Call for Contributions - Relate North: Creative Economies and Relational Practices

Call for Contributions:

Editors: Maria Huhmarniemi & Kathryn Burnett

Relate North: Creative Economies and Relational Practices

Relate North is an English-language, peer-reviewed book series published by the International Society for Education through Art (InSEA). The series aims to chronicle, document, and critically analyze art, design, craft, and education in the North, including Arctic and near-Arctic regions.

We seek chapter proposals for the thirteenth edition of the Relate North series, focusing on the theme “Creative Economies and Relational Practices”.

The Arctic is undergoing profound economic and social transformation. While the green transition is accelerating industrial development and employment in Northern regions, the creative economy and its funding structures remain largely concentrated in metropolitan hubs outside the Arctic. This imbalance highlights the need to strengthen creative economies and arts education as policy and practice centred from within, and between, Arctic regions and localities.  Art and design can contribute to local well-being, cultural continuity, and regional vitality crucially informed by all levels of art and design education, including continuing education, vocational education, and higher education engendering shared knowledge and leveraging skills and capacities to foster Arctic creative economies, informed by research integrity, ethics and sustainability.

At a time of increasing economic precarity and shrinking public support for the arts, employment pathways in the Arctic often differ markedly from conventional, urban-centred creative industry models. This volume responds to the need for context-sensitive approaches to art, design, and entrepreneurship that recognise the specific conditions of Arctic and ’near North’ communities,  exploring how creative practices can generate sustainable livelihoods, resilience, and respectful dialogue on entreprenurial and social values . Art and design educational research has a key role in experimenting with and evaluating such pathways. In this book, art and design education is positioned as a relational practice that can foster multiple dimensions of sustainability and shape how creative economies are initiated, developed, taught, and lived in Arctic contexts.

The volume explores art and design entrepreneurship and art entrepreneurship education in the Arctic as a culturally and pedagogically situated practice. Rather than framing entrepreneurship through market-driven or extractivist logics, it foregrounds creative economies that emerge from long-term relationships with place, communities, seasonal rhythms, material knowledge, and reciprocal responsibilities between human and more-than-human actors.

We invite chapters that examine how Arctic artists, designers, educators, and cultural practitioners develop entrepreneurial practices grounded in Indigenous and Northern knowledge systems. Contributions may draw on contemporary art, design, craft, and arts-based services across the circumpolar North, and explore material-led production informed by local ecologies, slow and small-scale modes of making, site-specific and place-based services, and initiatives that foster environmental care, cultural continuity, and community resilience.

Authors are encouraged to critically address tensions between creative entrepreneurship and dominant creative industry models, particularly in regions shaped by extractive economies, tourism, and global market pressures. Guiding questions may include:

• How can sustainable income be combined with meaningful artistic and design practice?
• How can art and design entrepreneurship in the Arctic resist the commodification of land and culture while enabling viable livelihoods?
• How do artists and designers secure income in ways that respect care, kinship, and responsibility?
• How can creative economies be fostered in rural and remote regions beyond established creative hubs?
• How can business and entrepreneurial skills be taught in ways that are relevant to Arctic artists and designers?
• How do the needs of an Arctic and/or circumpolar northern creative economy challenge art and design education, interdisciplinary integration, and collaborations between educational institutions and other organisations, including non-Arctic bodies.

Proposed chapters may

• examine arts-based services, such as community art practices, cultural facilitation, and place- or Land-based design processes, that prioritise relational value over economic growth;
• reframe entrepreneurship as a form of cultural activism, stewardship, and care;
• discuss the pedagogy of entrepreneurial skills in art and design education within Arctic and Northern contexts;
• explore alternative, community-based, or post-growth models of creative work in the North.
• Reflect and evaluate experimentation in art entrepreneurship or its education
• Focus on the sustainability impacts of fostering Arctic creative economies as relational practices.

By positioning entrepreneurship as a pedagogical, cultural, and ethical practice rather than solely an economic one, this volume contributes to ongoing discussions on decolonisation, sustainability, and creative economies in the Arctic. It offers grounded perspectives on how art and design practices can support viable livelihoods while strengthening relationships between people, places, and Northern ecologies.

About the Relate North series

This book will be number thirteen in the Relate North series connected to the Arctic Sustainable Arts & Design (ASAD) Thematic Network of the University of the Arctic and the fifth to be published by InSEA Publications. The Relate North series explores and shares contemporary practices in arts-based research and academic knowledge exchange in arts, design, and visual culture education. Each volume consists of peer-reviewed chapters. The series interests academic researchers, artists, designers, art educators, and practice-based researchers. This call is for contributions to the latest book, scheduled for publication in November 2026.

To download previous volumes of Relate North, go to: https://www.insea.org/insea-publications-2-2/

Publications are also available at: https://www.asadnetwork.org/publications.html

Submission and review process, timeline

In the first instance, the editors invite the submission of a synopsis (abstract) of the proposed contribution (no more than 500 words). The deadline for submission of a synopsis is on Monday, 9 February 2026.

Synopsis should be emailed to both editors: Maria Huhmarniemi and Kathryn Burnett

maria.huhmarniemi@ulapland.fi;  kathryn.burnett@uws.ac.uk

Editors select synopses.

• The InSEA Publications Board will review the synopses and notify editors
• Editors invite authors to write chapters for the next stage (editorial review).
• All contributors should note that the final deadline for full manuscripts is 25 May 2026
• Review Policy: Double-blind review (Jufo level 1)
• After the review period (25 May – 25 August 2026) authors will be informed of the final decision.
• Autumn 2026, editing and final corrections.
• The book will be published in November 2026.

Guidelines for authors

• Authors should bear in mind the overall themes of the series, Sustainable Arts and Design in the Arctic and the North, when writing.
• Authors must be members of InSEA at the time publication
• Complete chapters should be 5000 (+/- 10%) words (excluding references).
• Relate North uses the APA7 author-date bibliographical referencing system. References should be listed alphabetically at the end of the paper and must adhere to APA7 conventions.
• Relate North uses British English
• A short (maximum 80 words) author biographical note is also required. The article should not contain this, but can be sent in the same file. It should include a contact email address and ORCID number (if applicable).
• Do not include an abstract or keywords
• Do not use footnotes or endnotes
• Send text documents in Microsoft Word (.docx) format with low-resolution images embedded to show preferred positions (if the chapter or visual essay is accepted, high-resolution images will be required). Authors are responsible for obtaining copyright clearance for images.