(Re)configuring Territories Summer School 2025
“Ecologies of Trust”
June 30 – July 4, 2025
Ecologies of Trust is a five-day summer school held in Daugavpils, Eastern Latvia.
The starting points for the summer school are the city’s fortress building, the meandering river, and the city’s multispecies inhabitants. The summer school aims to answer critical questions: How can design practices facilitate meaningful change in the midst of geopolitical and ecological crises? How do more-than-human design approaches shape everyday spatial practices in the context of Daugavpils? How do the increased geopolitical tensions in the Eastern Baltic influence understanding of infrastructures? How do these two phenomena relate and influence each other?
The summer school will take place at the Daugavpils Fortress, and consist of two workshops: one facilitated by curator, researcher and architect Kaisa Karvinen and Jaakko Karhunen and the other by researcher and designer Tommi Vasko and Mari Vaara.
Workshop 1: Infrastructural trust
In the workshop we’ll explore how different infrastructures relate to trust: what systems quietly support daily life, and what happens when they break, are repaired, or reimagined? Through readings, discussions, and fieldwork in Daugavpils, participants will observe local infrastructures and create a small piece to share in a final exhibition.
Workshop 2: Live Action Ecosystem Exercises
The second workshop focuses on using roleplay as a method in understanding the Daugavpils fortress and its meaning to local people and other species. We will sketch a map of the ecosystem of the fortress area and its main actors using walks, interviews and observation as our method. In the end we will produce a collection of human and more-than human characters and encounters between them.
The two workshops are planned in collaboration with local organizations. Both will host six participants each, including active local citizens and students, as well as students from diverse design disciplines within the Nordic-Baltic region, selected through an open call.
Apply to the summer school by filling the form here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfEf81Fw0nVun-knCaCiUOKEwzBiCcMrKCi30U99l1kPlXwFQ/viewform?usp=header
The Summer School is free of charge. Participants will cover their accommodation and food costs. There is dormitory style accommodation available (about 13€ / night), and affordable soup lunches during the summer school.
Ecologies of Trust is a second phase of (Re)configuring Territories research programme. First located in Narva in Eastern Estonia, the programme is a platform for socially engaged design research, collaboration and networking between Nordic and Baltic design communities and a way to support experiments and engagement with local organizations actively shaping the urban and more-than-human spaces in Daugavpils.
The Summer School is supported by Aalto University Design Department and Nordic Council of Ministers’ Office in Latvia.
For more information, contact:
Tommi Vasko
+358 5903600864
tommi.vasko@aalto.fi
and
Vadims Murašovs
+371 26078107
vadims.murasovs@norden.lv