Enacting creativity through interdisciplinary, place-based and sustainability-oriented learning in Finnish Arctic primary education

Creativity and interdisciplinarity feature in European curriculum reform and sustainability-oriented education. However, classroom-based research has less often examined how these agendas are enacted through children’s everyday material and social engagement in primary education. This article presents an interdisciplinary art–science project conducted in a Finnish primary school under Arctic conditions. The study was designed using an art-based action research approach, with Zhang acting as a teacher-researcher who designed, facilitated and documented the interdisciplinary Winter Art activities. It involved students in their first year of primary school ( n  = 24, aged 7) participating in a winter-themed sequence of activities with snow and salt. Data comprised students’ artworks, photographic documentation, small-group interviews and reflective research notes. A multimodal analysis explored how students’ interactions with materials and peers shaped solution-finding and collaboration as situated dimensions of creativity. The findings show that place-based and material-oriented practices supported iterative experimentation, imaginative translation of observed changes and peer dialogue, which helped participants to develop, share, and refine their ideas across project phases. The study contributes empirical insight into how interdisciplinary learning is generated locally in primary education, illustrating how curriculum integration and sustainability-related learning can take shape through concrete pedagogical encounters within an Arctic ecocultural context.