic-Baltic
fine art academies, aiming to become an art university without walls.
By cooperating on a wide range of project activities, the member institutions
commit themselves to the continued development of higher
fine art education in the region.
This publication documents both the structure of the Rural
Contextual Practice course and the experiences, methodologies and
results that emerged throughout the three editions. Most of the texts
are based on interviews and conversations with the course facilitators
and participants. The informal photographs – taken with mobile phones
and a variety of other cameras – were contributed by those who took
part in the courses and serve as visual traces of the process.
Language Editor
Ugnė Bobyriūtė
Cover Photo
David Larsson
Production and Prepress
Tomas Karnecki
Thanks to
Vitalij Červiakov, Dovydas Černiauskas, Daniel and Ula Zarem
Printed by
UAB “Baltijos kopija”, Vilnius, Lithuania
Published by
VšĮ MENE, Vilnius, Lithuania, www.mene.lt
Vilnius, 2026
ISBN 978-9955-834-07-6