Project presentation
What was one Wednesday like in eleven Finnish families in February 2011? What did they have for breakfast, what about dinner? Who went to work or to school? Did someone stay home? Who baked what? And who made a Moomin troll?
Everyday life with its various events and phenomena surround us all the time. Sometimes it's busy, sometimes idle. What will our everyday lives be like in ten, fifty or a hundred years' time? That we don't know, but perhaps in the future we can look at what it was like today.
Eleven museums across Finland have joined forces in order to see how people lead their everyday lives today. Eleven families were chosen, and one day: Wednesday, 2 February 2011. During that in itself a completely ordinary day scholars mingled in the families' lives. They walked with the families from early morning to late night. There was photographing, shooting videos and observation, questions about thoughts on everyday lives. The families helped choose everyday objects for the museum collections to depict life in Finland in the winter 2011.
The researchers collected as souvenirs material that thoroughly looks at Finnish life. This web exhibition is compiled out of the material. We will meet with eleven different Finnish families or persons, in their various stages of life and surroundings. In one winter day there is a lot of everyday hustle and bustle on one hand, leisure and human kindness on the other. The weather of the day was also versatile: drizzle, sleet and snow, sometimes also light frost and sun! Come along and see how the families spent their winter day!
The project leans on TAKO, a collaboration network coordinating the Finnish museums' recording and collection cooperation, of which one of the pools aims at recording everyday life. The museums of this pool decided on the winter day project already during the previous spring. Therefore the museums had plenty of time to prepare: to look for and find suitable families and plan for the implementation of the project.
Here we would like to thank in particular the people living in these eleven towns who let the researchers observe their lives that day, and have given the permission to publish the material collected on this site.
