Soiva Metsä Festival
Soiva metsä Festival is a free, open-to-all multidisciplinary art festival held in Soiva Metsä, Suomussalmi, from July 3 to 6, 2025.
In this expansive festival, the forest will come alive with a variety of music, theater, installations, performances, social dances, communal singing and playing, workshops, and discussions. The festival will also feature a bookshop cart, a pancake café run by retirees, a forest bar, Tikkupulla´s (sweet-bun-on-a-stick), opportunities to explore civic activism, engaging forest-themed discussions, a resting island, and a chance to sauna on a floating sauna raft in a lake bordering the forested ridges.
The event weaves together multidisciplinary art with statements, proposals, and reflections on the state of forests in Finland and art as a force shaping these multi-species ecosystems. As a whole, it examines the interconnectedness of forests and humanity, emphasizing the forest as an essential prerequisite for all life.
The festival aims to bring together professionals and creators from various fields, critical thinkers, and dreamers. Alongside the audience, these participants will create a weekend-long public celebration that delves into the crucial question of the future of forest use and the values that forests and life in the present era embody.
Soiva Metsä Festival seeks to diversify both national and regional forest discussions, offering new perspectives, approaches, and spaces for different stakeholders to come together. Additionally, it aims to bring thought-provoking and timely culture to an ecologically and socially diverse region. One of the festival's most important reasons for existing is simply the stunning Soiva Metsä itself—and the desire to share this unique experience with more people.
Festival organizers
Soiva Metsä Festival is made possible by a small production team, volunteers, and dedicated festival workers. The team operates under Oikku ry, an organization committed to fostering discussions on the role of art and activism in society, promoting civic engagement, and supporting community development around these themes.
The production team includes:
Maija-Tilda Kovalainen
Hi! I'm Maija-Tilda, other funder of the Soiva metsä festival! Soiva metsä is my first large-scale production, but I have been working for a long time in the fields of activism, art and community work. In Soiva metsä I have been extensively involved with working and designing the broad entity of artistic and practical aspects of the festival. At the festival itself I will be particularly responsible for volunteer and worker activities, well-being, overall impact and many practical aspects. Otherwise in life I play with cakes, farming and different crafts.
My family is from Suomussalmi, and the landscape of the Soiva Metsä, together with the practicality of the people from the Kainuu area, are fundamentally part of my understanding and experience of this world. It is a privilege to be able to make this festival happen in Kainuu and Suomussalmi and to bring people to these special environments. With the festival I hope to bring together a little collection of proposals for alternative ways of working with forests and arts.
Siiri Hänninen
Moi! I'm Siiri, one of the founders of the Soiva metsä festival. In Soiva Forest, I act as a link between the artists, the technical production and our team, taking care of graphic design and many practical matters - from the festival's accounting to the book kiosk and back to the chairs of the floating sauna to think about the festival as a whole, the collaborators, working group and people's enjoyment of the festival. I'm an architect by training and lately a lot of my work has been related in one way or another to forests and forest conservation. In addition to the festival, I also work in the field of architecture education.
Laura Jurmu
Hi! I’m Laura and I savor ways to build life force through arts and pleasures. Rooting for wild things! I feel nourished by collaborative doing/being, twisting thoughts in new positions and lurking in the in-between. At Soiva Metsä Festival, I work as a producer hands-on with many practical things, but you can turn to me especially if you have questions about accommodation or festival-time logistics – or really anything related to the festival – I’ll help you find the right person.<3
poa pohjola
I am poa — a cultural multidisciplinary artist living from community work, music and grassroots culture, the chair of myös collective and a DJ. myös is an intersectional, anti-racist and queer-feminist association that has been organising safer space events and workshops since 2018. In Soiva Metsä I’m doing communications.
Vertti Korkki
Hello! I’m Vertti and I am the technical producer of Soiva metsä festival. I work with performing arts, usually as a sound designer or musician/composer and I sometimes teach music technology, too. I also like writing song lyrics and experimenting with words. Suomussalmi has a special place in my heart through family and memories so it feels wonderful to be part of this.
