Multispecies Wellbeing in Tourism – Virtual Exhibition

What happens when we begin to see tourism and wellbeing through a multispecies, more-than-human lens?

Welcome to our virtual exhibition, showcasing creative artefacts by students from the Multispecies Wellbeing in Tourism course at the University of Lapland!

As part of their learning journey, students were invited to reflect on how their perspectives, assumptions, and understandings had changed throughout the course, and to express these shifts through a creative artefact.

The exhibition brings together these reflections, exploring the interconnected lives of humans, animals, and nature, challenging familiar boundaries between them, and recognising the entangled naturecultures through which tourism and wellbeing take shape.

We invite you to explore these creative journeys, discover new ways of thinking about human–animal–nature relationships, and perhaps question what wellbeing in tourism could mean when we look beyond the human!

Change is possible

I saw this tree, while we were in Ounasvaara and took a picture of it because, in that moment, it represented the nature and environment that I was experiencing. Its bare and damaged appearance reflected my feelings during that hike, but also the system in which, tourism, animals and humans are connected. We humans literally need trees and plants to survive, so we should appreciate them more. I decided to paint the tree in more colour, add more leaves and make it bigger in general. This reminds me that change is possible, even when the situation seems bad and helpless. And it is also a reminder to not see the world in black and white, but to add some colour to it.

Credit: Anni

The Impact of a Mushroom

The artefact represents what became visible to me after understanding the concept of multispecies wellbeing. It represents how I see that we are all connected to each other because we share the same planet and need to depend on each other for successful multispecies wellbeing. Here I am using the mushroom I paid attention to from our walk in Ounasvaara as a symbol. It symbolizes how through the mushroom I am realizing it is connected to everything and everything is connected to it. Other species’ wellbeing depends on the mushroom’s wellbeing and vice versa.

Credit: Anonymous

Untitled

This picture was taken by me while I was travelling in Germany. This was in Lindau, which is not a popular city for tourists to visit, but this picture was taken near the city’s popular monument which had a lot of people around it. The first thing that I thought when I saw this was that the swan must be dead since it did not move even though there were many people and a lot of noises. It finally raised its head when there was an unusual noise, but normal human noises were probably normal to it. This raised a lot of questions about the living conditions of this swan. Did it purposely make a nest there? Did it collect the trash there or were they thrown by humans? Are there more advantages or disadvantages to it? Did it feel safe enough to build the nest there? Is it sick or is this normal behavior? Maybe it just has been adapting to the environment because humans have taken its natural environment.

Credit: Heta

Tree roots – symbol of the perceived kinship between species

I believe this course helped me become more aware of the kinship I have experienced. Even though I have been aware that my personal relationship with the more-than-human world has evolved over the years, this realization truly became clear to me during our sensory walk at Ounasvaara. While I was sitting next to the root of a tree that I had chosen as my choice on our task to explore, I began to reflect deeply on how we are all connected to one another. Tree roots are fascinating because they connect to each other as a web – the same way I think all species – human and more-than-human – are connected and entangled as well. It is a good symbol in the sense that it represents the kinship experienced between different species. This is why I chose to represent this symbol in my artefact as well.

Credit: Anonymous.

Who deserves more?

Who does nature belong? To us humans or to animals, or does it belong to no one or all of us. This artefact is made from already existing materials, photos I have taken previously and numbers from advertising magazines. This artefact is made to disappear, I didn’t use any glue so, the artefact is delicate and impermanent. I wanted to make this artefact as delicate as nature is if we don’t respect it. This artefact can stay intact if we leave it be.

Credit: Anonymous

Untitled

On my artefact I wanted to reflect my own experiences in animal tourism attractions. As a child, I went to many zoos and animal parks. Of course, as I was so small I couldn’t influence the choice, so I just went with my family. Later, I have thought about the ethics of the animals and how they have been only recourses of the business. I chose to use my own pictures in the artefact because of my own thoughts changing now. Nowadays I wouldn’t visit any of these places. If I would, I would want to do full research of the place before visiting and then decide whether to visit or not based on the wellbeing of the animals. Taping the alligators’ mouth with duct tape so people could hold them without danger and get the best possible picture is absurd now that I think of it. Feeding the giraffes was much more ethical in my opinion, but of course that activity was also really unethical. The enclosure at the zoo wasn’t as big as their living space would be in nature. Also, the animals aren’t used to humans feeding them in the wild eighter. The third picture is from Dubai, inside a shopping mall ski center. This animal-based tourism experience is also very unethical from the multispecies wellbeing view. The penguins are trans-ported from the northern parts of the world to a small, completely fake environment inside a building that is built in a dry desert climate. That isn’t natural to animals in any way. Then I decided to write “animal tourism at whose expense”. By that I wanted to highlight the usage of animals as objects/recourses and the experiences made by their expenses. Also adding the red crosses between me and the animals was a way to highlight the way people use the animals.

Credit: Ilona

The rose in a pot

This kind of little pot for rose will not do, there is not enough room for the rose in the pot. Roses should live outside in soil rich with minerals, moisture and sunshine, especially moisture, that should provide steady watering, told the lady at the store I bought the rose from. The rose will suffer and most probably waste away before long, she said. I didn’t ask why roses are being put in little pots and sold onward if it’s no good. I promised to water it regularly and hope for the best. I’m not skilled caretaker for plants but I was encouraged, because even if my strike with roses is poor, this sounded like it might not be my fault after all. The living conditions are simply wrong.

