Mission and Vision

Nature tour on IHME Festival 2018, photo: Veikko Somerpuro.

IHME Helsinki promotes the cultural change needed in the environmental crisis

We produce a new work of art for public space annually

The annual IHME Helsinki Commissions, tailored for public spaces, spring from the dialogue between art and researched knowledge. We invite artists, who share our ethos of ecological sustainability and faith in the power of art in the sustainability transformation, to collaborate with us. Our Executive Director is also a curator, who selects the artists and develops the Foundation’s activities together with the experts on our Advisory Board. The works offer an opportunity to deal with feelings and information related to this time of environmental crisis.

Check out the IHME Commissions

We promote eco-social education

Eco-social education involves an understanding that humans are a part of nature and that we get everything we need from nature. An eco-socially civilized person understands that their own rights and responsibilities depend on the well-being of other people and nature, i.e. their relationship with the world is a comprehensively responsible one. We promote eco-social education through participatory artworks, events, and communication. Our Communications Planner handles our marketing and communications.

Read IHME blogs and listen to podcasts

We monitor the carbon footprint of our operations and their impact on biodiversity

We have been proactively calculating our carbon footprint since 2020, changing our operations based on these calculations and compensating for the remaining emissions every year. In our work, we also pay attention to our environmental footprint, i.e. how the products and services we acquire are related to land use, which has been globally identified as the most significant cause of environmental damage. Our Eco-Coordinator handles these issues and communicates about them.

Read more about the sustainability of our operations

We reduce the climate emissions caused by our operations and offset the remaining emissions

We encourage our audience to arrive at our events on foot, by bike or by public transport. In our office we have switched to renewable electricity and district heating. We also take these considerations into account in our choices of venue. The food we offer is vegan. Air travel for staff, experts and artists is kept to a minimum and, whenever possible, we travel by land. Waste is recycled. Our entire staff participate in this work.

Discover our carbon footprint

We choose environmentally friendly services and develop ecologically sustainable operating models 

As partners, we are looking for companies and organizations that share our values aimed at ecological sustainability. We are also happy to introduce the topic to those partners who are just at the beginning of the path of change. Our eco-coordinator maintains a procurement list from ecologically sustainable companies and organizations, and the most important products and services we use can be found on the list.

Get to know our ecological operating models

We share information about our environmental activities

The eco-coordinator’s tasks include calculating the carbon footprint of our operations and finding out the most reliable compensation options every year. In the Eco-coordinator’s Ecoblog, you can read about the carbon footprint calculation of the office, events, trips and artwork productions and how we managed to reduce emissions.

Read more on Ecoblog

Our vision for the future is to be a recognized expert organization for contemporary art and sustainable operating models.

Our Values

History

Why did IHME change its operations?

From a festival into a contemporary art commissioning agency.

Read our story