Anna Sairinen
My name is Anna and I’m studying cultural management in Helsinki. I’m working at the Soiva Metsä festival as a production assistant intern. I come from a small but culturally vibrant village of Fiskars. From a young age, I have grown to appreciate the wonder of nature, community and influence through cultural means, which are also very present in the Soiva Metsä festival.
Eemil Tähtinen
I'm Eemil, working as a production assistant at the Soiva metsä festival with a subsidized employment contract and as a close friend! My duties include various office tasks and material procurement, and as the festival approaches, all kinds of hands-on work, carpentry, decorating, running the Café Paku, and more.
In addition to my festival work, I write and sing music, create my own performances for different venues, and do my best to enjoy a wonderful life. I also have a bug-themed children's theatre performance coming up for Soiva Metsä. I bet you’ll hear more about that later!
Janika Sistonen
Hi, my name is Janika! I work as a volunteer coordinator at the Soiva Metsä festival, i.e. as a volunteer trainer, contact and festival buddy. Something about me: I'm passionate about different ways of doing activism, I study global justice issues in my studies, I spend all my free time in winter snowboarding and I enjoy culture in different ways all year round.
Fanny
Hello! I'm Fanny and I'm in charge of cooking in the Soiva Metsä. I grew up in a green kitchen, where the pots are always put in the oven in the morning and in the evening we gather in the same place to taste, season, chat and wonder. This is the atmosphere I want to bring to Soiva <3
Riina Nykänen
My name is Riina — I'm in charge of the Soiva Metsä festival’s impact content. That is, my aim is to think about and create ways to communicate to the festival visitors not only about the needs of Finnish and Sámi forests, but also about the multidimensionality of the ongoing forest debate and ways to enable forest species to flourish in the future. For half a decade I have been working as a sort of freelance activist in various grassroots movements and organisations — educating, creating, organising! Oih, the delightfulness of active citizenship!
Saana Pohjonen
Hi, I’m Saana. I’m helping Soiva Metsä festival in different kinds of tasks related to sound and I will also perform at the festival. I’m a musician and a sound designer. Besides that I do all kinds of other stuff like writing stories and performing them + my own informal research on the macrocosm :p
With the support of, (THANK YOU!!)
Mummi and ukki – Maija ja Kauko Kovalainen, Annukka Ruuskanen, Ulla Schroderus, Heta Heikkala, Daniela Heimsch, Elsa Lankinen, Cecilia Aintila, Otso Jämsä, Aino Kovalainen, Ada-Karoliina Määttä, Terttu Huttu-Juntunen, Soko Hwang, Minka Virtanen, Paula Kovalainen, Olli Pentikäinen, Paula Markkanen, Jouni ja Leena, Suomussalmen eläkeläiset ry
Volunteering at the Soiva Metsä Festival
We are reopening the call for volunteers!
We are looking for a few more volunteers to join the Soiva Forest team! We especially need volunteers for the booth team during the festival, but we also have a few openings for the festival building!
Join us for a memorable forest festival!
Open call to be part of the Soiva metsä festival's book kiosk publication collection
We are assembling a collection of interesting books, booklets, pamphlets, and other publications to be read and sold from a book cart located in the forest during the Soiva Metsä Festival. We invite you to take part in the collection with your own publication!
The open call welcomes a wide variety of works: booklets, comics, photo collections, zines, or other self-published materials that complement the printed world of the festival. The publication may broadly explore themes like forests and forestry, mythologies, resilience, community, humanity, resistance, art, and change.
All sales proceeds from the publications will go directly to the creator’s own MobilePay or PayPal account, so participation requires having one of these apps.
Digital publications can be included in the Soiva metsä festival archive collection on the festival's website.
The open call is open until the end of May. Publications must be delivered to us in Helsinki during May or brought to Soiva Metsä in July by the creators themselves.
