Artistic or Spiritual?: Participatory Art Groups in Lutheran Parishes in Finland

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Heli Irmeli Ansio  

With four million members, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland is the largest religious denomination in Finland. It plays an unofficial role in social welfare: Parishes provide financial support for people in need, and organize various low-cost activities for local people. These activities include participatory art groups and courses in different art forms. My study concerns the meanings that participants, teachers and parish vicars give to participatory artistic activities in Lutheran parishes. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork in three art groups (dance and visual arts) organized in two parishes in the Helsinki metropolitan area in 2017. The research material consists of participant observation in the groups and interviews of the group participants (N = 14), their teachers (N = 3) and a vicar of one of the parishes. The results show that the participants, teachers and vicar all saw the groups as open and easily accessible to everybody, regardless of one’s relationship to the church. Most of the participants were middle-aged women (or young mothers in their thirties) who had at least a somewhat positive attitude towards religion. The main reason for attending the groups was interest in the art form in question, but most participants also attached some spiritual meanings to their participation. For the vicar and the teachers, too, the spiritual and artistic objectives of the groups intertwined. This research has been conducted as part of the ArtsEqual project funded by the Academy of Finland’s Strategic Research Council from its Equality in Society programme.