At home, watering the rose with tap water, I came to think the rose was supposed to last longer than cut roses would. Stress of understanding, being accountable for its wellbeing, began to rise. There was winter coming eventually, and the sun seemed already pale. I considered planting the rose outside, but it is risky business that can fail as easily as watering indoors. I also don’t have a yard. How am I supposed to take care of the rose with these recourses and who am I to decide what the rose would like best? Do roses hibernate?

Two months later:

The rose has already flowered twice, and I still don’t know how long it is supposed to flourish.

Credit: Anonymous

Participating in Tourism by Disruptive Involvement

The meaning behind this artefact is both meant to represent the mechanisms that make tourism possible are often the biggest detractors from the experience and have the biggest implications for multispecies wellbeing. Particularly in these cases of Mikumi national park where increasing “efficient” forms of nature watching caused this collection of moments that are stained by the human world. All these moments were captured on one 4-hour game drive and featured various forms of human aspects being shoehorned into a conservation area, which was introspectively what we are participating in this kind of tourism involves.

Credit: Johannes Kaihua

Map of Silent Stakeholders

This is a map of the imaginary place where the husky and green tourism are famous. There are three layers; the first layer visualizes the world that tourists experience, the second layer visualizes hidden stakeholders, and the last layer visualizes the relations. What I would like to express in my artefact is that relations are more important than individual existences or roles. Tourism is supported not only by humans but also by multiple species. The recognition and understanding of the relations through my artefact can connect to multispecies wellbeing.

Credit: Anonymous

Overgrown

The animation ”Overgrown” depicts a tourist experiencing the nature of Lapland. The camera in their hand clearly seperates the viewer and the object of perception. But when the trees come alive and take the camera out of the tourists hands the power dynamic within the scene shifts. As the trees grow bigger and bigger the value that we as observers place upon them increases too. We realize that the main character of the scene suddenly becomes the trees and so our perspective shifts from an anthropocentric point of view to a multispecies one.

Credit: Lotta Schramm

Untitled

In my artifact I’m trying show the change that happened during this course through pictures and words. The picture is taken in Ounasvaara on our walk when taking a closer look to the nature. It includes new thoughts as well as questions that I still have. It’s about the journey where I realized the bigger picture actually comes more visible when taking a smaller piece and looking carefully.

Credit: Milka

Who Is Hosting Whom?

My artefact represents a change in how I understand hospitality in tourism. Before this course, I mainly thought about hospitality as something between people, with humans taking the roles of guests and hosts. During the course, I started to question these roles. When a person enters a forest, they are entering a place already shared by plants, animals and other forms of life. The question “Who is hosting whom?” represents this change in my thinking and reminds me that humans do not always have to be at the centre.

Credit: Minka

Enabler of life

In this world, there is nothing “greater” than human power. Human have the power to destroy, and human have power to guard. Sometimes – and most of the time, the best thing that human could do for the nature and all other living beings, would be to do nothing. New beginnings, healing, and preservation do not always require human actions, but rather the human staying away. On the other hand, in terms of human power, nature needs humans to recover what human have made impossible for nature. It is listening and enabling. It is making life worth living with every other species. Serving as a platform for them. Giving them opportunity to live a life in accordance with their values. There is so much space for human in this world that there will be enough left to share with other living beings.

Credit: Maiga Lofo (Saija Hakola), 2026, High-fired ceramic, glaze and dried flower, 13 x 7 cm

Meeting the More-than-Human Forest – A Mushroom Friendship Book

Inspired by childhood friendship books, this artefact reimagines mushroom tourism as an opportunity to develop a relationship with a particular mushroom and to explore the more-than-human forest. Through questions, observations, and creative expression it invites curiosity beyond identifying, collecting, or using mushrooms. Reflecting a shift in my own thinking, the book opens up possibilities for relating to another species and exploring multispecies relationships beyond anthropocentric ways of thinking and doing, without prescribing what these relationships should become.

Credit: Sandra

Patchwork culture – Made of the people I love

In my artefact, I tried to find an answer to a question I had never asked myself before: how do I define my own culture? I came to the conclusion that it is made of the people I love. I put together one human being from parts of my family and friends, for the upper body I decided to put my own, because there everything comes together. The people I surround myself with define me and make me the human being I am right now.

At the bottom I placed stones, to come up again with the question: are stones living or non-living beings and who gets to define that? I was always told that stones are lifeless, but they were already on this planet long before me and will still be there long after me. Maybe we should stop putting living and non-living labels on everything, so that we can find our own answers to such questions.

Credit: Selina

Dance with – a map to Multispecies

We are all visitors, equal in being thus we must tread lightly embracing the currents of nature. We shall engage in a dance with multispecies as our partners while navigating the ever present and unsettling destruction. We are responsible for weaving the thread of thinking and living-with across every step we take.

Credit: Virág

More information:

Linda Tallberg
linda.tallberg(at)ulapland.fi
+358 40 594 5629